Sunday, July 13, 2014

"Come and Get It!!!" - the Stew(ing) is done

I've been avoiding discussion of this particular topic for a few days, but I finally let it go and can deal with it in a socially acceptable manner. The day we pulled into this campground, we had a bad squall move through. We had just dealt with securing the awning and we were taking a break - La then asked "shouldn't we tie down the SUP boards?". I was mouthing a response like "those boards are heavy..." when we heard a noise horrid to the ears of board owners - "boom" and "scrape". I felt like a total kook... I remembered I left some Resin Research Epoxy with Mike A back in Reston. We swung by and picked that up. I stopped off at the PX at Fort Belvoir and picked up some sand paper. And yesterday, I cleaned up and inspected the 9 spots that hit the concrete pad during the squall and prepared them for a coat of epoxy. The epoxy cured up nicely and I won't have to sand tons off (but will have to wait until Virginia Beach where I can bum a random orbital sander from a friend). I also bought a can of spray paint that will bond to plastic. There are a few silver linings to this cloud. First - the damage sustained from the board flipping over completely and landing on a concrete pad were superficial. The divynacell (sp?) and EPS/Epoxy construction really showed it's durability in this event. Second - after all these months of really babying this board, I finally have authentic battle damage. Now I can go a modify the heck out of the board without feeling that I am working on a pristine board (once we take delivery of our household goods and my tools). First up will be the installation of a windsurfing mast track so I can windsurf and troll a lure as the same time, followed up by sanding the entire board to make it more hydrophilic (the current finish is too glossy in my opinion - 600 grit wet/dry should fix that). Last but not least - this was yet another lesson in absolutes. Life has three guaranteed things: Taxes, death and suck. The "suck" is the one thing you have a choice on how to deal with (you have to pay taxes or go to jail; and we all die sometime). I learned to listen more to La (she has good intuition); if you can't get an inflatable SUP, get one made with d-cell in it's structure; and in the end, all this "stuff" doesn't matter - it can be fixed or replaced, but how you deal with it all determines how happy or miserable you choose to be and everything that ties into all that. Stand by in the up coming months to see how this board gets optimized. I'm done stewing about the bad hand dealt.

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