Chemistry's Chris Abad had an amazing week in the Jeep - Body Glove Surf Bout at Lower Trestles. Abad started in the very first round of the event and made it through 6 heats to the quarterfinals, placing equal 9th out of 192 competitors and pocketing $1500. Not only did he take out a few giants in the event he also posted the highest single wave score of the event. According to the event website, "Chris Abad produced the maneuver of the event this afternoon with an inverted full-rotation air reverse putting the beach crowd of surfers and spectators on their feet. The incredible ride garnered Abad the event-high single wave score of a 9.60 out of a possible 10 and advancement into round four."I was just sitting there for ages and wasn't getting any waves and I was getting really bummed," Abad said. "Then that right came in and lined up and it just kept going. I was just really lucky that I could let loose on it and I am stoked to get through another round. The set up here at Lowers is so perfect for a competition and I am psyched to be doing well in the event." We were all super psyched on Abad's performance this week and hope he can keep it going.

Chemistry's Thomas Clarke has finally returned home after a three week long trip to Mainland Mexico. He returns with stories of fun surf as well as a south of the border face tan. The trip went from Pasquales with the Sun Diego surf team to Barra with Volcom, getting waves the entire time. Pulling off full marathon sessions was the norm with the boys sometimes surfing up to 10 hours in a day. Now back home with his family and friends, Thomas is looking forward to finishing the NSSA season and upcoming trips. Check out more photos from the trip and his bio at Sundiego.com.

Easter weekend the Chemistry team joined forces in Baja. The guys called Los Gaviotas homebase and Rosarito the battlefield. Cheyne Mags, Abad, T-Grom, and J Bennett were geared up and ready for great surf and good times . It ended up mainly good times considering there wasn't much surfing going on. It was a rare occassion to get the whole team together because of everyones conflicting schedules (Cheyne in Maui, T-Grom in school, Jason in the shaping room, and Abad watching T.V.) so to have all the boys together and psyched was an amazing accomplishment.

After months of riding huge longboards and desiring to rip, former Pro Bowl Linebacker for the San Diego Chargers and future Hall of Famer, Junior Seau came to us to make him a high performance board. He was flat out tired of seeing guys twice his age with pot bellies on shortboards doing progressive moves. With that in mind as well as the fact that he is 6'3 and 255lbs of pure muscle, we came up with the Alchemist model, (8'6 x 24 x 3 1/2 triple wing swallow). Upon seeing his new board he claimed, "I'm gonna be taking it to another level on this!" With that in mind, look out for him at a break near you.