Hobbylords

Miné showed me a video about Jean Baudrillard recently, a bit of a mind blower. It was actually about how The Matrix flubbed the references to his work but anyway, it introduced me to the concept of the hyper-real - how "the world in which we live today is a “hyperreal postmodern” world; one filled with signs referencing little that actually exists". Honestly I don't really understand the concept but a section in the video talked about how, back in the day, the gap between our reality and our imagination was huge - we used to think up stories about impossible worlds and scenarios. Then as time went on, our imagination started to represent the world we live in - it would extrapolate our reality (sci-fi as a good example). Now, our reality represents our imagination. The gap between the two has blurred to the point of them being indistinguishable. It's an unsettling idea.. It's a little bit earth shattering and to be honest it makes me uncomfortable to think about ...

I’ve had sailing fever lately. Currently on a mission to get checked out on a second boat in the club’s ‘Small’ class so that I can then clock hours and bump up to the medium class and have access to boats that I can cruise on and bring friends along.  Last weekend I linked up with some of the youthful minority at my club (most of the members are 60+ it seems) and unexpectedly found myself on a 35’ catamaran with a really fun group of 30-something sailors. We headed out from MDR in the early afternoon towards Malibu just to get some fair wind sailing under our belts. Two of the guys brought fishing rods, a couple of lures and some heavy test line with the hopes of landing a tuna or two. One of them did manage to catch a couple of Pacific Barracuda which was a fun sight to see. We were out for a few hours on more or less the same tack the whole time. Clocked in a top speed of 7.5kts with decent winds around 15-17knts true.  It’s been so nice meeting and sailing with new faces f...

Work's been mental so lording has been slow but I managed to get some time off and finagled a trip to Red Rock in Nevada. I've been struggling with the mental aspects of climbing lately so I planned a very mellow itinerary that featured long routes but 0 stress to remind myself a) that I actually do like climbing and b) WHY I like it.  Our 'menu' was Birdland 5.7+ and Solar Slab 5.6, two classic trade routes that usually guarantee a conga line. With little ambition to push the limits, Trevor and I were down to wait around if we needed to and just have a nice relaxing adventure in the sun.  So we headed out towards Vegas on Thursday night after I wrapped work and got as far as Primm, NV.  Not much to say about Primm other than: "bleak". It used to be known as State Line, was established around a gas station - since replaced by cardboard casinos - and exists solely to cater to gamblers, jonesing so hard for a game that they can't wait to get to Vegas which i...

Overall pretty whack morning today. Cold, windy, few waves. Here's one of Zach catching one of the rare dece waves (as usual).

 Picked up my custom (first one) earlier this year.  It's a 7'8" hull shaped by my buddy Jeremy under his Terry Holster Surfboards name.  It's a really fun user friendly displacement hull. We took some design elements from a couple of great boards and combined them to make a super fun, ride-from-the-front kind of mid length.  So far I've only taken it out a handful of times due to the high dawn tides and micro swell that we've experienced a lot of this year. The times I've taken it out though have been super fun.  On long open faces it's a dream where you can really feel the board move in that ball bearing way that these types of boards are known for. It's a fun pumpy ride too if you're on faster waves. All in all it's just super fun.  Here's the board at Jeremy's place just before pick up. The dog didn't come with.

Sailing is wild.  Mine and I started our second leg of the ASA 101/103 course this last weekend.  We went from a 25' boat (Time Capsule) to a 35' Beneteau cruiser called Yoda which was a big learning experience. That being said, the real difference between our 101 weekend and 103 was the wind.  Yoda When we were on Time Capsule, the wind was max 5 knots with no gusts.  When we stepped up to Yoda the winds were averaging around 12-14 knots with gust of up to 23 knots. What we learnt first hand was that the variation between average wind speed and gusts should not be that excessive if you're learning. It was insane. I like to think that I can keep a cool head but being tossed around on a large boat when you're surrounded by other boats and you have a limited idea of what you're doing... well it was intense. I was glad to take the steps we did to make things less crazy.  pre-pucker sailing I'll for sure say that sailing is an amazing thing to get into for me. I can...

Well I finally finished it. The Ghost is back again from the dead. Gonna take it out when the swell picks up again and see how it holds up. Update 2/12/21 Went out to county line this am on some micro to RETURN TO THE SCENE OF THE CRIME!!!

