When we're not learning about Cuba and having some food, it's nice to paddle out and do battle with some humongous waves now and again. And, even if your sessions don't involve monster crashers, hitting the beach with your board is a great way to spend your day. The only problem for the kook, er, beginning board rider that is, is how to get your stick to the shore. Now, if you live where the surf meets the turf, you just grab your board and hit the waves, but if you're lugging that thing from the valley, you got another thing coming.

Surfing these days is wrought with more dangers than the traditional sting ray stings, sunburns and hangovers. Today's nose walker not only has all that to deal with, before their board even touches the water they gotta fight the beach traffic, find a parking spot and then run the gauntlet of hostile locals hell-bent on sending ‘em back to the valley in a body cast.

Now, strapping that water-logged fun board you copped at your grandma's neighbor's estate sale to the rickety roof rack of your dad's Country Squire might do the trick, but there are a few more graceful ways to get to the waves. And, if you've dropped some righteous bucks on a custom-shaped Skip Frye Fish, you not only wanna rack it right, you wanna keep that stick from getting ripped.

Enter the modern surfboard rack. Ranging in styles from a nylon-wrapped foam pad around the aforementioned roof rack's cross bars, to full-blown roof top carriers equipped with cargo baskets, bike racks, canoe racks and board racks. The former is sure to get your board to the green room in one piece, but the bungee cord fixtures don't do much to prevent parking-lot purloiners from snagging your stick while you're waiting in line for a bagel.

Now, the more sophisticated modern board racks come from companies like Thule and Yakima. They're just one part of the modular designs those racks boast, so you can go from surfboards to canoes to bikes to luggage with just a twist of a wrench. But the best part is the locking mechanism employed by these racks. Not only do the racks lock to the roof of your ride, your board locks to the racks. So, if some dick rips your board from one of these contraptions, they probably needed it more than you did.