Stoked Up

The box works. I loaded it up with three boards and headed to the beach. I also put the mats and the paipo up in the cab, and the flex spoon in the bed, knowing it fits in the cab if I want to lock it up. When I got to the beach I opted for the flex spoon. Update time:
I bought the spoon years back. The first session on it I got an in-out barrel, but also broke the rail when I grabbed and pulled it doing an Island pull out. I over reacted on the repair by adding several layers of glass to the whole board, wanting it to never break like that again. By the time I was done there was no flex left in the board. It was time to start sanding it, but I was scared of ruining a rare piece of surf equipment. It didn't ride well stiff, and I didn't want to sand it, so it didn't get ridden. Recently I've been surfing the HPD a bit and there are parallels to the spoon. They are both near neutral buoyancy so they duck dive well, and have no way to sit on them to get out of the water. The result is an intimacy with the water that comes from being up to your chin the whole time. It's like bodysurfing and feeling connected to the waves, but the planning surface of the paipo and spoon allow for more speed. I feel like the paipo would work better if it had ANY flex, and I considered sanding it down to get some flex, just like I should for the spoon... This renewed my interest in the spoon and I convinced myself to got for it and start sanding the spoon.
I went at it with 36-grit paper on the angle sander. After an hour of sanding the board had a tiny bit of flex. I was hot, tired, and out of paper. (Paper sanding disks fall apart if wet or too much force is applied while sanding.) I decided that was a good start and would continue after surfing it.
Back to me at the beach, a box full of three surfboards, paipo and surf mats in the cab, and me flippering out to 4-6' OB on a flex spoon. The spoon duck dives like a dream once I figure out the angles. The large UDeeTs fins modified for flex, a new 5/4/3 hooded wetsuit, and 60deg water all combined to make surfing the spoon downright pleasant. The waves weren't right to feel the board flex because they were either very soft shoulders, or the occasional hollow but short bowl. The flex is most obvious on cutbacks and other hard turns, which I wasn't doing that day. I got behind the bowl a few times and one time made it through for an in-out barrel. This is rare for me, so the stoke of it revitalized me to keep working on sanding the spoon. I got more sanding disks on the way home (cloth backed disks, last much longer) and sanded for another 90 min this morning.
But back to the box. That first day it was nice to have the box, but I didn't take a board out of it to surf. The next day I went to a job interview, and had left the boards in the box overnight. From the job interview I went strait to the beach and DID pull a board out of the box to surf. I was watching the waves and was happy I had the option of a few boards because the waves were not too big for the Pacheco, but not too small for the Moraga. I ended up having a shite session but the air was hot, the sun was out, and the water is still warm.
I wrote similar emails to two other spoon guys just before I wrote this up. It's difficult riding these unusual surf craft because I don't have anyone else to learn from or talk about things with. I hope one of them responds, but I also know that the kind of people who like to ride spoons might be off on a new surf tangent developing the next surf craft that I'll be wanting to try!