Go Green!

The theme for this week is...green.

Spring has finally arrived, and the depressing brown and grey winter motif outside my window has blossomed into springtime greens and yellows. Unfortunately for me, I happened to get sick this week and have been swimming in green phlegm all week long. *cough cough ack!*

It all started last weekend when I began running around like a chicken with its head cut off gathering materials for the shaping bay. I grabbed four 4' fluorescent light fixtures, eight 4' fluoro bulbs, some plastic buckets (for shaping stand bases and resin mixing), and various other doohickeys from Home Depot. Then I woke up early one morning, and rushed over to the local hardware store (which closes before I can get home from work) to grab some cement to use as the base for my shaping stands. Mid-week, after work, I threw all the stuff into the back of my Zipcar and dropped it off at the shaping bay (Note to Brain: Never try to lift an 80lb bag of concrete by yourself...Sincerely, Lower Back). The next day, I found some people on Craigslist (ie. the best website in the universe) who were giving away spare lumber that I wanted use for lighting stands, shelving/light hoods, and wall studs (for a wall partition my garage-mate and I were planning on building). I again drove around late after work to pick up the lumber, frantically trying to beat my Zipcar return time, when my body said, "OK. Stop, I quit." That night my head and throat were on fire and since then its been continuous couging, itchy throat, and gooey green phlegm. Mmmm.

I've taken the downtime as a hint to step back and slow down. They say that to shape well, you must be patient. Jim "The Genius" Phillips makes this clear in his Master Shaping Series. Careful planning along with the ability to put something down instead of forcing it will yield best results in the end. This goes for shaping as well as anything else I suppose.

In keeping with the "green" theme, I'd like point out some things that were brought to my attention by someone (thanks JD) who sold me my current favorite board, a 5'6" Brom twin keel fish...(seen here in shameless pic of self taken on 4/22/07 by Charles Unger, which I've entitled "Springtime Greens and Yellows")


As JD points out, environmentally friendly materials are now available through Greenlight Surfboard Supply. Greenlight provides environmentally friendly EPS blanks, bamboo stringers, and bamboo fiber laminating cloth! Gotta love bamboo, its light, strong, has stood the test of time as a building material, and...well, it grows like a goddam weed! They are also devoloping bio-plastics which will eventually become used for fins, fin boxes, and leash plugs. I hope we see more bamboo and bio-plastic in our boards in the near future. I will surely try to use them in mine.

Speaking of bamboo, I recently ordered a board from fish guru Manuel Caro over at Mandala Custom Shapes. It will arrive with groovy Marlin Bacon bamboo glass-ons provided by 101 Fin Co. He just started offering them on his boards, and I just had to have 'em! Manny has begun dabbling in the enviro-friendly materials as well, you can read about it here.

Well, thats all for now. Time to eat cough medicine and soup.

kc