Your Biggest Kook Move?

[WhatsSUP]

Was surfing the tube looking for a SUP surf video fix and came across one of Robert's (Blue Planet) old vid's where he's addressing common mistakes.  Got me thinking about my own Kook moves...of which there are a few.  For me, its got to be the first summer a few years ago when I held my paddle blade backwards......that went on for a good part of the summer until someone in the water near me very tactfully said "try turning your paddle blade around you may find it'll work better"...  Lo and behold....worked like a charm!  Total Kook move!

Yours?

[yugi]

I tried suggesting something (true, good and useful) to my girlfriend.

Once. Maybe.

[stoneaxe]

 

There have been many but the most memorable was long ago, 2008. Nice chest head high glassy waves on a very long bar at the Beachcomber. Beautiful early summer day. I'm the only SUP out. I'm on my 12-6 and very much the newb so it was just long freight train rides down the line with some wiggle waggle turns but I was flying and it felt great. A couple surfs schools out and a few others but I was surfing and going by well outside them, long, long rides. I could hear a few of the folks in the surf schools asking the instructor what I was doing.....

After an afternoon of great surf and feeling great I wait for the WAVE that will take me in. Here she comes....head high and clean, easy in, long swooping turns.....loooonnnggg ride. I ride it right into the cove at the comber, literally walking up to the nose as she lightly touches the sand and walking off onto the beach. Feeling very unhumble with my prowess I turn to look at the beach full of folks that are obviously watching me come in.....kookest move there is....don't turn your back on Mom. I turn back to my board just as the next wave slams my board across my ankles,  sweeping me off my feet, face down into a swirl of sand and suds.....came up spitting sand and started laughing along with all the rest of the crowd....not much else I could do.....

[fatfish]

I think every time I step on a SUP is chalk full of kook moves.  But probably the best one comes from a prone surfing session a while back.

A nice fall late afternoon, get down to a point where a head high left is perfectly peeling down the beach.  Water is still relatively warm (perfect for a 3/2), late afternoon sun, winds calm and light crowd.  I am in a hurry to get out to lineup, wrap my leash up and jump in.  Begin paddling out, wave breaks out front.  Prepare for typical duck dive, but once under my wetsuit fills up with water!  I am like the michelin man, wetsuit is totally full from hips on up.  I struggle to get back to the surface with a wetsuit full of water.  Confused i surface, WTF.  Then I realized that I never zipped my wetsuit up, just wrapped the velcro around my neck.  Now here I am sitting in the impact zone with a full wetsuit, couldnt paddle and more waves are breaking in front of me.  Took several on the head as I sat there trying to push the water out of my wetsuit.  Must have been quite the site as others were paddling past the michelin man.

Now I just wear chest zips, no more back zips 

[TallDude]

I've had a few, but my first was when I was learning to prone surf in the early 70's. I'd surfed smaller waves, but this day was bigger than I'd every surfed. My friend who'd taught me to surf tells me to just roll the board over as I go under the wave when you paddle out. Back then boards were bigger, so not that easy to duck dive with when you weigh 90 lbs. So I start paddling out and made it through the white water. Now I get to the impact zone and I'm staring at the face of a big wave. It looked huge to me at 8 years old. So I decide to try the roll thing. I did it wrong. I basically stopped in the impact zone with no forward momentum. Rolled the board upside down so I'm facing up.... under the board. All of the sudden I get this board slamming me in the face. The wave broke right square on me.  I was hanging on to the rails, but the board was ripped from my hands. It felt like I got hit by a train. I learned not to do that again.

[SUPcheat]

For me, still the incident in the harbor when I was first practicing on my inflatable.  I was paddling close to shore under the obstacles created by the boats and docks, ducking.  I miscalculated, was knocked backwards, landed on my back, and then went butt over shoulders backwards in a loop de loop to flop on my stomach in the water.  Some people saw it, and a girl started laughing so hard, she held her hand over her mouth.  I could hear her continuing to laugh for a while as they walked away.

I regularly had surf punks mocking me from shore, on a curved inflatable wearing safety vest etc., but that was the only time I really did something totally weird by accident.

