Okay, you’ve just finished an awesome foil session. Your wet, out of breath, thinking of food then you look across the parking lot, and it happens… Your eyes lock onto someone that’s staring at you with that look. A little squinty eyed with their head cocked to the side a bit like a dog that hears a high-pitched noise. You’re walking to your car, and they’re walking towards you, faster and faster like a missile locked on target.
You’re thinking to yourself, here it comes… Then, BAM!, you hear " Excuse me what’s that?.."
We’ve all been cornered in the parking lot or on the beach. You thought your foil board was just for riding, but it’s actually a tourist magnet. Yes, if I had a dollar for every person that approached me with dress socks and Teva sandals on, I’d be able to a buy a whole new foil setup.
So I’m curious to know what funny questions you all have been asked in the parking lot.
“What is that thing?” “How does it work?”, are pretty standard, let’s share some funny ones. GenRation Surf has donated one of their newest modular traction pads that will go to the funniest Q&A parking lot story.
Oh forgot about one. I had a guy in the water ask me how hard it is. I said it’s ten sessions of falling. He smugly replied I bet I can do it. Can I try your setup? Here you can ride my $1500 longboard while I try.
I felt bad telling him gear is over $2k so I just blamed covid and said no.
I always try to make time to share the aloha of foiling when people come up to me in the parking lot, but this one time I got stopped just as I was getting out of the water and I was in a big rush. This guy came up to me, “I saw you guys out there. That was amazing! I mean, I’ve seen this stuff on the internet but never in real life.” I was just smiling and nodding my head while walking to the parking lot. So trippy, the guy started asking questions and answering them at the same time. “Is it hard to ride that? It must be hard, and I bet you need good balance.” “How does it actually work? It’s probably like an airplane wing that creates lift” He must have asked me five or six questions and answered them all for himself by the time I reached my car. He didn’t even give me a chance to respond. When I put my board down at the car, he said , “Hey thanks for the information” and just walked away. I seriously didn’t have a chance to say a word, just smiled and nodded my head with the occasional “yup”
I haven’t had any funny ones, but I will say that almost every time I get out of the water somebody wants to know how much the setup costs. I never know if I should really tell them the truth or not…
Wow, I’ve never heard that one! There’s often a couple of paragliders zipping back and forth over one of the local breaks here n Southern California. I can just imagine them strapped to a foil board and literally dropping in.
That person clearly does not paramotor. Water is the enemy of everything PPG and combining it with foiling would be about the quickest way to drown I could imagine.
I don’t have a funny story but often get the usual questions. While waiting with my boat at the ramp for people to show up one day these two fine looking young ladies in bikinis came by. They checked out the foil and asked if I was good. “On the foil, you mean? I don’t know about good but give me another month”. I am old AF but would have invited them along if they weren’t getting on someone else’s boat.
Got a good one today that I’ve never heard before while rinsing off at the beach shower. Guy came up and started with the typical, “how do those things work?”
After I explained, he said, “ So it doesn’t have a motor? I thought y’all had a pedal there on the board that you were pushing for the gas!”
