Last night I found Jeff Clark's Surf Shop Website and called the main number. A very friendly dude-man surf-shop-worker answered and I laid out my story. "Hey, I'm calling from Vermont and I just received a surfboard signed by Jeff Clark. Do you know anything about this?". I gave him a little more detail and I could tell he was kind of curious himself, so he gave me Jeff's cell phone number.

I called Jeff's cell, got his voice mail and left a message (trying not to sound like an idiot). I left one of the best voice mails of my life explaining how flattered I was to receive a surfboard signed by him and asking whether he knew anything about it.

Five minutes later my phone rings.... "Hello, this is Russ". "Hey Russ, this is Jeff Clark!". Holy crap. We chat for a little while about the board, he tells me how happy he is that it arrived safely. Then I ask him the burning question, why? Turns out Jeff Clark is big buddies with my new favorite first cousin, Chris Scully who lives in Menlo Park. Suddenly I had a memory from two Christmases ago of Chris telling me that he's good friends with Jeff and that they hang out quite a bit. Apparently Chris and Jeff play a ton of golf together and Chris has been asking Jeff for some time now to send me a board. How awesome is that? Chris, I love you man, thank you so so much. How do I reciprocate? I'll need to take some time with that one.

In the midst of the phone calls last night with Jeff's surf shop buddy and Jeff himself, I "tweeted" about the board (Twitter is all about creating buzz, and this was certainly buzz-worthy). Jeff is apparently pretty dialed into Twitter and responded right away... Here's a screen shot from that Twitter dialog.

Chris, you are the man. Thank you so much.

For those of you in the Burlington area, I'll be hanging the board at the restaurant tonight. You should all stop by sometime soon to check it out. Its incredible.

Mystery solved. Story closed for now (until I book that plane ticket to play a round at Menlo Public with Chris and Jeff - or better yet, maybe a snowboarding sesh in Tahoe over the kids next school break).

Aloha! Russ