Can you tell me about your surf program? How much of the business is it at this point? It’s maybe a 10th of the size of the snowboard business, which is pretty big in the surf world. At the start, building snowboards was work and surfing was play for us. But we have always built surfboards too, for ourselves. Then, Mike had some unique construction ideas, and he was trying to make a better surfboard. That’s a really hard thing to do, but he figured out ways and now we have a process no one else is using. Mike put at least 10 years into it while I picked up some of the focus on snow. How is it working with Matt Biolos and …Lost? He’s a character. He’s gruff. He’s a punk rocker. He used to sing in a punk band. He came from the ’90s, a wild era of surfing. But he’s a su-per-hard-working, highly motivated person and he is really smart. He’s a good dude and he has become a friend. He runs the biggest women’s program in surfing. He takes care of so many people. His pros ride our boards too. He has helped people see us as legit in the surf industry. I consulted Tim “Stanny” Stanford before this conversation and he had a question for you: what’s with the hair? Well, when I was a kid, I had an afro. I couldn’t comb my hair. It was the ’70s, when everyone styled their hair, and it was kind of a struggle as I discovered who I was. In my 20s, I kinda got used to it. But in my 30s, it started falling out and I started looking like my forehead was growing, but I still had the afro. I hit that day—probably in my mid-30s—where I was like, “It’s gotta go. I can’t do this anymore.” I shaved it all off. I’ve been mowing the lawn for 20 years since, once per week. I still identify as bald, but my kids wanted me to grow my hair out this summer, so I started growing it and I just kept growing it—it’s an experiment. I was trying to get my afro back, I wanted to look like Art Garfunkel. But I’m kinda looking like Gene Wilder in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory . The kids won’t let me cut it; they like to pet me nowadays ’cause we haven’t let them get a pet yet, ’cause we travel too much, so I’m father pet. We’ll see where it goes from here. I think, if it keeps going, I’m gonna run the double-braided Willie Nelson. We’ll see if I can make it that far [laughs]. Speaking of family, how did you meet Annette? I first saw her at La Push [on the west coast of the Olympic Peninsula] and we were both in different romantic situations. But I met her there, and eventually she came to work at Mervin, and we both ended up single. We worked together so much that we eventually grew close. We had to navigate a few dating-somebody-at-work challenges, but we’ve made it work. We work together closely and live together and have a family together. And believe it or not, it seems to be working great. She’s an honest, hardworking person and I guess I am too. We’ve been able to make it work for the rest of the people around us, so there was never any disruption there. If anything, we overcompensated by putting in even more effort and being extra clear with work boundaries. Love is an unpredictable thing and that wasn’t the easiest path, but now life couldn’t be better. We have everything in common and she brings a whole lot to my world. She’s an amazing mom. With the amount of energy we both pour into our work life and then our board-sports life, I don’t think we could have made other relationships work like this one has. But with both of us doing the same thing, we had time for each other and time for the relationship. We have an all-in work, surf, snowboard lifestyle. If we’re not going to the mountains, we’re go-ing to the beach. And if we’re not doing that, we’re working on creative for Mervin. She’s the design director for Lib Tech, correct? Yeah. She came from Germany and got a degree at Western [Washing-ton University] in graphic design. She started out doing graphic design for us, and then she worked her way up to managing all our other designers. These days they have become so strong, and Lib has grown so much, that she focuses on Lib. How many years have you been together? Around 15. Hard at work. Mexican Terrapin market-ing content trip in 2022. Photo: Tim Stanford SURF AND SNACKS Recently, my seven-year-old Ailo and I had an amazing mini-session surfing by ourselves. The sun was out, not a breath of wind... magical little crisp peelers. I was coaching him into the spot and helping him pick waves, and he was paddling into waves and trimming down the line and excitedly paddling back out over waves screaming — classic surf dad moments. Later that day the surf was overhead, and the kids were on the beach playing in a little shack we built at the high tide line. I came in from my session and stepped over the beach logs and seaweed to where Ailo was sitting and playing, and as I looked down, I saw a dead seal wrapped in the kelp with its head bit cleanly off, still bleeding. I looked down at it and then at his smiling face and back at it and didn’t say anything. I surfed that spot alone for the next few days and it felt a little different. PETE SAARI 085
The Snowboarder's Journal The Snowboarder's Journal 20.4: Page 85
