Great piece today by Janet Cromley in the LAT about Laird Hamilton and how he's popularizing stand-up surfing. (With fab pix by Anne Cusack.) I posted about Laird last year but Janet explains how he's turning his parlor trick into a bona fide sport. And she's right about the sport taking off - it used to be that if a surfer was standing and paddling, it was Laird. Now it's anyone's guess who's out there. Laird, meanwhile, is out conquering the world.

About four years ago, House recalls, Hamilton brought some boards over and asked House to modify them for paddle surfing.

Armed with better boards, "We started riding little waves. And then we started doing coast runs on Maui, then channel crossings," Hamilton says.

Hamilton has since paddle-surfed the rapids in the Grand Canyon and the English Channel. He has paddled from Catalina to Dana Point and is preparing for a 500-mile event bicycling and paddle surfing the Hawaiian Islands.

This a photo shot from the bluff last week on a high-traffic morning here in the Cove. (No photo available of me kicking myself for procrastinating on this post and getting scooped in my own back yard.)