Surfing the Great Lakes: My First Board I Made

Aloha Tribe,

I've been up since about 1:30 this morning. Mostly exercising, partially reading my surfing dictionary Surfin'ary by Trevor Cralle (my favorite book), and partially reflecting on days of when.

When I was in 5th grade, I so desperately wanted a surfboard. But, as with so many young girls, I just didn't have lots of money to buy one. But, what I did have was a daddy who worked with styrofoam. He was a taxidermist and often mounted or stuffed animals and birds and fish for hunters and fisherman as well as museums and business and so on. Because of what he did, we had large blocks of thick styrofoam always available. So, I did the only thing that any enterprising girl would do, I went to the library, checked out a book on how to make surfboards, bought the supplies, and begged my daddy for one of his blocks of styrofoam.

Then, began my plans. I looked at photos and drawings of the typical surfboards available then, and, lacking any experience, I simply decided to more or less try to make one like in one of the photos. The ace up my sleeve is that I had watched my daddy make hundreds of styrofoam mounts and so I had an idea of what to do when it came to carving.

I cut out my blank, put the fiberglass on it, added a single fin (it had to be a single fin because that was what the board in the picture looked like, besides, it looked pretty radical).

Before long, the board was done. And, white. All white. I didn't have any access to colors for the fiberglass undercoating so the board was simply the color of the original styrofoam. Which, I thought was perfect since the one in the photo was also white.

I learned initially to surf on that board in the lake that we lived on in Michigan. At first, I simply went out and paddled around, but it wasn't long before I was begging my daddy to drive his speedboat as fast as he could so that I could surf in the wake. Interestingly enough, it worked. Then again, I had no reason to think it wouldn't work since I had no framework to work from.

Eventually, I entered high school several years and lots of wake rides later, and soon I was able to drive. Which, meant one thing. Freedom. Freedom of going to the beach on my own whenever I wanted. Except, for one thing. One tiny thing. School.

Well, I did the only thing any soul surfer would do, I ditched. During the course of my high school education, I skipped a total of 47 days to go surfing. I think we were allowed a week or two, something like that. At any rate, even though the beach was a 45 minute drive away, anytime the wind blew right through the corn field outside one of my classroom windows, I knew the waves were up at Grand Haven, Michigan. And, I'd be off heading toward the magic of the surf.

Grand Haven had great waves. Oh sure, they weren't like California or Hawaii, but, they were perfect for me. Besides, they were more or less all I knew. There was a pier, probably still is, at Grand Haven that jutted out into Lake Michigan roughly 2500 feet or about 833 yards on the south side of the Grand River, creating the perfect point break.

One of the first things I noticed about surfing at Grand Haven was the boards. Well, the first thing I noticed was the waves, but that's besides the point. Everybody had pretty awesome boards. All of them had wild colors, loads of stickers, apparent dings and dents, and, the oddest thing, what appeared like wax all over their decks.

Wax!!!

That was the missing ingredient. Here I had been "surfing," wakes for how many years, all alone, with no access to "real surfers," and thus, I had, for whatever reason never heard about surf wax. I must have missed that part in the books, or, since I tended to skip school a lot, maybe what the books said wasn't as important as jumping in and giving something a go.

I had found my waxless board a might challenging to ride over the years, but, I adapted to it soon enough and came to find that I actually loved slipping all over the deck while I surfed, besides, that's how I thought it was supposed to be done.

Fortunately, I had a best friend who I'd often meet at the beach. He went to another school, a bit closer to the beach than me (he lived about 20 minutes away. We always seemed to ditch school on the same days to go surfing. Imagine that.

Paul taught me about surf wax. And stickers. and how to get color on a board. And, interestingly enough, sex. But that last one isn't really the point of the story. He taught me to surf Grand Haven and a little bit of how to grow up.

Bodaciously Stoked,

Lily of the Valley