wakenutts
If people wonder why wakenutss who leaves for China to wakeboard would keep going to China week in week out, barely the grit of a horrendous road trip.. This weekend would be have been a great answer to that mystery. And no it has nothing to do with Chinese “massage” services.
There were just 4 of us.. Mikey, VL, myself and new gal, Mandy. 4 to a reservoir, all to ourselves. The mere thought of that got me excited enuff to forget about the stressful week that I have had. I met VL at 7.30am at Wan chai to begin the trip, going thru the checkpoints, hooked up with Mikey and Mandy, hopping into another car.. We didn’t get to 厚街 till 10.10. However, the moment we open the door, we knew something gonna suck.. A strong gust of wind greeted me and out on the water, we saw white caps and massive ripples… F*CK!
I didn’t think I could get onto the water that day although we would not just hopped back into the car and head back to Shenzhen. Thus, we ended up just messing around with our boards. I took out my two boards, (my darlings, #1 and #5. haha).. and Sharon’s from the board room to give it a good wash( one should never complain about giving their girlfriends a shower).. Michael has done a good job giving us a big boardroom to keep our stuff. However, the place is extremely dusty. Sharon’s board been dormant for the entire winter and judging by the layer of dust over the surface, a geologist can actually tell when the last time the board, The CWB SOL, had seen any water time. VL happily converted his PS3 into the a TOFU delivery board ( he pasted stickers from the tofu delivery car made famous by 周杰伦in the Movie initial-D). We also spent some time figuring out how to best build a slider that would not scare the jibbers out of the riders. Something progressive. My last trip to Niseko had given me the ideas that we should always start low and start wide…. Get the body to adapt to muscles needed for sliding on hard surface. Mikey finalized the blue print is out and handed to Michael. Now we are ready for the next step… buying materials.
About noon-time. The wind started to calm down and we happily geared for what would be a really good day!!! Courtesy of Dino, we now have a waterproof video camera and what happen next would ultimately became another milestone in our wakenutts history. We had a inflatable buoy tied behind the lower hook of the natique and let out about 60ft line to the back. I was the first to get on with the Video Camera. For the first time in Wakenutts history, we have video footage of riders from the surface of the water 15feet away from the rider. It was amazing esp. when we pull inverts, our head can be as close as 10 ft from the camera. Apart from take video, it seemed that having a buoy out could be an effective technique to teach new riders. Being close to the new rider, you can correct the riders posture right on the spot.
Since there were only so few of us.. we put the rest of the time to good use… VL spent the day focussin on riding goofy.. On his first set, he was crashing off two wakes but by end of day.. he had all his grabs and 180 locked in… On his goofy.. Would be cool to see him one day ride mirror image style on regular and goofy. I worked on my toeside Frontroll.. My indecision of wanting to go frontroll nor scarecrow is really hurting me.. Because of my indecision, I am not focused on sticking the landing. I have managed to come around on Friday’s trampoline lesson but still under-rotated on water. VL kept reminding to ride strong all the way. I have a tendency to ride strong but loosen up once in midair. For all tricks, we always ride strong, pop strong, rotate strong and land strong. Something I have to overcome. Anyway all in a days work. I ended the day with a bruise ass having crash so much on it.
We had dinner in Shenzhen, Mandy’s treat since she stuck her surface 180’s. It is her second time wakeboarding.. Pretty good for a newbie.. And we ended the night in HK for Matthew’s Bday party… A good day indeed.
