Got any good ding/ding repair stories?

I have one from a couple summers ago. I came home from being up in town with my wife late afternoon and the waves looked super fun. Not much sunlight left for the day so I grabbed my board and started running towards the beach. About halfway down the walkway over the dunes I ran the the nose of my board straight into one of the walkway poles haha. I said screw it and paddled out anyway.

 

years ago, bought a brand new quad fish...left the shop, headed to my spot, leaned it up against my truck while i put my suit on, wind blew it over, put a healthy ding in it, went surfing anyway. I was a little ticked, considering i dinged the damn board before it ever touched the water.

 

the first time it went to CR solo, I got tickets thru Gogo Tours. 300+ a first and last night stay at a hotel included. I hauled to the beach when I arrived, but stayed at the Ambassador in San Jose the night before leaving. A block away was Josefinas, a world class hoochie coochie bar. The room had a/c and hot shower and a Pizza Hut across the street. Ate, had a hot shower, then laid in the a/c. Around 7, I was dozing and thought,"If god wants me to go to the bar, he'll keep me awake." Around 10, god woke me and I went. Stayed a couple hours and saw some nekkid hussies strut. went back to the hotel. That was the scariest walk ever. the street was deserted and when I knocked on the hotel door, the clerk, jumped behind the desk and pulled out an assault rifle. He was more surprised to see a gringo.
I had my board bubble wrapped, packed in a board box with all my clothes etc. when I got the board home, the box was undamaged, but the nose of my board was flatted 4 to 5 inches. My wifey put the juju on me. good thing I didn't get the "special" back room dance or my plane would have burst into flames.

There was a sign on the hotel room door with a list of things NOT to do. #1 was not to rent a car from schmoos on the street, did that. don't go out at night, did that too, and some other things I did as well. oops!

 

Freshly finish shaped blank on the rack. Had to run... no time to sweep up. Figured I'd be back in an hour to clean up. Did what I had to do, went back to the shop to finish cleaning up. It was nighttime. I walk across the floor of the shaping bay in the pitch black darkness, reaching up for the pull chain to turn on the light... I know exactly where it is, even in the darkness. Just as I step up to the rack and reach up, I step on something, and hear that dreadful "crunch" sound of crisp polyurethane foam turning into dust on impact. I turn on the light... somebody swept up for me, and left the push broom leaning against the wall. You know how when you step on a rake and the handle comes flying up and hits you in the face? This rail had a perfect broom handle dent right on the apex about an inch deep.

 

oh man... i was probably 18 and surfing legitimate big waves for the first time. note quite 10 foot faces breaking a 100yds off the beach just south of the pier in Avon. big A-framing waves with slightly better lefts than rights. while i was definitely intimidated, i would put my head down and go for whatever wave i was in position for... getting THRASHED every single time. straight kooking.

well during a lull, my friend and i were just sitting on our boards shooting the sh*t staring off towards the horizon. the next thing you know out of both our peripheral vision, about 50yds away we see a shark lunge up and take a pelican off the top of the water. i'll never forget it. just seeing the entire backside breaching and crashing back down the way it did... we were absolutely tripping!! well without saying anything to one another, we start stroking towards the beach like our lives depended on it. trying to ride already broken waves in prone, but getting bucked off in the process due to the turbulence of the whitewater. then you've got that last 25yds in to the shore where it's a deep spot and of course you feel like you're not even moving. so i get spat up on the beach first and am just ecstatic to be on dry land.

5 minutes later we're up at the truck drying off in some random cul de sac. i place my board on the asphalt street with the deck facing down. by this point we are both laughing our heads off and fidgeting like two teenage girls. i've got so much nervous energy/adrenaline inside of me that i'm practically hysterical, shaking like a leaf on a tree. well we're both trying to decide what our next move is going to be and i just took a simple step backwards... resulting in crushing the nose of my Maurice Cole like it was a bag of potato chips. just CRUNCH. my buddy just falls on the street laughing at me, while i'm still in such hysteria that it didn't bother me one bit. "hey i'm alive, that shark didn't get me, screw the surfboard".

that was such a classic trip. later that week we rolled up to the ECSC and got to watch guys like Bruce Irons and Fred Pattachia just go mental on little east coast slop waves. seeing Bruce catch a wave that never broke out the back and linking it into the inside busting a 3 foot air off a coming section. getting our hotel room comped because technically we were staying in a room that wasn't supposed to be available due to the previous tenants trashing the place. rolling back down to Buxton and catching a few more days of waves, having an old acquaintance let us camp in his yard free of charge. the experiences we got in the water and out, just really will always be one of the best east coast trips of my life.