STATEMENT SHADES Doin’ Double Duty to Create Some Statement Hair! After all, you don’t want anyone to think you wear glasses because your vision is off.
BLUE RIDGE OPTOMETRY
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the water and see that come to life and feel it—there’s just something about that that brings me satisfaction and joy.” Over time, his friends and their friends started asking if they could ride his boards, check them out, see what they were all about, and Bill obliged, learning that their stoke fuels his fire. “To me, being able to watch your friends surf them and have a good time on them—that’s almost as much fun as surfing it myself.” Bill’s shop is six hours from the nearest surf break, six hours from the sounds of waves peeling down an empty beech, six hours from friends stopping by to say hello, drink a beer, shoot the breeze. That bit of separation that he has from the surf break to the shop is important. Bill gets his inspiration from the coast but needs the serenity and peace and quiet that comes with living and working in the mountains to get things done. “When there are waves, I want to be out surfing,” he says. “So if I was there all the time, and the waves were good, I would be surfing. I wouldn’t get much work done. Up here at least, I can choose to let those days that are very marginal go and save my energy and my time for the days that are really good. “Don’t get me wrong,” Bill explains, “I’m always checking surf reports and weather charts two or three times a day when there’s something happening. I’m always planning ahead so I can drop everything and go if a swell comes in—and I pretty much do. Most of the time, when there are waves, I go. But I think if I lived 10 minutes from the beach, I’d be making that 10-minute drive to the beach five times a day checking it. Sometimes, living here in the mountains, it allows me to just get into it. Sometimes I’ll be in the shaping room and I’ll step outside and it’s dark and I have no idea where it went.” On a rainy afternoon on the first day of summer, Bill is hard at work. He is wearing a respirator mask as he puts the finishing touches on a new shape. On the different workstations in his shop are three more nearly completed boards in various stages of completion. Upstairs is a room full of foam core blanks. Bill makes surfboards— for himself and a few friends—and he plans to keep it that way. “I was talking to a friend the other day and he was just like, ‘Yeah, you know, I guess you make the best boards in Valle Crucis.’ Yeah, I don’t think there’s any doubt about that.”
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July 2011
High Country Magazine
113