This always amuses me...

Every time I'm off on a surf trip and I've got my two boards stuffed into my single board bag (I always try to bring a smaller, "regular" surfboard with me... just in case) I always get a kick out of watching them get loaded up. It's kind of a morbid fascination- I'm always waiting to see if a board-crime is being committed. Check it out:

Those are my babies over there in that gray FCS stando bag. By the way- those FCS bags are the best around- great zippers, spacious and very durable. I've had mine totally overloaded on five or six trips down south and it's never blown out or torn apart from being dragged around.

When I was kid, traveling with a surfboard meant staying up the night before carefully prepping it for the hazards that lay ahead. These were the days before removable fins. You'd go to the surf shop and buy a big foam block that had two or three fin slits cut into it, the block would go over your fins and you'd wrap the whole thing together with duct tape. That was just the start of it. Typically, you'd take two or three beach blankets and wrap them around the nose and tail. Then, you'd stuff the whole thing into a sleeping bag, wrap that a couple times with duct tape and then jam the hundred pound, burrito-board into your board bag.

Problem was, when you landed in Honolulu, some big, burly baggage handler would always give your board bag the "Welcome to Hawaii- have a good time" stamp of approval with the Vibram side of his size twelve steel toes. I never actually got a chance to see the crime being committed - but I always craned my neck out the window of that plane to take a look. I guess that's where my fascination with watching my board being loaded took root- old habits are hard to shake.