oh yes!!!!!!!!!! pieter surfboards fifties pig

below are pictures of my pieter surfboards fifties pig, and a video regarding the pick up from united airlines cargo and the unpacking of my board.

the template is outstanding. i love the width of the board, the location of the wide point, the pulled in nose.

as you can see, the deck is flat. no one i asked in california would shape a board with a flat deck

the fin is the Australian federation star, and the United States stripes

the thickness and the foil of these rails seem like they will be perfect for me. i am incredibly optimistic about the performance of this board. the curve shaped into the bottom seems like it has what it needs in the right place. when i picked this board up, and took it out of the box, i thought it'd be heavier than what it is. i was STOKED to feel it's weight. what ever it weighs, it feels like it won't be a dog, yet it doesn't feel light enough to be chattery. feels perfectly weighted to be a fast performer. any flat deck board i have rode has a tremendous amount of weight. the idea of a flat deck yet not super heavy log is EXCITING. i had no idea what to expect from this blank. Pieter had videos of him trying to push his thumb through the foam before he shaped it. he couldn't do it. other blanks he had , he could push his thumb through them. i thought dense foam = tremendous weight. not so, this board has about the weight of my feral pig.

the packing pieter did was bullet proof. so stoked.

repacked the packaging material and stuffed it under my house. i will reuse the box and packing foam for a surf trip.

the video below shows the trip to the airport to pick up the box from united airlines cargo. we had family in town, so i followed them to the airport with my daughter so she could give her bff and cousin a final last hug at the air port. i had been speaking to the people at United Airlines (UA) to get an understanding of what all is required to grab the board. from what I had gathered from my 8 phone conversations with them, it seemed like bringing my daughter could be a reasonable thing to do. after we dropped our family off at the rent a car place my daughter and i proceeded to the UA  cargo address. i signed my name on a sheet of paper and waited to be called on, I was helped with in a few minutes. they gave me some papers and told me to drive about .7 mile away. this was a Monday in August, and i was on Century Blvd at LAX . the .7 mile journey took half an hour. we arrived at the customs place, i grabbed a number and felt like i was about to drag my 6 year old daughter through a DMV experience. however, a customs officer called me up immediately. i filled out a few papers, gave him the papers that UA cargo gave me, he took my ID and made a copy of it, he stamped my papers, handed back the papers and my ID, told me to go back to the UA cargo desk. the entire customs event took less than 10 minutes. I drove the .7 miles (30 minutes), went back to the desk and handed them the stamped paper. i had to pay $50 for an import fee. the gave me a pick up form and told me to walk into the warehouse and hand the paper to a forklift driver. at this point i was like "...come again?". the lady says "take that paper into the warehouse and hand it to a forklift driver". so i walk into the warehouse. there are about 15 large truck drivers standing around with papers in their hands and their are forklifts driving all over the place. i had no idea who was first in line, if their was a line, and what was the protocol to get my paper in the hands of a forklift driver. at this point, my daughter is exhausted. i am carrying her in one arm. she is asleep. i got my paper in the other arm. one of the truck drivers told me to have a seat. i followed his instructions. my daughter was sleeping on my lap as i proceeded to wait. after about 30 minutes , a couple of the truck drivers started to explain how i could tell what forklift operator worked for UA cargo and which forklift operator worked for EVA. that helped quite a bit. eventually i was informed what the order of  the line to get served was. after waiting 1.5 hours in a warehouse with my 6 year old daughter UA cargo had serviced 4 of the 9 people in front of me. i arrived there at 3 pm. it is now 4:30 p.m. the next truck driver to be serviced asked me how many packages i had to get picked up. i told him 1. he gave me his place in line. fucking gentleman. my daughter thanked him. i get the box loaded onto my jeep, i had to double up my straps. i was about to raw dog my tumultuous journey back through the orange curtain with a giant box stopped to the top of my jeep with only one strap. i figured i had a chance of it working given i would obtain a max velocity of 15 miles and hour for the next 4 hours as i would surely be caught in some of the worst traffic on the planet. however, a random truck driver observed my predicament  and offered up a strap. i was shocked by the courtesy of the strangers. we get on the road and make it home safe. long day. pieter packed the board superbly. every other manufacturer around the planet that ships logs should pack them this way if they are shipping individual boards. i'm guessing there are other ways to protect a board from being damaged, but this technique can't be improved. i'm not sure what cost we saved by having me go to LAX. as i learned , we shipped this board as "general" cargo. general cargo flies on standby essentially. had we book it "express" it would had made the flight i was told it was going to arrive on. the board came 3 days later than i was originally told. UA cargo did have capable humans to speak to. their customer service is sufficient. i am not sure about the cost difference that the shipping would have incurred had we booked this board as "express " vs "general". above and beyond this discrepancy, the people at the cargo desk at UA told me I could have hired a "broker" to do all the paper shuffling and warehouse waiting. i suppose this broker would also hire a truck driver to drive the board to my house. i'm guessing the express vs general and the hiring of a broker and driver would have increased the shipping price significantly. all said and done, i had a nice day hanging with my daughter, and i received a beautiful surfboard in perfect condition from Australia.