Birdhouse

A few summers ago Darren and I decided to find a few less intense on-the-lake, and behind-the-boat alternatives to our usual wake-boarding, slalom skiing, and supertubing. The Knols had some creative things they did back in the '70's that we thought would be fun to try. This included skiing on a 3 foot circular disk, and surfing on a board that was attached by rope to the speedboat. The apparatuses used to do these activities are not commonly found in neighborhood sporting goods stores. Therefore I had to put my natural wood-working ability to use (in Dutch "schaaf" means "plane" as in "wood-plane"). I went to the hardware store and bought 3/4" wolmanized plywood, wolmanized 2-by-4, and marine grade varnish. After many hours of noise pollution with my dad's jig-saw behind my grandparent's cottage I had two beautiful towable surfboards. Each had three fins along the bottom. Two holes were drilled in the board to allow attachment of a tow-rope. They provided hours of fun for the entire cottage crew. They required little speed, and they required no hands leaving them free to give a "thumbs-up" or "hang-loose" to bemused onlookers. But, like most of our water-sports equipment, one of the surfboards could not handle the rigors we put on it, and one fateful afternoon the board snapped in half. After the tragic event my wife took the side of my inner realist which thought there is no use for a broken, home-made surf-board, and that it should be scrapped. However, as usual, my inner pragmatist won out and I decided that some day I might have a need for wolmanized scrap-wood coated in marine-grade varnish. Because such raw material is expensive I kept what I had. Since then, I have learned that over time, having shattered wood occuping your garage space is quite taxing. To put my mind at ease, I decided to turn the wood into a birdhouse to get rid of it. I'm very happy with how it turned out. The curving edges remaining from the surfboard give it an old nautical appearance. Now I am happy, my wife is happy, and this spring the birds will be happy too.