BillyStyle

The past few weeks here in Clermont have been pretty windy. We haven’t done a whole lot of quality wakeboarding, and it was starting to get a bit annoying. Then today happened.

In the past 24 hours, I haven’t been one bit too warm or cold and I’ve been mostly just wearing shorts the whole time. The wind has been almost non-existent, the air temperature is like a nice Oregon summer day and the water is a perfect refreshing temperature.

This is why I moved here. My work day consisted of going to work at 10am to cover Bob’s kitchen shift. I did a little emailing and sandwich making. I went for a wakeboard at lunch time and had some fun on the glassy lake. For the afternoon I coached four people and had a great time. Two new moves were landed and one rider landed a toeside 360, which he hadn’t done in a while.

Oh, to explain that title now. At lunch, I walked outside and noticed a big white jet stream to the east in the sky. Apparently a rocket or satellite had just launched from the Kennedy Space Center, cool! Then as we went out for the afternoon set of riding, I noticed a pair of turtles had crawled up on our boat lifts to do a little relaxing in the sun. Later on, I put the boat on a different lift, and the turtles decided it was in their best interest to plop into the water.

It was just an awesome relaxing day with some good wakeboarding. The forecast shows that more of this is to be expected. Awesome, can’t wait. Yay Florida!

- It’s hot in Florida! Last week hovered around 100 degrees Fahrenheit with 80-90% humidity, but no rain to cool us down. We’re in our busy season now, and we’ve all been spending many hours on the boat. The shallow lakes here are currently right up around 90 degrees, which can be a bit uncomfortable. Now, I’m not complaining one bit. Three years ago I was one of many people stuck in a big dirty warehouse moving huge heavy boxes of furniture to a new huge clean, but still really hot, warehouse in Southern Utah. Man that sucked.

So life is good here in Florida. I’ve noticed that with the weather and my current financial situation, I’ve gradually toned up and my body is in pretty good shape. See, I figure it’s the weather and money I have to credit my shape to because I wakeboard more with nice weather and eat less when I have no money. It’s a pretty sweet deal really.

- Right now, I’ve still got this site hosted in St. George, and something happened a while ago that messed things up. I’m kind of tired of pestering them to fix things, and I feel bad about it because I’m not paying for it, since I used to work for the company. I say this because I can’t upload any images right now, which means you have to wait a bit longer to see the splinters that I took out of my butt last month. They’re pretty awesome.

So yeah, I’m going to move this site to another server I use for my other sites at Bluehost. Yep, that’s an affiliate link right there. If you don’t know what that means, don’t worry about it. If you do know what that means, can ya blame me? They’re good and I could use a buck!

- Anyway, this NBA offseason has been pretty sweet for my teams (yes, I consider Orlando my #2 team these days). Orlando dropped Turkoglu, Lee, and Alston then picked up Vince Carter, Brandon Bass, Matt Barnes, Ryan Anderson, and managed to keep Marcin Gortat, yeah! They’re bigger and badder than before, and I like that.

Portland stayed pretty inactive, although there were lots of talks of moves. They got some young guys I know nothing about, gave away Sergio (no more sweet Spain to Spain alley-oops, bummer) but then got Andre Miller! The dude is the best point guard in the league to never really accomplish anything. He’s a career 14 point, 7 assist, 4 rebound point guard who can post up and has a great knowledge of the game. Word on the world wide web is that Oden is looking pretty good at the moment too. Magic/Blazers finals? Well, maybe in 2011. Shaq might get one more this year.

OK BYE!

Today was another good day to give the good readers a taste of what it is I’m doing down here.

I got to sleep in a bit today, had the morning off. At 9:30, I left to help Amber, my friend (and super duper pro wakeboarder) from Australia, pack up her stuff and move into her new place. Got done around noon, so I came home, showered, and headed over to work.

I was on the schedule to coach this afternoon, so I heated up some pizza from last night and had some lunch before going out on the boat. Today I had 2 Greek riders, a couple from Indiana, and a dude from Illinois (I think). We had a good time out there. Worked on some tantrums, some 180s, some toeside jumping, and switch riding. During that time, there were as many as 5 boats out on the lake running the same line, since they were all boats somehow tied to The Wakeboard Camp. Kyle and Ben (both super duper pro wakeboarders) had some private lessons to give, then 3 camp boats with 4-5 people in each of them.

After riding and putting the boats away, we all hung out a bit and talked about the rides during the day.

My night ended with going out for a sushi dinner, which Amber bought for me for helping her move, awesome. I went with Amber and Chad (super duper wakeboard coach), my neighbor, and met up with a foursome of people from England and Australia. Had a great time talking and laughing and what not, and now I’m about to pass out.

So, today I ate/coached/talked with and met people from French Canada, Normal Canada, Greece, Sweden, England, Australia, and the good old US of A.

That’s actually a pretty typical day (except the moving part) here in the spring/summer time. I dig it. I’ve never left the 48 continental states, but I get to meet people from all over the world every day. Good fun!

I know plenty of my friends out there are pretty curious as to what it’s like having a job where you just get to play around, so I’ll list off what I did on Friday of last week.

I had the morning off, so I was pretty lazy. Did a little cleaning around the house and some reading, then headed over to work around noon. Four of us coaches planned on riding at lunch time, so we took two boats out. I went with Bob Sichel, the son of the Camp owner, and an up and coming rider; he shreds.

I rode first, the water was right around 50° F, so I wore a full wetsuit. We had three campers in the boat to watch us ride, Leo, Ciarn, and Owen (those are all spelled incorrectly) of Ireland. The weather was sunny and the air was calm, so the water was super glassy. I slid around a bit, but then the boat started acting up and wouldn’t rev over 3,000 rpm. That killed our session, but it was an easy fix. Dang.

So then I coached in the afternoon. I had the Irishmen. The other boat had Nick from Greece and Jeroe from the Netherlands. My guys had been here all week and were looking to do a little free riding on the wakeboards, then each wanted some time on the wakeskate. So I didn’t really do much coaching, just driving and rocking to good music, getting entertained by some hilarious crazy people. They were all beginners, but had a great week and learned a lot. It was a very fun afternoon, and I even had my first experience pulling a guy wakeboarding while only wearing a speedo and a life jacket – horrible but awesome.

After that easy afternoon, Bob and I got ready to ride again. This time the boat behaved well. I had a fun set. My best feeling move was a switch heelside 360 that I got a decent mute grab on. I finished with plenty of time, so I am planning on getting my switch hs 5 next week. Then Bob rode and had an awesome set. I think it was the first time that he got three of his toughest moves landed in one set: heelside backside 540, huge melan front mobe, and a dum dum. Awesome set, that kid’s getting good.

We then took the boats out of the lake, wiped them down, gassed them up, put the covers on, put the boards away, and ate some dinner. Right now we have Cam, a French-Canadian girl, who is an awesome chef. So dinner was good. I went home, took a shower and nap, then got a text from my roommate and fellow employee, Cason, telling me to go to Sports On Tap. That’s the sports bar across the street from work. So I did.

It’s typical when we have cool campers for a week that we go over there to have one last fun hang out. Unfortunately, most people choose to get sloppy drunk for a fun time…which gets a bit old, but oh well. So I went over, had my usual water, and watched some Irish dudes do their thing. There was some good entertainment. I left before the rest of the crew and I think I watched some basketball or something and went to bed.

So there ya have it, my Friday. This week is looking real nice, I was driving around today with my windows down, it feels like spring/summer down here. This should be a great riding week. I’m hoping to start landing some new stuff. Peace out!

I want to do this very very badly.

wingsuit base jumping from Ali on Vimeo.