I would say nothing I’ve experienced can beat the feeling of riding a wave exactly how you want to ride it on something you’ve created with your own two hands.
Because some of us just like to work with our hands?
Because its a basic human thing?
Because its genetic? My grandfather, Allan Senior, was a master machinist, my father was quite a good craftsman (though he toiled in the white-collar world), and a distant relative (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grinling_Gibbons) was a pretty good woodcarver.
Because its fun?
Ambrose, I like what you said very much.
I’ve heard it said that men make things because they can’t have babies and they want to leave something around to be remembered by… I don’t know if I buy that but it’s a theory.
(Another theory is that all dinosaurs are small at one end, much much bigger in the middle, and small again at the other end…)