I am Joe. Average Joe as a matter of fact, or at least an average joe. I have wife and son (and desire even more kids). I have a job that is more important than riding a sliver of foam and fiberglass. I have a mortgage and private health insurance policy. I've been mortally sick. I'm for religion, namely mine. I am in my 30's. If I fall off the tax bracket I will not meet my deductible. I do the repairs to my home, not because I know how but because I have to. I'm very average. I do not own oceanfront property. I do not travel to exotic locations for surfing her waves. I do not have a personal trainer. I do not even have a membership to a gym. I do not have a sponsor for surfing nor have I ever. I did not grow up in San Diego or some other epicenter of surfing's origin or development and have no claim to native-born surfing rights. I was not taught to surf by my father or mother or brother or mystical water-living mammals. I slugged it out the ugly and embarrassing way - the hard way of learning alone and from inland and with my native, non-straining, anti-surfer accent. I'm average. So average that it has been work to even be average. But, I do happen to surf and enjoy surfing as much as any I've met. Which among those who really surf is still pretty average. I like surfing and surfboards. Not the clothes or language or idea of it as 'culture.' I don't care for the pluralistic ideology and generally inarticulate ethos of life and meaning of her icons, nor the rank and emotive hedonism that sells surfing (or at least its image). But I do like to ride the temporal swaths of water on pieces of foam and fiberglass. I like weather models and buoy readings and isobars. I like early mornings whether cold or hot, numb fingers or flesh rubbed raw from more than a hour surf for a one does not have more than an hour to surf. I like nasal drips at awkward times and the lingering smell of my wetsuit throughout the day after a morning session (which is at most once a week). I like the understanding and images of rockers, foils, vectors, cants, rakes, rails and tails.
Being an average joe, I like many things but a select number of them I like a quite a bit more than the others. Surfing and surfboards are one of them. While I hope not the chief among other desires and enjoyments but an enjoyment and a desire, for sure. I am Joe. A very average guy with responsibility other priorities of a higher value but who really likes to surf and thus surfboards.
This blog will just be what I do mentally anyway, record my evaluations of the surfboards I ride on the waves God blows my way when my other duties of a higher priority do not call. If you are average and you surf, I'm sure you will relate. Maybe I can pass along something only learned from the inland, duty-bound, wave-starved, quiver-poor, commuting, 30-something guy who still tries to surf as only a part of living life as it was meant to be.
