Two years later I met Steve Smith giving demos of the FSL tools, which had been released in June of 2000, and we began a collaboration that has continued to this day. Our partnership has involved a yearly course that has been a near catastrophe in almost every instance, including the 2005 course in which, during setup, we plunged large parts of a major Boston hotel into total darkness every time we powered on the course machines (they had gotten our power requirements wrong by about an order of magnitude). This course was also notable as it was that year that Jenni Pacheco became the FS(L) champion baguette jouster by battering some poor stranger into near unconsciousness with a large piece of bread (all in good fun of course). The 2003 course held in Santa Monica, CA (near the beach) was particularly memorable due to the arrival of the first apparent participant, who came into the course room and asked “Where is the free surfer course, dude?”. He ended up being quite disappointed in the subject material.
