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[Uncle Grumpy]

My friend and neighbor John Warren http://www.rocknfish.com/ and myself made it down to the fairgrounds for the Expo yesterday.
We got there right after it opened and talked to a lot of great folks. It was fairly crowded and kind of hard to get good photos........
Johnnie's a Capo Bch /SC oldtimer who worked for Hobie back in the 60's so he's on a first name basis with old masters like Terry Martin who we had a nice long chat with. Another local San Clemente artist and friend, Malcolm Wilson http://www.malcolmwilson.com/ was very stoked to be invited to share booth space with the legendary Greg Noll.
Lots of beautiful wooden surfboards being built. I had a a nice talk with one of the guys from Grain surfboards who'd made the trek out from Maine with their hollow creations. I'm very tempted to order a kit for their "Leaf" paipo offering. http://www.grainsurfboards.com/
After waiting for a while just to get into their crowded booth, we spent some time talking with Tom and Jon Wegener, who are just great guys and both very eager to share their knowledge. We have both been corresponding with them for some time so it was nice to meet them in person.
Johnny was talking to Tom about how hard it is for an older guy to paddle a plank alaia and so Tom shows us his current love, a brand new hollow paulownia kook box of his design.
He chided me for using the term kook box and said only kook's call 'em kook boxes ! and then proceeded to regale us with stories about how well it worked at Malibu during last week's swell.
He also said he may make the plans available once he gets back home.
John and I also had a very interesting conversation with Mike Sheldrake who's the brainiac behind the mathmatically designed and truly beautiful Cardboard Surfboards. http://www.sheldrake.net/cardboards/

There is some very neat stuff going on in the surf world these days although much of what's happening is really just older ideas reworked with modern materials.
The fall of Clark Foam was just the kick in the pants needed to get a few folks to try some new ideas.
It's nice to see the surf world starting to look past the 3 fin thruster.............