New alaia

forgot to be taking photos of it along the way, but basically, i bought three 6"wide 8' long 1" thick pine boards and glued and clamped them together, then cut it down to 7' long and 3/4" thick and then cut the shape, contours, and rails into the board. yea, quick description, sorry. here it is though. it's going to be really hard, I think. I've gotten four coats of spar varnish on it, so i think it's ready to take out on Saturday! hopefully the waves are alright for it.

the big guy! psyched to try it out, and will probably be humbled completely
bottom side. with the shine, you can see the contour running down the middle, from the tail up 2/3 of the way to the nose, about 1/4 deep. basically the same as my first 4 footer i did. this helps it from slipping out super easy, since it has no fins



dims

Cool articles

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/aug/31/sunscreen-pill-coral-five-years

pretty cool article on how there's potential to use what goes on in coral to make some sort of prescribed sunblock pill to take, in five years maybe. the end of the article starts to go another direction though and talk about genetically modifying food to be sun-resistant to be able to grow it in the tropics and other places it doesn't naturally.

http://news.discovery.com/animals/dolphins-fish-trick-110831.html

this article is about how dolphins trap fish in big conch shells and then bring them up above the surface of the water to shake them out of the shell and into their mouth! insane! apparently they think that the dolphins are learning this technique from each other and the technique is spreading. even more insane!

This is just cool

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4157182.stm

a 50 foot long viking ship made of popsicle sticks. enough said. oh and he's sailing it (has already sailed it) across the Atlantic.

Lots of photos!

So here's my finished, newest handplane - hanging to let the final hot coat dry. super pumped to take it out and see how the fin feels

shot of the bottom

bottom again

top

we had a homemade pizza night the other night with cameron. Everyone's came out better than you could imagine!

On saturday, i found out about this wooden boat building company doing a demo of their boats in newport beach. this company designs and makes boat building kits for DIYers to buy and build their own boat! seems pretty awesome. So this company just had about 20 to 30 different boats for people to try out, for free, and get pumped on the boats. needless to say, i'm pumped. the photo above was this crazy skinny long round kayak/canoe style boat i took out, it was fast!

here's a standard kayak i took out for a spin


the first boat we took out, mel and i tried this skiff. it was pretty fun just being out rowing around in this bay area

cameron trying out a kayak similar to one that i took out

another of cameron

land ahoe!!!


cutie

this is a shot of the skiff we took out


here's some of their standup paddleboards and a kneeling paddleboard on the end. they were pretty sweet to try out!

rower?


i took out one similar to these guys. they're fast and wobbly and awesome!

a model of a standup paddleboard and the internal framework

this guy brought his own boat down to display. it was insanely awesome looking


this little one looked awesome, and it is collapsible - the front end detaches so you can store it in a smaller space. it was about 8 feet long and only 60 lbs. this is what i wanna make

here's a kayak we took out too. it was awesome! i talked with the guys a ton on how they got into boatbuilding and with this company and just sat there and dreamed of working for a company like this...

Dos cosas

We had our first dragon fruit. Unfortunately, we aren't growing these, we bought it, but it's awesome! but a bit pricey too. Very fresh tasting and about as colorful as it gets!

I think you can read that there - that's the thermometer down in the barrel compost reading 121.3 degrees F inside! pumped! it was exceptionally hot this weekend, so i hoped this would be the case in there. The supply of coffee grounds from the cafe around the corner is definitely helping!

New handboard

I've been slowly working on this guy lately - a new handboard. This is again out fo the surfboard i found i the alley dumpster. The resin i used on this though is not the polyester resin i'd used on the past handboard and surfboard. i used this stuff called super sap epoxy resin. first off, it's an epoxy, so no volatile organic compounds, and basically no need for a mask when working with it outside, which is great. On top of that though, its base is recycled pine oil, which is a waste-product of bio-fuel processing, which further reduces the impact of making this, and just uses somethign that was going to waste anyways. pretty pumped on it. it still acts like a polyester resin, but it's actually stronger when cured, and yea, i'm just pumped to be using it and getting more familiar with it.

Here's the top all glassed, no hot coat yet, gotta sand some first

view of bottom and a view of how i didnt' match the colors of the green up top very well. i should have mixed a large batch of the both colors, then split it in half, then saved one half to use for the next side when i glassed it. but i was lazy, and am still learnign how much is needed of this stuff, and figured i'd try my luck at matching colors when i glassed the other side... i'm not too good at that obviously... oh well, not selling this or anything.
now all sanded down. ready for hotcoat. you can see the "spine" which is the stringer in it. this is from the stringer in the surfboard. i realized that it's a pain in the butt to deal with it on something this small. on a surfboard, it's not so bad, but keeping this little guy in place while sanding the stringer and not too much of the foam is a pain. won't be using pieces with the stringer in it anymore.
same for bottom. i don't know if sanding it will have any good blending effect of the green colors, but i doubt it... we'll see. think i'm gonna put a fin on this handboard too. more to come

Camping at Glen Camp along the West Fork of the San Gabriel River

This past weekend we checked out a new campspot, as it was Mel's last summer weekend. We heard about this spot from a friend who fly fishes along river. It's called the West Fork San Gabriel River and it takes only 50 minutes to get there from Long Beach (pretty awesome). The river has an old paved road running alongside it from the parking lot, and about 6.5 miles back on this road is the campspot. The road is closed to the public and is only accessible to the handicapped, rangers and whoever has keys (looked like there's about 30 different locks on the gate). So we took our road bikes as our friend said they'd do fine, and our gear and biked in! It was pretty awesome, and actually pretty easy with the bikes. Within the first mile or so there's lots of people playing in the river and hanging out for the day, and then still some another mile or so back, but then there's basically no one after that. About 4 miles in there's a bait shop called the Pasadena Fishing Club, i think, with supplies for fishing and what not. They were closed when we stopped by, but it looks cool. We just hung out most of the day, biking back, stopping, eating, reading, and playing around. Our friends Neil (the flyfisherman) and Marylin came and met up later to hang out too. We fished some with him, and continued to hang out and eat more as the night fell. The campspot is pretty cool, maybe 8 sites total, among some trees and spaced out enough. There are fire rings and plenty of wood around, no running water, but a pit toilet available. However there were a few pretty big black widows hangin out with decent webs in the bathroom, so I didn't venture into it. The awesome part is, it's a free campspot, as long as you have the Adventure Pass, and on a Saturday in mid August, we were the only ones at the camp! Pretty awesome considering this is so close to LA, and so easily accessible with bikes. On top of that, the fishing was pretty fun, and the river was super nice.

riding to the campspot is a slow incline the whole way there, but so slow that you don't notice it too much. then on the way back, it's all downhill!

It was pretty hot on the way up, so we hung in the shade some, cooked and read about Chile!


Neil caught maybe 6 or 7 little rainbow trout, maybe 5-6 inches in length. i got a handful of bites but no catch

Marylin brought the hammock and got lost in it i think.



Here's the campspot!

Nightfall

We got up early, made a fire, ate, and headed on out.

Pretty awesome morning ride, chilly air, minimal pedaling, and no one around

Action shots!

self-inclusive action shots!