Skimboarding

When I was a teenager, a couple friends and I used to make our own skimboards. I still have one of them up in my attic. Not knowing any better, we made them out of 3/4 inch plywood and Behr 50 (some crazy thick coating that would spontaneously combust if mixed improperly). They weighed a ton. They were like the mack truck of skimboards. But once you threw them down and hopped on, they flew. And they didn't stop for anything: not flesh, not bone. Well, they did occasionally stop if you misjudged the timing and the water ran out from under you, leaving only wet sand. When that happened, you were typically going full speed, so you didn't typically stop with the board. You'd generally fly off the board and land rather abruptly on that same wet sand. As you may know, there's not much give to wet sand. Also, it bears more than a passing resemblance to sandpaper; so when you hit that going full speed, it was like hitting a cheese grater made of cinder blocks. All that was left was a bloody smear about 20 feet long with some smallish body parts littered (still wiggling the death dance) around it. And even that was gone within slight seconds as the next wave washed you away in the agonizing sting of saltwater.

And that, of course, presumes that you got both feet on the board! Often times, you'd just barely miss the back-end of the board with your trailing foot. So, one foot would go hurtling down the beach: the other, being firmly planted in the cinder-cheese-grater, well, it wouldn't. It had an effect not unlike being drawn and quartered (in the French tradition, of course).

Man, it was fun.

After using them for a couple years, I bought a professionaly made board from Victoria Skimboards. Like the ones we made, it was a wood board, so mainly suited for shooting along the beach on the thin sheet of water of a retreating wave. That same summer I bought a foam-core board, also from Victoria. With a foamie, due to its increased buoyancy, you can skim directly into the ocean and surf back in or do a trick off the next wave. To do a trick, you basically use the board as a spring-board: you skim out to the wave, and then slap the board flat against the wave. Your forward momentum throws you (disconcertingly high, at times) into the air. The people who were really good could pull a flip, but I usually performed my signature trick: what I like to call "the screaming flailing ragdoll of terror". Something to keep in mind, is that when you came down from this sub-orbital (but just barely) flight, the water was only about two feet deep.

Yeah, it's a pretty rediculous activity, fraught with pain and suffering. But, when you manage to overcome all the obstacles; when you time it right so the water doesn't run out; when you manage to get both of your feet on the board; when you manage to not immediately fall over backwards; only then, after you've conquered all of that, then a little kid always runs into your path giving you a mere split-second to decide who lives and who dies. It's you or the kid. So, displaying the characteristic selflessness everyone who knows you says you've come to embody, you decide that you, having lived a long, full life, should be the one to perish; and that the kid, just starting out in life (who knows? Maybe he'll cure cancer--you're certainly not going to; you're about to become a particularly gruesome shade of bloody sand paste) should be the one to go on living. With an anguished yelp, you perform a feat of such heroism that it seems to defy the laws of physics: you throw yourself off of the board--flying head-first over the toddling interloper--while simultaneously managing to change the direction of the board using only the first two toes on your right foot (the other three having slipped off the edge of the board and, after much discussion between them and the grinding edge of the board, they decided that they'd tear free and stay behind). In mid-flight, this thought flitters across your brain "in slow-motion, this feat would've put the Matrix to shame". Before you have time to savor that thought cruel gravity takes hold and you come crashing violently down. And as you lay there--torn, tattered, bloody, missing toes--you look up and see that the mother of the interloper is standing over you. Is she thanking you for sparing her kid's life? No, she's yelling at you for scaring her kid, who is clinging to her leg, whimpering . You reach for him and earnestly whisper "Earn this", and then you die.

But all is ok, for you knew it had to be this way. This is the death you've chosen; the skimboarder's death is one of unrecognized honor and angry misunderstanding. The seagulls feast tonight!

I was only able to use the foamie a few times before it was stolen. I've only been skimboarding a few times in the years since then (using one of my wood boards), but every summer I've thought about making a new board, a foam and fiberglass board. Just recently, the MAKE blog posted a link to a tutorial on how to make a surfboard. I also found an article on how to make a skimboard. So, next spring or summer, I'm making one. Bloody sand, here I come!