Right after I'm finished writing this post, I'm going to strip the wax off my 9'1" Schopenhauer and put an ad on Coastal BC and sell this board. It'll sell easily, apparently... because there are very few used longboards in these parts. I am selling my first surfboard. I... am selling... my first... surfboard.
After switching to 11' boards, I didn't want to ride the 9'1" anymore... I assumed that I wouldn't want to ride anything smaller than an 11'... but the more people I talk to, the more I keep hearing that a 9'1" just isn't long enough for a longboard. A work friend said that he wouldn't ride any longboard under a 9'4"... and then not long after, ULTE1 said the same thing... that a longboard has to be at least 9'6"... this was not what I remember from my early readings about surfboards... the consensus among the literature seem to have suggested that anything above an 8' is a longboard... as it turns out... the caveat was that it has to be above a 9'4" to be a useful longboard...
I went to "jingle into Christmas" today... (it's a Tofino thing... all the stores stay open late and offer free food and alcoholic beverages... and people go from store to store eating and drinking and shopping... I thought it a little weird at first... but I'm definitely getting into it this year... I even went to the Legion (first time ever) for their turkey dinner)... and tonight, at the surf shop, they convinced me to sell my 9'1" and buy a 9'6". Considering that, ever since the time Bluepath gave me a concussion, I've been super paranoid about taking out an 11' board in overhead surf, trying a 9'6" isn't a bad idea... especially since there's going to be another I don't know how many months of winter left... and winter will come again, year after year...
And selling my first surfboard... that's sort of a big deal... but there's really no other way of going about it... I'm not going to surf this 9'1" ever again... so why would I keep it? I remember buying this surfboard on Hallowmas 2006... and taking it out for its inaugural ride at South Chesterman... (incidentally, i think that's the last time I surfed South)... ULTE1 was there... he zipped up my zipperless wetsuit for me. That's the board I'd drive back and forth from the city... getting it in and out of an elevator to the 21st floor... where it had its own room with a view of Mount Baker. It's the board on which I got my first white water ride... it's the board on which I got my first ride on the green... the it's the board on which I made my first bottom turn...
So many memories...
Of course, I'm not going to catch another ride on this board... and having a board that I won't be riding just isn't the thing to do. So... it'll be a wax and a final polish with the citronella... and then soon it will be goodbye. I just hope that I don't get overly sentimental and can't go through with it... that is how packrattism happens.
This weekend though, I'll be going out with my 11' NSP. I've decided to keep the 11' G&S as my summer board... winter just seems a little too hazardous for a super heavy 11' glass board.
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