Part 1:

I read Keel Nation, a book about the designs of a famous surfboard shaper from back in the day. He shaped the type of board which today we call the mini Simmons. This is a very strange looking board, something that was extremely adventurous and new back in the day. The book gets into the effects of each part of surfboard design. I used it to help inform my decisions on how I shaped my board from rocker to contours and outline. 

Part 2: 

I read the Art of War and the Art of Peace last trimester, these books have led me down the path that I am on today. Today I’m in the process of reading the Book of Five Rings and I also finished the Tao Te Ching. All of these books are old eastern philosophical texts and they really speak to me and to my essential question: What is surfing to me? All of these books study what it means to be a warrior. The Tao te Ching seems to me to be the underlying philosophy of all these texts, and this philosophy can be phrased as ‘go with the flow’ a famous line in the surfing community and a philosophy that I can really relate to as a surfer. To be a warrior is to let go, not to go against the grain, but to submit to the way things are as only from this point of submission can we alter, influence, and assert ourselves. The one who fights the flow or in Taoism ‘The Way’, or in Zen the ‘Hieho’, is the one who drowns, the foolish one, caught up in ego or delusional thought. In surfing we have no choice but to submit. Me to the ocean is like the earth to the universe, I am insignificant as I sit floating on the surface bobbing over the swells created by powerful storms hundreds of miles away. As the wave crests and breaks I notice and adapt to what is. I have no power over my circumstances yet this is not a problem, rather this is fun, and in that place I can finesse my way around in the exact way I want, in my style. This is surfing to me.