Technology is great.... daily
updates on surf forecasts, look at buoy
readings, check the surf from your computer or phone, E-mail a surfboard order.
Yeah, Technology is great... until
it's not. Your computer goes south and doesn't come back, like mine did earlier
this month. Shoot, I was stuck doing things the old fashion way, like going down
to the beach to see what the surf was like instead of checking the surf cam. Oh
wait, I have a phone and can look at the surf cam with it... never mind.
Things happen though. The shaping
machine ( technology ) breaks so no surfboards get shaped. My shoulder ( old
technology ) has gone out in the past so no surfboards got shaped. Kind of the same thing.
Computer ( technology ) goes out so you can't write your blog. Actually you can
write, long hand on paper. But, can't get what you wrote by hand on the web
without a computer. Well I don't know how anyway.
The computer got fixed just in
time for this last swell. Which meant I could follow the latest buoy readings
to see how the winds in the channel might be affecting the surf. Check the
reading late at night then first thing in the morning... before dawn you can't
see anything on the surf cam. but, you can get an idea of what the surface
conditions will probably be like from
the buoys. As well, see if the swell is on the rise or not, what the water
temps are etc. That's the info you need to know what board to take to the beach
and what wet suit you might want. All the tech we take for granted now until we
can't access it. But, I'm still going to take a few boards and a couple
different wet suits to the beach just in case.
Here's a picture of some old surf
technology... and the way it was carried. On the head for the most part. Darn
things were heavy, and , we didn't have cool foot ware. Bare foot all the way
down a long path to the beach. If the little stones in the dirt didn't tweak
your feet on the way down. with 30 lbs.
of surfboard on your dead, getting the
bottom of your feet blistered on the way back to your car could be a problem
too. Once the sun started baking the dirt on the trail in the summer sun...
like walking on hot coals.
Only an old surfer knows the
feeling.
D.R.
How's that.. even one of these guys has a wet suit.
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