Cool little drum pad -- buy this and support youth music!

So I've got myself a cool little pad (New, NOT vintage, sorry), made and sold by a drum corps called Jersey Surf. Unlike many drum corps in this all-too modern era, Surf remains a volunteer-driven organization, which means everything they raise goes directly into equipping, feeding and transporting the corps during their summer tour.  (There are drum corps today whose senior staff members pull down huge salaries. Most volunteer-driven corps have much lower staff salaries and it's a labor of love. The latter are getting harder to find at the top levels of the activity.)

I ordered my pad as soon as they were made available this winter. After all, it would make a nice addition to my collection, and the price ($12) was right.

I've been enjoying my little pad since it arrived. It has two sides: one side is made from a mousepad the corps sold last year. They had extras and decided to repurpose them for these pads. (repurposing makes Surf a drum corps after my own crunchy-granola, PNW environmentalist heart.)

The mousepad side is a little harder and tighter, and makes you work a little more to get decent diddles and rolls. And it's SO clean-sounding that there's nowhere for your lazy technique to hide.
You'll hear every note whether you want to or not.

The other side is a hard, dense rubber that's only slightly thicker than the mousepad. It's also a fairly hard surface, but without as much "bite" as the mousepad side. Both surfaces are glued securely to a particle-board platform. The whole pad fits easily into my messenger bag and therefore is a pad I take with me anywhere. Below is an example of how this little pad sounds and plays.

This is not a super-high-performance drum pad. (For that, spend the bigger bucks and get a Xymox or Offworld pad.)
Instead, this is the pad to reach for when you find yourself with five minutes of downtime and you need to play a few rolls to calm your squirrel-brain. Or the pad to keep at the office when a vendor puts you on hold for too long. Or the pad to take to beach with you so that you can chop out while you stare at the waves and go all Zen-like. (One of my favorite pursuits, BTW)

I'm taking mine on tour next month when I go do some singer-songwriter gigs in Seattle. Because it's the perfect size to travel with and for what it is, it's not bad at all.

There are still some available at the corps web store:
http://jerseysurf.org/product/jersey-surf-drum-pad/
Every purchase supports youth music.
Which I know you absolutely WANT to do.
Happy chopping, kids!
And all the best to you and yours in 2019.