Do you get a lot of feedback from those guys?

Yeah. That’s why it’s good to have all those different kinds of guys. Sometimes it’s hard to make everyone happy. I think that’s my job: to make each person…happy.

Not just team people…

All people. I feel like a customer that comes in, he deserves to have a board as bitchen to him as the team riders boards are bitchen to them. I think each customer deserves that. There’s a lot of competition out there and I want to treat those people with respect and really appreciate them. If it wasn’t for those guys I wouldn’t have the team riders, anyway. It may be more important that the regular guy is as stoked on his board as the pros.

You do any events or sponsorships?

Yeah, we’re giving boards away for school fundraisers or charities or whatever. I try to help my shops and keep my dealers stoked. I used to do the surf contests, but I haven’t done it in a while. I did 7 of them: The Ultra-Mad Open Surf Off and Bash. I think the last one was called The 7 th “not-quite annual” Ultra-Mad.

Laugh...Besides the team guys, who are some surfers out there you really like to watch?

I like Andy. Mick Fanning, Dean Morrison, Taylor Knox, Tom Curren, Rastovich. Really, I like to just see a guy go out there and get a good ride! You can tell; you’ll be on the beach and I just think it’s so cool cuz you can tell he’s not even good but he gets that wave and it’s an insane wave and he just barely hangs on and he gets a good ride and you can just tell what a charge that had to be for that guy and I get jazzed on that, especially when you’re my age and it’s kinda hard to get a good turn in…

Laughs…

I can appreciate that; that’s cool!!

Outside of surfing what do you like to do?

I like the mountains. I’m not into the motorized stuff. I like mountain biking and road biking. I used to bike a lot back in the day before I got busy. I used to ride my road bike 100 miles a week, at least. Now I’m so busy I don’t have time for anything but surfing. If the surf’s bad at all I’ll ride the bike, but between this, my family and surfing I pretty much don’t have time for anything else. My favorite thing to do is take a surf trip where I just surf. I take a lot of trips where I surf and do business, too, but I’m talking about trips where the goal while I’m there is to just surf and eat.

Like a boat trip…

Yeah, like a boat trip but you don’t necessarily need to be on a boat; you just need a place where you don’t have a cell phone

What are your favorite breaks?

I’m not like the big wave guy. My favorite thing is probably a foot or 2 overhead, a bit hollow and long. I’m all about long waves. At my age once you get to your feet, it’s ON!! The longer the wave, the better I’ll surf! In the wintertime I like to go to Baja to right points and in the spring I like to go to mainland Mex to left points. In the fall I like it around here as long as it’s glassy.

Do your kids surf?

They’re just starting to. I have an 8 and an 11-year old and my 11-year old asked for a board for her birthday. I tried to get them to do it but I got the “don’t push me daddy…” so I just mellowed out but now the older one likes to ride on a big 7-0 Mad-Platter kind of thing.

If you weren’t carving foam, what would you be doing?

I don’t know. I really don’t know. Hopefully something where I could be creative and using my hands. I was always into art in school. I used to paint boards a lot. You can’t spread yourself too thin; I think I spread myself too thin already so I can’t really take on too many new projects, but I’d probably be some kind of artist.

Where was the first placed you surfed?

I totally remember it. It was at San Onofre. I was probably 11. I remember riding through the foam and all the sudden there was no foam and I saw the rock going by and the board was just like slicing the water and it was all over; I was hooked right then…it was the most insane sensation. On the open face…I remember it got all quiet and the sound of the board going really fast and I was just trimming through this little piece of a wave and it was so bitchen.

What’s your favorite type of music?

I like everything. I listen to all sorts of music. These guys think I’m nuts. Some days I’ll listen to Mexican music all day long. Other days I’ll have that jazz station all day and then I’ll listen to Power 106. There’s a lot of good different kind of music out there. I even like pop stuff.

Britney Spears?

I’m more into Christina Aguilera.

[Laugh...]

What’s your favorite surfing maneuver?

My favorite thing is to get one of those high speed kinda banks off the top where you don’t really throw the tail and it’s not a floater but you get your bottom of the board to where the lip hits the bottom and you ride like a monorail along the pitching lip but stay on the lip the whole way and then air drop to the bottom and keep going. That’s the best feeling. You get the board up just right so that the lip pitches and hits your board right on the stringer and it’s power against power and off you go.

Any final words of advice?

Everyday is a new day. It doesn’t matter what you do but if you do it to where it matters and you just try to do the best job you can, then you’re a success. I don’t care if you’re sweeping a parking lot. What you give is as important as what anyone else did that day. A lot of people put a price tag on everything, but I think you can be successful at anything. If you do everything with good intent and purpose and follow it completely through, you’re a success.

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