The fin is on!  I’ve been working on the board intermittently over the last couple of weeks. I was putting off getting to the fin but I bit the bullet and put it on yesterday as I’m pretty much just down to the last hot coat application on the dings.  My personal assessment: not the best looking fin repair but it’ll work! I had had to patch some glass on the fin when it was off the board but I didn’t clean it up super well. I figured that any exposed weave would just get soaked when I glassed it on to the board but there’s a fair amount of dusty looking parts.  That being said, only I will notice. And the board looks like it’s been through hell anyway so not a huge problem if the fin has a weird look too.  My only serious concern is whether I have enough glass to keep it on when I’m riding. I applied fin rope - prob about 25-30 strange of 6oz - and two full pieces of 6oz cloth on either side with a proper amount of tail to glass to the board. The fin ain’t going anyw...

Found a few drops of my poor lost mojo today at Woodson with JT, Russell and Chris. The pilot light has been reignited. Set list: Rockwork Orange, Out of Sight, Unnamed 5.8 Corner, Some random 11-something, Undertow*,  Mother Superior*, Baby Robbins and Robbins Crack.  Rockwork Orange, 10a  📷RH Send train pulling out of the station 

Been really off climbing lately - a lot of effort to be scared and frustrated is how I’ve been thinking of it. I know I need to reframe my approach and mindset for sure and so today went to Joshua Tree to hit some mellow easy climbs and restart the fire.  I rolled out at 5:20a ish to meet my buddy Russell in town outside the park where there’s still signal. As soon as I got to town I figured the weather had other plans.  Snowed out.  We bailed and hit Big Rock for some chilled slab climbing.  Big Rock, CA: I got on an arching finger crack/lie back 5.7 and flailed. Took a much more dangerous but easier variation because I got wigged out. So stupid. I think I’m stuck in a repetitive mental cycle of fear when I climb which isn’t helping me get my stoke back - gonna keep pushing through and be more attentive to my mental dialogue like I was doing earlier in my climbing career. 

I’ve been hitting the bigger dings this week which has been a mission. The previous dings were just about filling holes but these latest fixes have required me to do some proper shaping. The tail in particular was  the biggest task since I had basically lost the entire half of the tail. Before: After: So far so good - need to put the bottom side glass on today, sand it flush and then hot coat. Shaping it was tricky but I templated the good half and used that as a guide and matched the contours as best I could by eye.  The big hole on the rail has had the same treatment. Before: After:  Getting enough glass whilst not having too much of a bump is the crux right now. I’ll need to lay a bit more glass on than expected to make sure that there’s strength there whilst also getting things flush. Right now I’ve got too much weave standing out.  2 more dings on the nose after this and then the fin goes on. Closing in!

 I also make bread sometimes. I’ve been trying to figure out an easy and quick recipe. Most bread recipes online read like scientific journal entries and make things super complicated. Maybe that’s what you need if you’re trying to win best in show but I just want bread. My recipe was a bit janky but here it is as a reminder to myself: 520g of flour - mostly bread flour with some whole grain and rye. Eyeballed in true peasant style.  438g water cuz some recipe said so.  10g salt 70g vivrant starter Method: Mix water and starter together / mix in dry stuff / let sit for 30 / 3-4x stretch and folds every 30 mins / (here’s where things get backwards) / pour dough out, pre shape stand for 20, shape and put in an oiled loaf tin. Let stand/rise/proof for 10-12 hours at room temp. preheat oven at 50 and bake that shit at 470-450 degs for 20 mins each. Pull out of tin and bake for 3 mins each side to brown the crust.  Result : dank bread Findings: might need to shape after t...

 More dings fixed this week - one gaping hole on the deck side of the rail. Just got done hot coating it. Gotten to the point where I can fix almost fix a ding a day if I q cell at dawn not including hot coatings. 5 more fat holes to fill in - I’m almost out of resin so I’m waiting for a delivery tomorrow and then I’ll hit these last holes on the weekend.  I cleaned up the fin this week. The fin itself is sound but it had some nasty delams on the outer glass so I pulled off the broken glass and laid some 4oz down to replace the cloth I pulled off. I’ll clean it up so it’s nice and smooth again and prep for reattachment.  If I put the time in this weekend I’ll probably have it done next week! 

 

I finished the 3 bottom patches and glassed the rail dings over the weekend. There was a lot of experimenting and some mistakes were for sure made but overall I've taken a step into the world of fiberglass and began to find my bearings.  The bottom glass patches went down fine though not as smoothly as I had hoped. I increased the temps in the booth to around 77-80 degrees and applied the same mix of resin and hardener as before thinking that it was simply a temperature issue that was causing it to take so long to cure. Sadly it wasn't the case so I had a similarly long wait for the resin to cure in the first glass application. Once it had cured, everything looked good. I sanded down the glass patches to be flush with the bottom being careful not to sand away the glass itself and ruining the repair.  By the time everything was flat and smooth things looked pretty good so I applied the hot coat, this time changing the resin/hardener mix to 10:1 (which is a lot more than recomme...