lenny is an idiot

[lenny]

Bram
That's great your surfing has improved so much. I started to reply to the October review but got bogged down. Let's say it could have been a lot lot worse. My daughter who had contracted cancer was back in the hospital, but it wasn't cancer. She was discharged after a few days thankfully. It takes a toll. If you ever have kids, you don't want to spend time in the children's cancer ward and don't want to ever go back when they're adults.

I did a version of this in October and again today. Notice that one knee pad is upside down. I was too exhausted to do it but said fuck it and created a youtube channel yet.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrebZerLo7k[/youtube]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrebZerLo7k

For a lot of reasons, poor sleep, a back spasm, a virus, no waves, I didn't get to surf the last six weeks but went out on my carveboard a few times. Here’s a photo in case you've never seen one.
https://www.warehouseskateboards.com/ca ... kateboards

I have another one called the surfstik
https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/ ... f-52637538

Carveboard sports was established by Brad Gerlach, who was the number 2 surfer in the world at one point, and his dad Joe in the late 1990s. I think they’re out of business because I couldn’t find their website. I went to their factory not far from you, probably in Del Mar or Oceanside and bought it about 15 years ago.

I have 4 skateboards, one signed by Skip Engblom, the manager of the Zephyr skateboard team that included Tony Alva, Jay Adams, Stacey Peralta and some others. I didn't know he had signed it or who he was until I saw this documentary called Dogtown and Z-boys. If you haven't seen it, you would probably enjoy it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YKPEDayb_U&t=2s

I have a replica of a Logan Earth Ski. I had the original but it got lost in the mail when I sent it overseas, which wasn't too smart, but I was traveling with one and couldn't take another. I went to their factory in 1977 not that far from you to buy it. Here's some of their history.
https://ozzieausband.wordpress.com/2020 ... earth-ski/
It blows my mind that on ebay they are going for over 1,000 dollars.
https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R ... i&_sacat=0

Mine was in a lot better shape than most of what you see, but I wouldn't sell it unless I was desperate for the cash.

I also went out on a loaded vanguard a few weeks ago, which I had barely used in five years, and is a lot faster than the carveboards.
https://loadedboards.com/products/vangu ... skateboard

I had a back spasm but figured I could get away with it. I force myself to wear all those pads, including the pelvis pad (I bought it along with a mountain board) because I have fallen a few times on asphalt and this stone tile floor and been lucky not to have broken anything. They used to call it road rash. Maybe they still do. When you're a kid, you heal pretty quickly, but at my age it could take a year or more. In 1978, I had a bad fall and landed on my palm. I got an x-ray. It wasn't broken, but it hurt for six weeks. I was 28 at the time and quit skateboarding not long after that for 25 years. Padding has gotten a lot more advanced in the last 44 years, not that I would have worn all these pads back then. I didn't even wear a helmet skateboarding in the 1970s.

On the loaded vanguard, I hit a pebble, which I didn’t see and didn’t expect (the asphalt was brand new.) I flew off and landed hard on my elbow and forearm. Without the elbow pad, I would have broken it for sure. I took a few more rides and came home. The next day, my back hurt so badly, I couldn't even get into a car to get any kind of treatment and was able to work it out on my own.

I never heard of a skateboard as a kid and only started in my mid 20s and never developed the skill set to be successful in a skatepark. In 1977, I went to one for the first and only time in Orange County. I went down a half pipe that was a foot high at most. The skateboard hit me in the ankle. I hobbled away and limped out of the park after one ride. If I'd been a kid, I'd have laughed it off.

The manager of the surf club I go to told me there was a guy giving lessons at a skatepark near me, but said, "Don't go. Everybody breaks bones." He told me a kid dropped in on him, and they collided. I asked what happened. "What do you think? An 80 kilo man (176 pounds) hits a 40 kilo kid (88 pounds.) He went flying." I read about a guy my age who went to a skatepark with his grandson. I don't think he had much experience. He fell and fractured his orbit (the bones around his eye.) That's what you get for being an idiot.

I used to work in an office building in the midwest. There was a sandwich shop with magazines. Some guys like the girlie ones or the muscle cars or the bodybuilding ones. For some reason, I noticed Surfer and Skateboarder, which I began buying and bought a skateboard and learned to ride it well enough to have fun. One day in a deserted parking lot, a lady almost hit me with her car. I didn't go back there. I have moved numerous times, and all those magazines disappeared. I bought a few back about 15 years ago when they weren't too expensive.

Here's the October 1977 Skateboarder issue that I owned that cost 1.25 going for 100 dollars.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/225087362666
If I was a billionaire, I wouldn't buy it. I'd never have believed that this stuff would be worth anything or I'd have held onto it.

I was in Encinitas for a week in 1977. It was so beautiful. I couldn't believe it. You could walk down Main Street and see the ocean from the side streets. There was or maybe still is a parking lot overlooking the sea. A bunch of us watched the sun go down. 15 years later, it was completely different, there were so many cars. I couldn't understand why it had been so special, until there was a break in the traffic, and I could see the ocean again.

