Tell me it's just a surfboard. . .

Okay, I'll get back to the endless motorcycle stories soon, I promise! Trying to pay off some debt, while still feeding the motorcycle obsession has been difficult. I've been doing everything I can not to spend any "new" money, which to me means I've gotta sell stuff to buy stuff. According to the laws of retail and thermodynamics, if done properly, this can result in not only a net loss of stuff- if that be your aim- but, in the end, less time dealing with stuff. I resorted to eliminating entire categories. I sold all of the snowboard race gear in one fell swoop (as a ski patroller, I always rode race boards in ski boots so I could be a switch two-planker for sled-dog duty). I got rid of a whole bunch of cross-country ski stuff going back close to forty years. I was kind of leading up to the surfboards. For years and years, especially during the ten years I was a boarding school nurse, I surfed whenever there were waves. In New Hampshire. Especially in the winter.  I worked fifteen-hour overnight shifts with a six-hour "on-call" segment in the middle where I could sleep. I'd get off at 0800, and if there were waves, I'd go to the beach. I'd head back to the school mid-afternoon, rinse out my gear, relieve the day nurse, and go to dinner. I'd get something out of a bottom drawer, and salt water would run out my nose all over the place. Very professional, I know. Surfboards are kind of commodity items. You're going to destroy them eventually. They get dents from your heels (knees, head), they get dinged-up, they eventually break. If you're lucky, you can keep them for some years, though, especially if you're not obsessed with lightness. I was never a great surfer, though, and I'm an old-fashioned kind of girl, so I like traditional-looking boards. The Stewart Hydro-Hull is a great board, but the production item has a sanded (dull) finish, and you usually find them with huge airbrushed flames down them. Still, they paddle and ride like a dream, in everything from ankle-slappers to double-overhead. When I ordered mine, I asked for a 9'0" Superlight blank (a name that they gave it in the 60's- it weighs about twice what a modern blank weighs), three wood stringers, and a fancy wood tail block. Gorgeous. I'd only had it a few weeks when I took it to Rincon, Puerto Rico for Thanksgiving week in 1995, and met somebody in the lineup there that examined the writing on the bottom and told me it had been shaped by the legendary Terry Martin. It was my main board for the next four years, and I had many, many great days on that board. It was a comforting presence in some bad situations, and a delight always. Then life changed, and my job changed. Still, I had mentioned surfing on my dykefinder.com profile, which is how Mary found me there. We surfed  few times together, but for years now, our surfboards have been stuck up in the barn loft, their bags serving mostly as mouse condos. I got them down last week to get ready to sell. The board of Mary's that was up there, she had only used twice (we bought it on a trip to P'town), and my 9'6" "big-wave" longboard, another Stewart/Terry Martin custom, I had only surfed a handful of times. The board bag zippers were frozen solid with metal corrosion and I had to cut them out, but the boards cleaned up really well, ancient wax and bushels of mouse nest coming off pretty easily with Fantastik and mineral spirits. I got great pics in the fading light on Saturday afternoon, and figured I'd get the 9'0" cleaned up for pics the next morning. I set it on the padded sawhorses in the fan blast from the heated end of the shop, and went to the house for a cup of tea while it warmed up enough to scrape the wax off. After, I went back to the barn and started in scraping. As the wax was coming off, I started noticing how the board felt under my hands, noticing the tiny line of green where the foam meets the wood stringers (the mark of a Clark Foam Superlight blank), the dents on the deck that showed how I stand, how I fall. . . the pale gray-green of the repairs. . . it seemed to take a long, long time to get the wax off. Taking a blue towel (unused operating room towel), folded and soaked with mineral spirits, I began to wipe the remaining wax off the board, and that's when it started. Have you ever cleaned up a body? I have, lots of times. It's never bothered me. This was feeling a lot like that, but my chest was getting tight and it sure was bothering me. This is crazy, I thought. It's just a thing. A hunk of plastic. A slab of petrochemicals, nothing more. It's in the past, it's done and over, sell it and move on. I put the rag down and went back to the house. Mary was cleaning the bathroom. "Come to the barn with me, please?"

"Why? I'm busy, and I'd have to get all changed to go outside. What's up?"

I was just about in tears, and I felt really stupid. How could I explain this? "I can't deal. I can hardly breathe. Please come and tell me it's just a surfboard. Tell me it's just a surfboard and I'll be all right, I can sell it."

Mary looked me calmly in the eyes. "It's not just a surfboard."

"This isn't helping."

"It's not just a surfboard. There's a lot of you in it. A lot of life. Don't sell it, you might want it some day, and besides, it's beautiful. Hang it in the living room, or wherever, but don't sell it."

So, there it is. I guess I'm keeping it. Last time I was out in LA visiting Alison and Chen Wei, I bought a ratty old Harbour 10'0" and paddled around a bit, even caught a wave or two, so I guess I can still, on some level, still think of myself as a surfer. Maybe I'll even get in the water a bit in New Hampshire again, although my old wetsuits will hardly fit me these days. Gotta do something about that, too, or I won't fit in my race leathers either.

Sigh. . . well, better get to it, what else is there to sell around here?

Note- the pic is of the 9'6", which has some funny yellowing up near the nose, and is actually for sale. Couldn't bring myself to take a pic of the 9'0".