Surfing is a sport in which people use a board made from polyurethane foam, wrapped in fiberglass, and sealed with resin, in order to ride waves in a standing up position. It hasn't always been a fiberglass board that surfers have used however. They use to use a very heavy wooden board that ranged somewhere around 18 feet long. Now days, they use a board anywhere from five feet to 20 feet long, and they are much, much lighter.
             Surfing has been around for quite a while. Christopher Columbus sailed to the New World in 1492. Surfing had started before then in what is now known as the state of Hawaii. Now the sport has spread across the world and has even become a professional sport.
             The techniques of surfing are very precise. You must maintain excellent balance and must be able to maneuver very quickly while maintaining this balance. You also must know how to read how the wave breaks and how to react to each break. Before the wave, you usually sit on the board in an upward position. Once you see the wave, you begin to paddle until the exact pop-up time. This is when you feel yourself being pulled by the wave. At this time you stand up on your board, turn, and ride down the direction opposite of the breaking crest. From there you can do tricks or maneuvers depending on talent, balance, and waves size.
             A very important person in the history of surfing was a man named Duke Paoa Kahanamoku, also known as "The Duke." This man helped spread the sport of surfing throughout America as well as many other parts of the world. He was born, and grew up, in Honolulu, Hawaii, in the year of 1884. This is where he began surfing at the age of eight years old. Kahanamoku became one of the best surfers ever to live. He rode a longboard made of wood, as explained earlier. He traveled around the world teaching people about surfing and how to surf. Among the people that he taught, one of the more noteworthy of all w...