Influences Part II

So, I was out cruising yard sales this morning, and as I was driving up a street I saw the “Master of Disaster” himself, Mr. Duane Peters parking his van. Who knew that DP lived about a mile from my house?
Now, some of you that read my blog will recall one of my past posts “Influences” (click for a link to it). In that post I talked about a certain photo of DP, and how it meant something to me as a young kid who loved punk rock and skateboarding, back in the day.

I always wanted to meet DP, and hopefully get him to sign that picture. So here he was, I really didn’t want to come across as some kind of 45 year old groupie geek, but how often do you get a chance to meet someone that had an influence on you as a kid? I pulled over, said hi, told him about the picture and my previous post and asked him if he could sign it. He was super cool, he said “sure”, pointed to where he lived and told me to stop by.

I went back home, and grabbed the picture off my office wall and drove over to his place.
He signed the picture. I told him about what that single picture meant to me back then, and how if affected a 12 year old kid. He old me about the photo, where it was, and what was going back then. For those that do not know, DP is pretty much “Punk for Life”. He still rips. I just watched him skate the Combi Pool at the Recent Pro-Tec Pool Party Contest. He is still has his band U.S. Bombs, a great blog DuanePeters.net, and Tweets like no one else.

Thanks DP for taking the time out to let a 45 yo meet one of his early influences.

Back in the Water Again.....

So I finally got in a real surf since my shoulder injury.

Since today is my Birthday, VR and I decided to head to Spot X. We got there around 9am. The main spot was packed tighter then a can of sardines, with everyone fighting for one peak. We went to the Middle spot.

The wind was blowing very lightly out of the north, while a giant fog bank was lingering off shore, waiting to come in. There was around 10 guys already out, speard out over 50 yards. To be honest it didn’t look all that good, but I was my birthday and I was going to surf.

I paddled out and caught a small right, worked it in, and thought this might be fun. I quickly caught two more. VR came out and he got a few. Then, everyone left except one other guy, he stayed north of us. The surf picked up and we had the spot to ourselves for about forty five minutes.
Rights and lefts. We had a bunch of waves. It was a real fun session, more then we expected. But if you go in with low expectations, you get rewarded.
While I was sitting n the lineup, it dawned on me that we have been coming to this spot for 28 years, shit, I am getting old!

BTW, the shoulder is sore, but not real bad.

Spindrift Surfboards, Secos and Cyclone Surfboards and 1 kook

I found a box of old pictures the other day, and found these two shots.

The first one is me in 1984 with my brand new Spindrift 5’-10” thruster. This was a custom order from the factory up in Santa Barbara. Lokk at those colors and the Kook Holding it. Wish I still had that board.

The second is a shot of me at Secos around 1987. I am riding a 6’-2” Cyclone round tail, shaped by Jeff Bushman. I got this as custom from Jeff when he had his little shop up there in Ventura. A few years later he moved to the north shore and the rest is history. You can see pros riding his boards with the Bushman lable.

I wish I had that board too.