David snapped this nice little sequence yesterday. Apparently both confirming and overcoming his curse of the Machado shot. Apparently David has been skunked every other time he has tried to shoot Rob. Bad lighting, bad timing,  you name it it has happen. 

It is funny, with all the surf images we see we get sort of jaded. I flip through magazines or online and just think to myself... NEXT. 

Ok, so I got inspired again. This time with the help of Alia.  I was itching to do some more wax art and this is what came out of me. It doesn't really look like Alia but it was the best I can do. She loves it. She asks to see it all the time.  

There is a new blog in town.  Leucadia local, free surfer, and self proclaimed webhead nerd squat Chris Del Moro is on the scene with his own flavor of blog called the Collectic Life. Only up for a month now it quite entertaining, covering his travels, misc thoughts and some really cool how to board art.  We've added it to our blog list and look forward to seeing future posts. Enjoy.

Any of you who have kids in preschool know about share day.  That wondrous day where your child gets to bring something they love to school to show their friends. It is a great day. The kids love it and it teaches them to show others what it is they do or hold dear to their hearts.

Today was share day here at the project.  I got an email this morning from Mick over at Little House of a bunch of stills he made from the footage he has been gathering for his new film. Apparently the surf has been really good lately in AU and Mick has been taking advantage of it. It's probably not hard but see if you can guess who these shots are of. Enjoy.

Here are some great fins I just got. They came from Pichilemu, Chile.  Here is the email that came with  them. Geree is an American living in Chile. She is very talented. I checked out her work on her sites.   Enjoy.

HI there-
I just found your site last night and finished 3 fin designs today. (I tried to use your submit entries link but it didn't come through so I am attaching them here.)

I live in Pichilemu, Chile which is touted for being the Surf Capital of South America. Have you heard of it? I moved here from New Mexico, but before that I lived in Solana Beach for over 10 years. Love the beach!

I have skateboard designs on www.Zazzle.com/GereesGallery and when I saw your fin design project, I felt compelled to draw a few designs.

Hope they all make it on your site,
Geree

www.Gerees.Blogspot.com
www.Zazzle.com/GereesGallery
www.GereesGallery.MosaicGlobe.com

Alia and I went to Beacons the other day and were mesmerized by the beauty. As we walked down through the wild flowers Alia looked at me and said "Beacons is my favorite beach, Dad." It made my heart melt knowing that I was leaving a lasting positive impression on my daughter through a simple act of taking her to the beach. A beach we are all so lucky to have access to. 

Some of us dream about places like these and others actually charge
out there and live it. My friend John is the guy who actually lives
the dream. For the last 20 years he has been spending at least a month
a year surfing all over Indonesia. He somehow ended up with the
perfect life to do this... He grew up here in Encinitas surfing every
day and became an airline pilot which allowed him to get to Indo for
free. Over the years he has made friends with a bunch of Australian
bros... Here are a few shots from one of his trips.

David sent me these fins a while back from a random house visit of long time local and fin enthusiast John Peugh (Spl?). David was doing some work one day in his neighborhood and he got invited in to take a look. He was lucky enough to have his iPhone with him to grab some shots.  If anyone wants one of his fins contact David for details.

I tend to gravitate to the soul surfing shots David sends in of the smaller days with the hand dragging and the back lit wave.  I like the guys who take their time getting down the line. I guess I see my own ability in them and naturally enjoy the mood of it.  With that said I can still appreciate a little performance surfing.  Here are some shots that David sent in of a few weeks back.  Only one I recognize is TK.  All are killing it.

A little TK in local waters for your Monday afternoon.  Notice the hand/arm drag that he pivots around. He sinks his arm up to his bicep. It's pretty impressive.

My friend Kipp Denslow dropped off this board for me to try. He has been shaping fish as a hobby and wants some feedback. When I got the board I was really blown away at how beautiful it is.  It's a 5'10" x 22" x 2 7/8 and it looks really fun.  He wanted me to wax it up and take it for a ride but I had to shoot it first. It was just too nice looking. He is ultimately selling the board on CraigsList to support his board building habit.  He is doing this for the love of it so he said it can go to a good home for $350. He just wants some feedback. If you need a new fish contact us or Kipp.  I have it with me and will take it out tomorrow if there are no buyers.

David shot a few of John Haffey the other day at Cardiff.  This guy is great. I've seen him in a few movies and always liked him.  Lots of soul and a good surfer. Enjoy.

I'm sure you have all seen the lost dog signs up everywhere in Leucadia. The large bright pink ones along 101. For about 6 days a woman has been franticly trying to find this dog. As a dog owner myself, I was getting worried for the dog as the signs kept going up and nothing was happening.  Each day as I drove around I kept think, "Where can this dog be?" I was thinking I should do a post on this dog to see if anyone has see it. To my surprise David emailed me this story...

Ed, I was home today watching my son while he is off for his spring break. About 10:00AM I walked out front to talk to a guy who who was going to do some work in the front yard. We talked for a bit and I mentioned to him that I needed some work done in the backyard too. I said lets go back and take a look... my yard is gated off, so I had to reach over and undo the latch (which I set last night around 9:30pm) in order for us to check out the situation. We walk around and we are looking at the grass and out of the corner of my eye behind all my plants I see this big beautiful dog hiding! I'm thinking to myself how did this dog get into my backyard? I checked all my gates and everything was closed. The only thing I could think of was that it ran in there before I locked the gate last night. He seemed really frightened.... I thought to myself, my neighbor is a big dog lover and she will probably know who this dog belongs to.

I walked over to her house and she came right over. We get the dog to come out and can quickly see that this is no ordinary dog. It was just beautiful with a perfect disposition. It pretty much just said I love you every time it looked at you. You could also tell that it was very well taken care of. My neighbor thought she might know who it belonged to so she went on a walk with her and about 20 minutes came back with the dog and said nope... I was wrong. She called the humane society but they were closed. So, all the kids just pet this dog all day. Everyone who got a chance to hang out and pet it fell in love with it right away.

Later, I stopped by my moms house with my son and told this story to them. My step dad says I think that's the dog that all of Leucadia is looking for right now. He tells me that he noticed the signs all over the place when he checked the surf out at Grandview and Beacons. I say get in the car and lets go check out the signs. Sure enough it's the dog! I call the owner right away from the Beacons parking lot. She was so happy to get that call and I was super stoked to be the one lucky enough to call her.

She tells me she has been looking for her dog since last Wed when she was helping a friend move into their new place on Neptune (or close to) when someone dropped a surfboard and it freaked the dog out. I guess it was like 8:30pm and dark. They ran after it but it just kept
on running and they lost it in the night. Now, I have to add here that this dog is not a hyper active kind of dog that would run out the door every time it opened up! It is more like the sweetest dog ever that just got scared. From this point it was just gone. They put together a
group of people and looked for 6 days for this dog. That's right, it was on the run for 6 days and stayed alive and found it's way into my back yard about 1 mile away from the place she bolted from.

The owner came over and was so stoked to get her dog back! She was actually in tears.

         

I had a bunch of photos from the making of the Murphy Balsa Quad that won Best of Show. I threw them together and made a quickie slideshow. It gives you a good feel for how it was made. Enjoy.