What a great time tonight. This has been my second WW meetup/demo. We love hosting, so hit us up if ever going to be around Lake Oroville. We did this this past weekend with Randy Morrell and his crew, but we only had video. I will throw that up later this week or on the weekend. They had fun on the wake9 cruiser. Frank Wolter wanted to get a board for himself and he is a big guy, so we took him out. I told him to bring his kids and we will all surf since we were going out anyways. It was a great afternoon/evening. I love going out, and everyone just wants to surf til you have to turn on the lights, and then you have to stop when you can’t see anymore. Lake was perfect, and almost had the place to ourselves. RJ is starting to land his stall 360, take a look at the pictures.
We had a great afternoon, and Chris still wanted to surf again, he loved the SMED Wombat. We turned on the lights and he surfed back in. We finished it off with a run to Taco Bell where Frank treated us to dinner.
Last week we had a REALLY great time hosting Sean Cummings and his girlfriend Heather Jones. We have gotten to know them as a family at a few of the contests we have gone to. Sean is a professional wakesurfer and an Inland Surfer rider. I would have to say he is an all around good guy. I am very protective of my kids and I remember noticing this young guy messing around with Maddie (11), T-Bone (8), and Jesse (4). This always grabs my attention, because most young guys don’t pay much attention to young kids. I saw right away that he was genuinely playing with them and they really enjoyed his company. So you can say that I couldn’t help but like Sean right away. He invited us to meet up with him sometime to demo some IS boards for the kids.
Heather was also very playful with my kids, and my older girls really liked her. I think they said something like, “she is really nice, and isn’t a ho at all”. Girls are tough, aren’t they? Anyway, Heather is cute as a button and the best way I could describe her is a line from a TV show we watch sometimes called the IT Crowd.
“She has SPUNK and BALLS, and I like that in a woman.”
When they first came to the house we ate lunch and got ready for our first session on the lake. Heather started talking about one of her favorite movies, “Anchorman”. I told her I liked ferrell in several movies, but Anchorman wasn’t my favorite. She stopped, gave me this look like she wanted to rip out my heart with a spoon, and said “Well you are just a big blueberry.” You have to picture that she is 5 foot nothing, and maybe 110lbs and she is standing directly in front of this 6’2″ 400lb mexican and looked like she was ready to take me on if necessary. I think I told Sean she was definitely a keeper at that point.
So we took lots of pictures and video. Sean and I also filmed 4 “How To” videos that will be in our new 201 series showing you how to do several tricks. I am very excited and will finish these up in the next few days. So on to the pictures, here is a slideshow from our picassa stream.
We took a break from wakesurfing today, not that we needed one! I love music, especially alternative music and real genuine BANDS. No lip syncing packaged crap if you know what I mean. Anyway, I took my 4 oldest to see No Doubt and The Sounds at the Sleep Train Amphitheater in Marysville. We really had a great time. The Sounds were incredible, and then No Doubt was amazing. No Doubt was just a band, they seemed to be playing to have fun, and it came through the music. A great show.
Its been about a week since my last entry which is WAY too long. We are working on some great stuff. You should see several new how to videos, 2 new products, and just a bunch of fun stuff coming from us in the next week. I am so stoked about the new how to videos!
What a great day today. It was perfect, hot, but not too hot, you know? About 90ish, and water was high 70s. So great to jump in, and refreshing. The whole lake was glass, everyone wakesurfed, and Jesse almost got up. How great is that? She is GOING to get up, I just know it. We did a ballast weighting video today, check it out here:
We had a great time out this past weekend with the Hortons. Dennis was a great teacher, and you can’t spend time with Bre without having fun. Thanks a lot Hortons!
A few weeks ago we purchased a Endless Wave Rack for our boat from wakeoutlaws.com. When I unboxed the rack, I was very excited about how well it seemed to be made, so we decided to do a review. As long as you have a monkey to climb your tower to get at these boards, they work fantastic and look very cool. They are the perfect solution for when you have large/long boards like we do, or a lot of boards. I contacted Michael Ward from Endless Wave and I shared with him an idea for a giveaway. The idea is to have wakesurfers submit fun videos, and we would pick one, and then send them a free rack. He agreed! How cool is that? CLICK HERE to find out more about the giveaway.
We had an incredible day on Lake Almanor yesterday, we took the whole day to spend up there. Conditions were perfect til about noon, then the famous Lake Almanor wind picked up. White caps started around 2ish, so we got off. There is no real shelter from the wind at Lake Almanor, which is a shame, since it is so beautiful.