Bram. These clips are for you. I just saw the movie again for the umpteenth time. It's not even close to Kirosawa, Jean Renoir, Orson Welles, Ingmar Bergman or the really great directors, but I love it anyhow, at least some of it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZ-dPBoR_xg
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZ-dPBoR_xg[/youtube]

How about this great speech?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MJlHIWbEYk
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MJlHIWbEYk[/youtube]

Enjoy your youth or whatever age you are. It doesn't last forever. The guy who started the first surf shop in Israel quit surfing recently at the age of 76. He'd been at it for probably close to 60 years. I told his son, I could get his father surfing again. He asked what I would do. I told him he'd have to start working out. He said my father doesn't want to. I have a personal trainer certificate from an intensive course at Tel Aviv University and have studied extensively for 20 years. Our course as deficient as it was, (there were no assessments) was a lot better than all the online American ones like the NSCA, which I started studying for when I thought we'd move back to America.

The current choices for people my age and older are 3 as I see it. A really bad deterioration if you live long enough, steroids or something like it, or an intelligently designed strength and conditioning program so you get stronger, more mobile and don't get injured in the gym. They were supposed to have gene therapy for strengthening muscles in time for the 2008 Olympics according to a Scientific American I have, but they still don’t have it. Maybe they will, but I’d do it only as a last resort. It takes about five or ten years until the really bad side effects pile up enough for the doctors to take notice. I wrote way too much.

Take care of yourself. At least you're surfin man.

[Bram]

Lenny, I’m really touched! I checked out all your links and love how happy you are nailing the balance board — nice style too, with the back knee gently tucked in.

I take it you live in Israel? I’ve watched a few documentaries on surfing there (in Tel Aviv I believe), and the waves look fun.

I’ve never tried a Carveboard, but used to skate a lot with a buddy who had one. They draw lines like a snowboard — wide and flowing. I’m 43 and gave up skating 2 years ago when my board got stolen out of my car. I had two romances with skating: one in my early 20’s, another in my mid-30’s to early-40’s. All I ever did was carve medium hills. No Ollie’s, etc. Figured pain was hanging out along the path to acquiring those higher skills.

Dogtown and Z-Boys is amazing. That surf style of skating is timeless.

There’s a local guy, Skip Frye, who’s 81, and still surfs beautifully.

Here’s a video of him in younger days:

https://eos.surf/video/entry/skip-frye/

And more recently:

https://youtu.be/kqpa0SjIc0Y

And this article on Klaus Obermeyer, who still skis at 100:

https://www.outsideonline.com/health/tr ... XgQAvD_BwE

I like to think about those guys when I think about getting older.

I met a special human, a surf shaper named Donald Brink, who described Skip as “surfing with his fingertips.” I thought that was a beautiful description. You’d dig Donald, if you have the $ have him make a board for you, his approach is unlike any other design process on the planet.

Here’s a link to Donald’s website:

http://www.brinksurf.com/

Glad your daughter is okay. That has to be the scariest thing in the world, worrying about your kid’s health. Hope you have a great day and thanks again for all you shared in your post.

[lenny]

Bram
glad you enjoyed it. the world is so different now than it was in the 70s. You'd only find out who won a major surf contest a month or two after it was over in one of the surfing magazines. Now it's online for free. there was very little if any money in it. now guys are making millions on endorsements from sportswear companies. Shaun Tompson the 1977 world champ said that what the girls surf today the guys of his generation couldn't have dreamed of doing.

This is the film that turned me on to surfing called Free Ride in 1977. I can't believe it's on youtube. I saw it in Cocoa Beach Florida one night in 1977. It played in a high school auditorium for exactly one night, and I was visiting Cocoa Beach for two nights. Almost everybody in the audience was a teenager. There were slow motion shots of guys surfing the tube. I went into complete shock. The kids were screaming their guts out. Surfing had been on TV, but nothing like this had ever been shown on television. I looked for years to get a copy, which I eventually found. It was missing a few parts. Maybe this has all of it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeK-b9a ... PauloTibau


What that movie didn't show was that this one does Bustin Down the Door.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XYPaIg ... kateMovies


Shaun Tompson, Rabbit Bartholomew, Ian Cairns and a few other guys went through hell in the 1970s to make a professional sport out of surfing. Rabbit and Ian Cairns brought it on themselves as far as I can tell. They could have been killed. I have the article that Rabbit wrote in the 1977 Surfer magazine called Bustin Down the Door. It didn't seem that bad to me, but it really enraged the Hawaiians who for the most part were portrayed as really nice guys at least in the beginning of the movie, especially Eddie Aikau. It was only because of Eddie and Claude Aikau's father that some of the foreign surfers weren't killed. You should watch Bustin Down the Door if you haven't seen it. It's really fascinating.

One of the takeaways of this movie is don't fuck with Eddie Rothman. An ex-neighbor of mine was a surf champ of Israel. One of his friends got into a fight with Eddie in Hawaii. Eddie thought he was a Brazilian, but when he learned he was Israeli they stopped fighting. How a Jewish guy became a leader of the Hawaiians is a mystery to me. Watch these movies while you can. I don't know how long they'll be up before they're taken down.
Have a good weekend

[lenny]

Bram
For some reason, only the last part of your post came up about my daughter when I first saw it. I'll check out the links you sent.
thanks