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May
2000
Clermont,
Florida
In
an attempt to improve my riding and kill some time in between a
wedding in South Carolina May 14th and a wedding Memorial Day weekend
in St. Petersburg, FL I enrolled myself in The Wakeboard Camp run
by PJ Marks. While I was there there were 4 other American campers
and 9 Japanese campers who spoke very little English, someone (Zak
I think) dubbed the 5 of us "Team USA" and they were "Team
Japan". The other campers were Zak from Washington, Jason Swafford
from North Carolina, Chris Holmes and his younger brother "Junior"
from Scottsdale, AZ, together we rode together the entire week.
We ran the gamut of experience levels, Zak got a concussion attempting
a TS O/A 5 late in the week, Chris was working on taking his Mexican
Backroll into a normal backroll and consistent 3s. Jason wanted
his fundamentals restructured since he wheelied across the wake
and would get big air and then eat shit, me... I was just trying
to clear the wake, learn the basics and still have fun. I did by
the end of the week master most of the 180s (surface, 1W, Ollie
and W2W) and attempted the dangerous toeside toeslide to blind........
Junior, he was working on being more aggressive and holding his
edge through the wake and exploding! He's a little ripper, I think
he was like 15 or so, but he looked 10 or 11.
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The
boat line up on shore at The Wakeboard Camp
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TWC
Coach Glenn Fletcher tearing it up on the 1st pro tour stop
The Coaches
I spent the most time with were Kurt Robertson, Kyle Schmidt and
Pat Hagan. Glenn spent most of his time with Team Japan letting
the women go Gaga over his hair and funny accent! But at the end
of the week when we hit Church St. in Orlando I introduced Glenn
to Razberry Stoli and 7-up, last I heard he was still enjoying
them.... crisp, clean buzz.... no hangover!
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Spending
an entire week at the camp gave me an entirely new respect for
riding every day and the big part conditioning should play into
your off water regime (or off season). Most campers were hurting
by the third day, we had done two or three sets each of the first
three days and it was taking it's toll. On the third day Glenn
and Kyle loaded up "Team USA" and headed to the Orlando
Watersports Complex (OWC) to ride the cables and attack some sliders
if we dared. When I was there in May of 2000 they hadn't even
built a full-time kicker, it was in shambles on the beach. They
explained the basics of dock starting with the cable and some
tips on how to succeed. I'll be honest, I wasn't nervous but perplexed
how this small rope on a pulley was going to pull my 300+ pound
ass off the dock, much less out of the water. So I get all strapped
in and I'm up, I mosey over to the edge of the dock and grab the
handle. Operator looks at me, tells me I'm live and here you go....
WHAM! I fall flat on my face.... didn't lean back, too
far forward, wrong handle position, this continues for 20 minutes,
I'm struggling here... Then Kyle takes me aside and gives me some
advice, lean back against the rope and imagine it's a deep water
start, let the rope do the work. Now, I'm pumped.... want to ride,
getting worked by the cable and I feel like a retard. So I get
on the edge of the dock, amped to ride.... the rope is coming,
I have the handle in tight.... the carrier zooms by and grabs
the rope.... tension and i'm up and moving.... then POP! The
damn rope snapped, I broke the damn cable!
The
end of another great day in Clermont (Photo
by PJ Marks)
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