All that said, this is not the reason why I was so excited about yesterday. I was excited from watching my kids. First there is Thomas and Maddie. Some of you may know a little bit more of their story, and seeing them progress in wakesurfing chokes me up. Just watching their confidence, and their willingness to push and keep learning has been amazing. They have only had that new GROM board from Walker for a month, but the progression from that point has been amazing. What a help to have a board designed for them. They took out the back fin for the first time yesterday, and really enjoyed the extra performance. We tried taking it out before and they were too unstable, so this was very cool. I am adding a video to this post and you can watch T & M shoot the curl, at least how it can be done on a wake and not a real ocean wave with the curl over your head.
Then there is Jesse. If watching T & M causes me to choke up, J knocks me on the floor. I am going to share a little bit more about Jesse since I want to document this a bit. Jesse came to us from Butte County Adoption placement and was a very special needs baby. Long story short, this little girl had no chance and if we didn’t take her… I can’t even think about that. J was born premature and addicted to meth, and we were told when we took her home that we should prepare ourselves that she will most likely not be able to walk or talk. We took her in and loved her as our own from day one. She has always been my little girl. Geez, I can’t even type this without getting “something in my eye”. She had to sleep in our room from the get go because she couldn’t breathe well, and we had to be able to react if there was an issue.
Jesse wasn’t like other babies. As time progressed she just layed there and didn’t do the normal things that babies do. She never attempted to roll over or sit up, or anything. I was determined to help her be the best she could be. I was ok with whatever God allowed he to do or not to do, but still wanted to give her the chance to be the best she could possibly be. So I did some research, and learned that one of her main problems could be that she can’t learn naturally, but needs everything TOUGHT to her. When these kids are born this way, it is as if they are actually MISSING pieces of there brain. Things don’t connect normally, and stuff doesn’t process right, and parts of the brain don’t communicate with each other. But through our research, during this development stage it is actually possible to STIMULATE the brain to reconnect and rebuild itself. Doctors actually say it is akin to brain surgery without the knife. So I started rolling her over, over and over and over. Nothing. I started sitting her up, then back down, and again, and again. Constantly, many times a day trying to teach her these things, stimulate some part of the brain. At first not much happened. But then one day she started to try roll over by herself! Then she tried to sit up, then the was able to sit up, and stay up.
Ok, now it was exciting. Its amazing, how much you take for granted, when your children just naturally learn the things they are supposed to at given ages. Jesse was so far behind, but I worked with her every day and she was actually slowly catching up. You can just imagine this huge 375lb dude trying to teach this little baby how to rollover, how to smile, how to sit up, crawl, every little thing. She eventually walked, and talked, and then sometime around 2 yrs old, she started learning things on her own by watching everyone else. It was such an amazing thing to see her start to learn on her own. I really think we performed brain surgery. Now all that is incredible, but there was one side effect. I did this all on my own. Not because my other kids or wife didn’t want to help, they helped all the time, but I took it on as my personal mission. All of a sudden, when her personality started revealing itself, we realized she was a 400lb obnoxious mexican trapped in a 30 lb body. No joke. She like adapted my personality, it is very funny.
Now even with all of the incredible strides Jesse has taken, there are still issues. Jesse wears special splints on her legs, which she must wear all day long, and every day, probably til she is 18. They are basically like plastic casts up to her knee. They make everything harder for her, but I don’t baby her, I push her harder to work harder so she doesn’t give up on things that are tough for her. I do help by buying her a special scooter she can ride (she now can ride a normal scooter), special tricycle she can peddle, etc. But she blows me away every day. She has the GANAS (guts, desire, determination) to work harder. I have had a goal for the last 2 years, to get this kid wakesurfing, and specifically by this season. We are almost there, and today on Lake Almanor I saw the light at the end of the tunnel. I KNOW it will happen this season now, and I am so excited. You can watch the video to see what I am talking about.
I am sorry to wax on so much, but that is what wake9.com is all about. It is about our family doing something together that we love to do so much. I hope you enjoy the video, I know I enjoyed making it.
I would also like to throw a HUGE thanks again to Mike and Dennis at Walker Project for making this GROM board. I don’t think T & M would be progressing as they are without it, and I know Jesse wouldn’t have done this.
Recently we removed all but the 24Ve graphics on our Tige, to make way for the wake9.com custom graphics we had made. We have been doing a few videos with out Tige, and some friends at Tige said “You can’t tell its a Tige anymore! Where is the love?” So I said, “send us some graphics”. And they showed up a couple of days later. Very cool, huh? Well, these aren’t just any graphics, these are Sic, you must see these raised chrome graphics. Here is a few pictures.
Right Side Tige 24Ve Graphic
Rear Tige 24Ve Graphic
Rear Tige 24Ve Graphic
It is a lot of fun spending time with Larry and our kids working on the Tige in our wake9 “lab”. Here is a quick video we did of the install, and a bit of horsing around.
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