For surfers like me who started out in the early 1970s, it is possible to claim that we have been a part of each epoch surfing's modern age: single fins to twins to tri-fins to quads, and now back to singles and even no fins. In 1974 when I graduated from mat riding and paipo boarding in Newport Beach to a 'real' surfboard, it was a perfect time to be an incipient shaper/designer, as the shortboard revolution had just occurred 6 or 7 years previous, and the fossil record hadn't even sunk into the tar pits and stratified yet. There were boards of all stamps in used board racks at the local surf shops -- old tankers, transition boards, exaggerated vee bottoms, S-decks, and all sorts of kinky backyard experiments. I sampled everything I could get my hands on. Now, over 40 years later, I still tend to think of surfing not as waves I have ridden, breaks I have named, or trophies won and discarded -- rather the surfing life for me is all about surfboards found and ridden and whittled and dreamt up. Going into the shaping room, the surfer/shaper has to be electrified, each and every day, by the possibilities and idea of What If?....