“Sucks. Totally lame. This will never catch on. And my leg hurts!” That was me. 

The Way Back Machine is set to 2007. I'm trying out my girlfriend's new 12-foot Laird stand up board for my first SUP experience. We are at a North Coast beach break. The waves are head high, punchy and mostly closeouts. Even though the board is as new as the sport, it's still old school, at least as old school as a new fad like stand up paddling can get. No deck pad, no handle, and only one tiny lump of wax to cover almost thirty square feet of slippery deck. At first glance, the strange new board looks just like any other longboard -  if Paul Bunyan surfed. Even Babe the Blue Ox would have a hard time schlepping this one around. I get the full girth of the new sport when I carry the big Laird.

Paddling prone out past the impact zone, I stand up on the outside with a bad case of the wobbles. Despite Jell-O legs, I'm somehow able to turn the board half way around and paddle for a swell. The wave is a quick right and for some unknown reason, the board is stuck on the wrong rail zinging hard to the left, resulting in the first of many crashes to follow.

It doesn't take rocket science to figure out that the bulky 12-footer doesn't fit in the close-out beach break. It's like a 10-foot ladder stuck inside an 8-foot room. My kill-zone, adding up the size of the board, plus the 10-foot leash, plus my outstretched right leg, is roughly twenty-five feet, about the size of a hand grenade blast. I'm surfing 144 inches of pure, get-out-of-my-way. Luckily everybody out in the water gives me a wide berth. My success rate (as in still standing after making the drop) is limited, very limited. It doesn't take long before the big red Laird board T-bones into my left thigh. Battered, with more than my ego bruised, I call it quits. And more than once I repeat: "Sucks. Totally lame. This will never catch on.”

One year goes by and despite the fact that the actual name of the sport is still in question (is it stand up paddling? SUP? Beach-Boy Paddling? paddleboarding? Hoe Hehe Nalu? or simply stand up?) it is now everywhere. Happens overnight. It's in the news, on the beach, and all over the internet. Hollywood can't get enough as SUPs are plastered on billboards, are used as backgrounds for TV commercials and are seen inside almost every issue of People Magazine. Most of these photos feature celebrities with their paddles facing backwards. The funny thing is, no one really cares about the paddle. It's about selling a lifestyle more than the product itself.

I jump onto the rapidly gaining momentum SUP bandwagon with a shiny new 11'11" Angulo. But I didn't purchase this board to surf it, mind you. No, I bought it for core strengthening workouts. I'm still sold on the idea of "If I'm going to surf, I'm going to surf."

Stand up paddling will strengthen my core, they tell me. "A great core workout," they promise. Up until that moment, I'd largely been ignoring my core as a phantom spot, well padded and buried somewhere deep inside me. Soon I'm cruising outside the surf line in search of my core.

My "peanut butter in the chocolate moment" arrives about a week later. Coming back from a short paddle down the coast to Capitola, I swing through the lineup in front of Jack O'Neill's house along the Pleasure Point cliffs. A kooky weekend crowd is out battling over the small mushy surf. I find my opening and ease into a knee-high dribbler. One tiny soft wave is quickly followed by another. And then another.

Within the next hour, I surf over ten waves. I get major surf stoke without having to snake or back paddle anybody to get it. "I'm eating lightning and crapping thunder", as Rocky Balboa's trainer would say. With just a simple change of equipment and new attitude, I go from fighting for scraps in crowded surf to "King of the Dorks." In a glorious salt-encrusted epiphany right there in front of Jack's house, I realize that I can surf on a stand up board for the rest of my life even if I can’t find my core.

Now it’s almost twenty years later with thousands of waves ridden and still counting, living proof that time really does fly by when you're having fun. It's a new day, and no longer is stand up paddling picking at the seams of mainstream surfing. It's toothpaste out of the tube, a fully baked cookie unable and unwilling to turn back into its original ingredients. Despite a small scattering of people out there with their paddles facing backwards, the sport is moving forward.

I’m still searching for my core, but that's small potatoes. It's all over now but the shouting. Praise the Laird!