[Badger]

I started standup surfing in July 2013. As the weather started getting colder in the fall, I didn't want to get a wetsuit. I tried all kinds of things to keep warm. Layers of different clothing. Gloves and sneakers I had around the house. I looked like a total idiot.

I hated what I perceived as conformity. Everyone had the same black wetsuit. I didn't like the idea of wearing a tight wetsuit, so I bought a bright orange Ocean Rodeo Soul drysuit. It had some advantages. Easy to put on. Clothes stay dry inside it. I got a lot of kook calls wearing that suit. Nobody wanted to talk to me but I didn't care. I surfed in it all winter and into spring. If you search my posts from 2013/14, you'll see me saying how great the suit was. It is a great suit for paddling but it's not designed for surfing.

In May of 2014 I broke down and bought a wetsuit. I suddenly felt a lot less conspicuous and surprisingly, I didn't mind wearing it. I felt perfectly comfortable in it. People became a lot friendlier. It didn't take long before I was completely accepted and treated as an equal at my local point break. It just doesn't pay to be a kook but I had to learn that for myself. I now understand why it's not cool to stand out from the crowd in the line up. Kooks just stink up the place.

.

[WhatsSUP]

Some good one's fellas....for sure!  I know we're all guilty at some point in our SUP career.

Another for me:

Got back on the horse late last fall while recovering from a bout w/ cancer.  I'd lost about 35lbs from having been sick so I was kinda swimming in a lot of my older clothes.  Anyway, one day I decided to jump on my JL B&B and ride some nice mellow waves.  I leashed up at waters edge and was like WTF -even my friggin leash is too big.  Well, after about an hour I finally figured I was wearing my CALF leash as an ankle leash......DUH!   

[JEG]

I was out with the long board but forgot to take the 2+1 fins, not fun in the surf going side ways, backwards and spin outs 

[surfercook]

Great kook moves from all. I have a list! So take your pick. Number four is probably the winner.

1- Crashing my new-ish Hull Ripper in the shorebreak!
2- Blowing out a tire while hopping a curb by accident trying to see if a girl I liked was home as I drove by...years ago!
3- Totally going for a hail mary drop knowing I only had a 5% chance of making it...and breaking my Local Motion lngbrd (which I got off Craigs
    from TommyO)
4- Not even coming close to seeing a local and dropping in on him like 100 yards down the line at a famous point break, on a perfect macking
     hurricane swell...only to have him surf right up to me and we both fall. 

[1tuberider]

In the mid 60's, on my first session on my $28 Noll board, I was being laughed at off the Hermosa pier for prone paddling alternate stroke vs the very cool butterfly stroke from prone paddling position or the very accepted make bumps bigger than yours from knee paddling.  I still see a few knee paddlers, but have not seen the butterfly in a long time. Still a kook move for the time.

My grimmie years were full of borrowing boards as I had to hitch hike to beach. I vaguely remember being
run over by someone and returning the board with a full on fin slice across the deck. OK Wilber no problem.

Another kook move was buying 4 wavestorms for grandkids who live with me.  I noticed the other day one came back with a fin slice across the deck.  Favor returned. BTW they love them.  No wetsuit no problem, no waves no problem,
the joy they had was heard every time a wave took them in.  I really enjoy watching, instructing and being their
mentor.
 
Look out, I have 4 kooks in the water.

[PonoBill]

Too many to cover. I have many incidents of coming smoothly to the beach to the admiring gaze of onlookers, stalling out of the bump I'm riding, stepping gracefully to the sand only to find a hole that pitches me on my face where I get rolled up and down the beach a few times. I stagger to my feet and try to catch my board which gets caught in a wave and takes me off my feet again. I'm not describing a single incident, I'm describing one beach dismount in ten, which, given the thousands of times I've come in from a surf session yields a lot of kook moments.

I've also managed to turn a number of late drops (which I love/hate) into lawn dart emulations, and downwinding adds another entire dimension or fuckups.

I won't even mention foiling, wherein I am a total kook who should wear flashing danger lights, though I guess I just did.