wakenutts
Wednesday, I got up at 6.14am.. It is a Hong Kong Public holiday and I woke up earlier than my normal work mornings. I looked out of my window, Sunny- great. I forgot about why or what hadcaused my insomniac state, spruced up the PC and burned a real cool CD. Today is riding day and I wanna ride to the cool tunes of BlackEyePeas and Gorillaz.. Ha…
Matthew, Mikey, Hydie, Scarecrow and I will be heading to Wakeaholic at Tung Chung.. It is sort of like a homecoming. For Tung Chung was where Matthew, Hydie and I met the first time, and thus it, for me in a way, was the beginning of what would eventually be the formation of Wakenutts. It was Leo’s encouragement and his camera that got me hooked on Wakeboarding Photography. Back in summer of 03, he handed me his NIKON 35mm SLR and asked me to shoot some pictures at the MTV wakeboarding party, since then I had not looked back.. We had a lot of history.. Good or bad.. it was history worth looking back.
Sometime, last yr, Leo bought a X-2.. Gotto say, Mastercraft makes good wakeboard boat.. Wake was big and consistent. There is lots of time to prepare for the ascension. No surprise nor sudden tug of the line etc… Fully loaded, it is just pure riding joy.. Riding in Tung Chung too, gets me really pump up.. Very few places in HK can offer such flat conditions. Pretty soon, the Cable car system to The big Buddha will be available and there will be more reason to excited about.. Can’t wait to hop into one of the carts and shoot riders from above the horizon.
Wednesday ride allowed me to test an hypothesis too.. For a long while, I could not understand why CWB stretched the length of the molded in fins for the 06 absolute model. The 05 model was simply just dynamic in every area.. Length, weight, rockers, fins.. The pops are consistently.. it rides neither too fast nor too slow.. In my world, it was the perfect board. Now I know. The extended fins in the 06 model gives extra traction to aid the rider when he rides in seawater… Boards ride higher in sea water due to density.. and thus with lengthened molded fins, it rides just like the 05 model in fresh water.. I am not sure if that was what they had in mind.. but when Mikey and I rode the 06 for the first time on Sea-water, we both agreed that the traction problems we had with it when riding at 厚街 were gone. With the increased grip, my landings were smooth and it gave me enuff room to compensate around on impact to ride off unscathed.
Wednesday was also another big day because I was using my Canon EOS 30D, with EF 70-200mm F2.8 L IS USM lens for the first on wakeboarding.. The picture quality was simple breathtaking. I was so engrossed in shooting that I forgot how damn$%@#@ heavy the entire set up were. The camera made me the cameramen that I aspire. It was like a dream come true. For the first time after a long while, I finally shot Hydie wakeboarding. Somehow over the last few yrs.. I have always missed the opportunity to shoot her.. She has of course taken plenty footage of me on video. I am glad I finally caught her in stills.. She is a good rider if her bad knee didn’t screw up her confidence and fear of being aggressive, she should be the first gal pulling all sorts of grabs and inverts by now.
Scarecrow, we have a scarecrow on board ( Connie’s nickname). On water, we were going scarecrow crazy.. Matt started it.. coming in hard, pop and spin around, crashed…. I have been thinking of it for awhile.. Esp. since I totally still massively sucked at the Tanturm.. Figure a change may help and so I scare-crowed too.. Given that I was naturally weak on toeside because of my hunching posture, I was very surprised that my edging coming in was more progressives than when I just try to cross two wakes.. Hydie commented that she knew my pop was gonna be big when I made the approach.. Somehow, I had the feeling that I know this trick. I couldn’t explain it.. After a few toe 180’s, I came in for the spin.. I thought of nothing.. Hit the wake and tossed my hip up towards the left and kept my head tugged.. Naturally, I felt myself being spin around by the line.. But next time, I knew, I hit the water hard on the flats.. Despite Leo’s advise, I was not able to see the water on landing.. somehow, I didn’t have the final bit of room to roll back upright. I tried a few times without successful… In the end , I got so tired I was totally missing the pop… The scarecrow attempts got me really excited, I felt I was stucked.. stucked in the grabs and one invert zone… It gave me a new zeal to land the sucker. I am gonna take a break from the tantrum and focus beating Matthew to land the scarecrow before he does!!!! He he he……
