If we want this, it’s on us. Photo: Ryan Struck
I used to spend much of my day as an undergrad staring through microscopes at single celled species struggling to survive as the water evaporated around them. The burden lay on me to isolate these cells and transfer them to new cultures where they could hopefully flourish. It’s funny, even though I was dealing with life invisible to the naked eye, the fact that I was solely accountable for an organism’s continued life or death always managed to put knots in my stomach.
I haven’t thought about that in a long time. But watching Scooter Halladay waltz around the block of foam in front of me has reminded me. I’m sitting in the corner of a shaping room next to a six pack of beer that the winter air is keeping cold. The walls are all a shade that I can’t put a name on. It’s bothering me so much that I ask why the walls are that color. Scooter kneels down so his eyes are looking straight down the stringer and explains that it’s the best color to combat the lights and shadows. I love that color. The optical baby of navy and royal azures.
Scooter is covered in all kinds of pink shit. I hand him a beer and try and visualize this piece of foam under my feet out in the Atlantic. Some people have features that can’t be ignored. Scooter has a beard. The kind that is beyond scraggly. Not long, just extra scraggly. The kind that things can get lost in. I try and mentally Photoshop it away and wonder if he wouldn’t look so salt infused with a clean shaven face. My buddy asks him what he’s covered in and he tells us that it’s insulation. He has a job as a carpenter of sorts, or a handy man, or whatever is asked of him to make ends meet. A charter sailor in the summer, ding repair for the local shops to get through the winter. Shaping boards is not a full time job. It doesn’t pay the bills. He’s worked for all the major surf places in the Outer Banks, learning elements of shaping from his predecessors. Picking up tricks from the likes of Rascoe Hunt, Lynn Shell, and Murray Ross, just to name a few. All of them well renowned, and not just locally. It’s all accumulated into “Bone Surfboards.”
