Jim, I own a board you shaped for Channin. I’d first seen it hanging from the ceiling in the Rockaway Beach Surf Shop around '95, but it wasn’t until '00 that I really took a hard look at it and realized that it was exactly what I was looking for. It’s an odd board, an 8-6 that might be described as a drawn-out egg, or maybe a “fun gun,” but neither of those categorizations really describes its subtle uniqueness. Definitely a longboard, but with a pulled-in nose that almost matches its rounded pin tail…like a double-ender…with a slight belly under the entire length, a little more pronounced under the nose, just noticeable through the middle and becoming more of a vee through the last 18 inches, with a glassed-on thruster setup of carbon-fiber striped fins. No color, and only two ovoid Channin stickers, one on the deck, one on the bottom, that seem to mimic the over-all shape of the board. A novice shaper (hell, plenty of experienced shapers) could go to school studying just the rail transitions of this board. Throw in the bottom contours and rocker, and the parts add up to a virtual history lesson of modern longboard design. And yet it’s an oddball: a longboard that is most definitely not a noserider, yet easily enters a wave with “no paddle;” with a planshape that might seem better suited to a board 1 1/2 feet shorter, but only because that’s where mainstream ideas would put an egg or double-ender; and a fin configuration of a shortboard that in no way detracts from but rather only seems to enhance this board’s “glide factor,” because it glides with great maneuverability. My question is this: what was the philosophy behind this board? Was it along the lines of something you said in a Longboard Magazine interview (from '94) about searching for a design that maximized “accurate functionality?” Needless to say, it’s an awesome board. Anybody that’s ever ridden it has come in with a grin. Could you tell me what you were thinking? Were you aiming at a true multipurpose vehicle?