The 1988 movie 'Young Einstein' made a great impression on me as a teenager. After seeing it for the third time at the cinema I actually started wearing workwear shorts with braces over a white singlet with Blundstone boots, 20 years ahead of the faux urban woodsman look that was to come.
I loved pretty much every concept and joke in the movie, but I was particularly tickled by the idea of a young Albert Einstein conceiving of the thruster design surfboard and then carving it from a solid log.
When I saw this board advertised, badly, I got tingles.
Could this be the actual board from the movie that Yahoo Serious worked with and then surfed, quite well, that by some mysterious circumstance, has appeared for sale very very cheaply?
My mind raced with fantasies of a junior workman from a demolition crew at the now defunct Hard Rock Cafe or Warner Brothers Movie World pulling this out of date movie prop from a skip and posting a picture on eBay.
It could be possible, better and more famous boards have come from the tip and rubbish throw outs.
Or could it simply be a promo item made by the dozen for movie theatre foyers and video store to promote the renting of VHS and Beta max copies of the movie?
While the board was waiting for me to pick it up on my next trip to Melbourne I wrote to Steve O'Donnell to see if he had any memory of making just one or many many copies of the board.
He wrote back, he only remembered the one.
Wow, this could be it.
I felt like I'd found Gerry Lopez's red Lightning Bolt pin tail that he shaped and rode in Big Wednesday.
All would be revealed once I got my hands on the board.
If the "Young Einstein" logo was a sticker or painted on the outside of the glass then I would have found a unique piece of Australia's cultural heritage.
If the logo was under the glass then I'd have a worthless promo item.
The bad news is the logo is under the glass.
The good news is I now have a lovely late 80's thruster with hand foiled wood laminate fins shaped by respected Hot Buttered shaper Steve O'Donnell, ready to ride.
