weird but true... the midwest's "early" days in paddle surfing

[shapeshifter]

way back in 1965, well before people rode what is commonly accepted as the snowboards of today, sherman poppen of muskegon, wisconsin had a healthy business marketing and promoting the snurfer. jake burton liked the idea so much that his first backhill model was a pretty close copy of the snurfer right down to the rope handle that secured to the front of the stick.


click on the picture for the link to snowboarding's history

i was one of these earliest practitioners of that sport, later on participating in the resurrection onto the binding revolution. i've been riding dimitrije milovich's winterstick swallow tails since 1979, only later retailing burton snowboards at chicago's first surfshop in the early 80's.

some of you may be aware that back in the 1930's, tom blake, a wisconsin native, travelled to california and hawaii on his way to reinventing the modern surfboard with his hollow rendition of the surfboards of his day. later on he came up with the first fins and even attached sails to his boards in the 1940's. jump to 1975... tom wiltse of elkhart, indiana, purchased another company's molds which had already been making paddle boards; something akin to the boards that we enjoy today and they make a 9½' soft version to this day.


click on the picture to the history link on their website

so the reason that stand up paddling's recent revival may not be so "new", is that my earliest recollection of them were way back in 1973, when i first encountered the boards as a summer camp waterfront employee. this was even before the company was purchased by mr. wiltse, then marketed by a company called gobuoy who made them available primarily as a water safety and rescue device. i remember standing on the boards but since they had no fin, they were quite difficult to keep on a straight line. the kayak paddles we used somewhat corrected the issue but there was still a little wobbling to contend with. i had long forgotten about those puppies until only recently, but while thinking back on the funny old water-walker "boots" it occurred to me that these existed back then too. some of you may remember the water walkers as pontoons which you wore and kind of skied on without the need for a boat to tow you around!

in retrospect nothing is really new, not even the ancient sport of paddle surfing (not here in the midwest anyway).

well, there is one thing. heheheh... maybe one day i might tell you about something which i innovated, and to put it simply: it was a frisbee you can ride.

[stoneaxe]

Very cool Shape......everythings derivitive.....from the 1st time someone stepped on a downed log and used a broken branch to paddle. No one truly owns the idea. Great history lesson!

[Knash]

 The water walkers look like Del Cannon in one of Bruce Browns old movies where they did th walker foam experment.