About Me
I started riding waves at age 13, saving paper route money to take a Greyhound Bus to Santa Cruz to boogie board the Rivermouth. It was $14 round trip from my hometown back then. The East Side was still a surf ghetto, the cottages all stuffed tightly together. There were no stairs to the water, and playing hooky on weekdays meant empty peaks (because all the grown ups were at work, and the kids were all in school). People would honk driving past the breaks on East Cliff, weekdays, because it was something special to be in the water during work hours.
My mother bought me my first board, a Mike Croteau on my 14th birthday. What a board that was. I wish I still had it, and probably part of the reason I started making my own boards was to feel something of what I used to feel on that 1st board.
I stopped surfing around age 20, just moved on to other things in life, and then didn't surf for 20+ years, until moving back to CA and to Santa Cruz. In those non-surfing years, I lived all over the US, and abroad, and in particular for more than 10 years in New Orleans, where I learned my professional trade (restoring saxophones), and lived a happy and fulfilled life (most Orleanians would say that their lives are happy and fulfilled, I think -- it is culturally one of the greatest cities on earth). I miss that city and it's people every day.
I live in Santa Cruz for one reason: to surf -- and have surfed just about daily since moving back to CA, and first smelling the Monterrey bay salt, Pacific air again in 2010. Not too long after moving to SC, a new friend (now an old friend), Lon Lawhorn (Surfrite Surfboards) taught me to shape, and I began making boards for myself and friends.
I started riding waves at age 13, saving paper route money to take a Greyhound Bus to Santa Cruz to boogie board the Rivermouth. It was $14 round trip from my hometown back then. The East Side was still a surf ghetto, the cottages all stuffed tightly together. There were no stairs to the water, and playing hooky on weekdays meant empty peaks (because all the grown ups were at work, and the kids were all in school). People would honk driving past the breaks on East Cliff, weekdays, because it was something special to be in the water during work hours.
My mother bought me my first board, a Mike Croteau on my 14th birthday. What a board that was. I wish I still had it, and probably part of the reason I started making my own boards was to feel something of what I used to feel on that 1st board.
I stopped surfing around age 20, just moved on to other things in life, and then didn't surf for 20+ years, until moving back to CA and to Santa Cruz. In those non-surfing years, I lived all over the US, and abroad, and in particular for more than 10 years in New Orleans, where I learned my professional trade (restoring saxophones), and lived a happy and fulfilled life (most Orleanians would say that their lives are happy and fulfilled, I think -- it is culturally one of the greatest cities on earth). I miss that city and it's people every day.
I live in Santa Cruz for one reason: to surf -- and have surfed just about daily since moving back to CA, and first smelling the Monterrey bay salt, Pacific air again in 2010. Not too long after moving to SC, a new friend (now an old friend), Lon Lawhorn (Surfrite Surfboards) taught me to shape, and I began making boards for myself and friends.
(This page in progress, under construction.....)
