Last winter I was camped out at a point break in Baja for a few weeks and the two best surfers who I shared the lineup were a couple firefighters from San Diego. One was 49, the other 52. The older guy was a slender fellow and he rode a 6'8 round tail twinny. He surfed it beautifully. Long, swooping cutbacks, deep bottom turns. Flowing, seamless carves on the open face. The 49 year old was a stockier dude and was riding a tiny Xanadu thruster. He was strait up shredding. Fins out the back on his snaps, full rail gouges and buckets of spray on every turn.
It really stoked me out to see guys that age still surfing so well. I hung out with them drinking beers and talking story a couple times. We talked boards and the younger guy said he had some alt boards but he kind of struggled to figure them out and just wanted to hit the lip so "that weird sh1t", as he put it, wasn't really his thing. The older guy said he'd been the same way and then a buddy of his shaped him a channel bottom twin and he just clicked with it right away and now had a whole quiver of them.
It's funny because I love alt boards, mostly twins of varying persuasion, but whenever the waves get juicy and at all consequential I just want to be on a thruster because they are so familiar and predictable for me.
I'm not sure what the point of this was. I guess just that nearing 40 is still pretty young and just ride whatever makes you happy.