BoardBags

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It's about life - not "lifestyle"

BOARD BAGS

Another random, lingering thought subject again here. Some of you have called them "sermons" and maybe that's accurate. Send money if you believe it.

Had anybody else noticed a correlation between bagging your boards and not using them?

It's probably just me, the lazy streak blossoming out like an 18 year old girl in Cancun on Spring Break, but I swear having a board in a bag all the time keeps it from being used more. I absolutely have to use one for a good board, especially inside the wagon, and the green bag you see in the photo above has done a great job protecting it's contents when the whole thing fell from the suspended position from the garage rafters when old nylon rope broke (hint: when you move into a new place, put your own rope up). I have no problem with the concept of protective bags.

I'm thinking here that it's just a level of hassle I don't like dealing with. I liked having the boards mounted on the garage wall at the last place I lived at. It felt good to see them up there, gleaming in the light of the single bulb over the washing machine or maybe the dim glow of the garage door opener unit. Pick it up and hit the road.

In storage for a friend: A very nice Takayama longboard. Delaminations notwithstanding, it's a work of art. As is the board in the bag.

My days of grab and go seem to be gone now. Again, that may be my own laziness. Maybe I should just take the wax off the good board and hang it on the wall, but I'm not ready to do that just yet.

Another board bag phenomenon are the "coffin bags", which I assume are the massive, multi-board bags I occasionally see on top of SUVs in Southern California. If there is one thing that might inhibit my surfing choices more than hassling one board bag, it's having a multitude of board choices. That quiver idea sounds so simple and good: have a board for several ranges of wave size and conditions. The reality of this never seemed to work for me, and I suspect this is true for anybody who has to drive to get waves. Surfcams haven't helped much, either. Having a quiver might be great on the North Shore, where the whole show takes place in a 7 mile stretch, but it's useless if you have a 20 minute freeway drive.

One way around this is a bigger vehicle, so extra boards can be locked up. Can you say "Mo money"? A dangerous circle...

Remember what simple used to be? All you could afford was one board, and getting to the surf was a bit of a hassle. So whenever you could you took your one board and rode anything you found, for as long as you could.

Surfing