BillyStyle

So on Friday, we were out on the boat to watch Mr. Ben Greenwood ride. We had a whole lot of weight in the boat, so it was having trouble getting up on plane. I jumped up into the bow of the boat and, with another guy up there, got as far forward as I could. I ended up sitting right on the tip of the bow when all of a sudden I began to lose my balance…the wrong way. I’m not sure exactly my thought process at the time, but I think my survival instinct kicked in and I believe I shoved with what I could against the boat. I did this as I was falling into the water so I wouldn’t be in line with the boat’s propeller.

So I went down in the water and (again, not sure if I’m telling the truth, but I think it’s what happened) I gave a quick paddle away from the boat on the port side. After a few seconds had passed, I knew I was safe, and popped my head out of the water.

I was wearing Ben’s sunglasses before I fell in, and wasn’t wearing them when I emerged from the water. The boat had stopped, so I was halfway between the boat and Ben. I immediately began apologizing for losing his glasses. He shouted “I don’t care about the glasses. What about you? Are you missing any arms or legs? Are you bleeding?”

It wasn’t until then that I really realized the danger in which I had just put myself. I kind of laughed and said that I was totally fine. I got back in and after the water calmed down (some huge boat was joy riding), he had a great ride.

So the moral of the story is: Don’t be stupid like me!

Luckily I had a very smart and aware driver who continued to go straight when I fell in the water. He said he didn’t want to turn either way because the boat’s behavior when you turn the wheel is unpredictable enough to make that dangerous. He did the smart thing by going straight and backing off the throttle after he had passed by me. Good times!

Yesterday was a great day. We’ve just got one student here at the camp this week, Ed from Sweden. It’s pretty laid back with just one fellow here. In the morning, after dropping the boat in at the ramp, I saw a tall white bird (I still don’t know what they are, I should find that out, some kind of crane or something) was trying to snag a lizard off of a palm tree. I watched it from about 15 feet away for a while. It was cool, its head didn’t move at all while it was creeping up in its would be victim. The bird’s neck was a good 18 inches long and it was swaying this way and that, but the head was perfectly still, weird stuff. He ended up giving up, that was too bad.

Then I rode in the afternoon. The other day I spent some time working on one wake stuff to reclaim some moves I’ve lost. So yesterday I went ahead and landed 2 of the 3 moves on the first try wake to wake. They were a HS BS 360 and a TS Backroll. Nice and easy. I couldn’t get my switch HS BS 3, but that’ll come. I may work on getting my TS 5 back first, since it has the same rotation in it. We’ll see.

The day ended with some tasty lasagna and then I popped in Ninja Gaiden Black that I just bought off of ebay. It’s an old XBox game that I was hooked on before, but now it’s upgraded and I’m super excited about it. So yeah, life’s pretty good right now! I should probably work on getting me a good woman now…and a dollar or two.

I haven’t really posted just about wakeboarding since the move, so here we go. It’s awesome. I ride at least a few times a week. It would be more, but since it’s the dead of winter, some of the days are a bit chilly and windy, so we wait a day or two and ride in the warmth again. The Florida winter is warm most of the time with just a few cold days in a row.

[Wakeboard lingo warning] My riding has improved since coming down here. I’ve got my switch toeside threes consistent now, even grabbing some of them. My moves I had dialed this summer are still there for me real consistent, and now I am working on getting some of my old moves back. Next week I plan on getting my heelside front flip back, then some of my threes. Namely, heelside backside, switch heelside frontside and backside. I’ll probably do some toeside fives too, since I haven’t done any of those in over a year. I think I can land it within two or three tries.

The people I ride with are all great. The coaches all spin to win. Most sets consist of a lot of grabs, 180s, 360s, and some 540s, most of them grabbed and poked. Then they all have that one or two inverts that they like to throw in there. One rider who lives about two minutes away is Ben Greenwood. He is still a coach here, but doesn’t coach unless he’s been requested or we need another coach for some reason. The reason behind that is that he was the rider of the year recently, and he stays busy enough keeping sponsors happy to make decent money from that. I get to ride with him regularly too, which is awesome. If watching him ride doesn’t inspire somebody, they can’t get inspired.

So with that, here’s a little clip of Mr. Ben Greenwood, so you can see what I get to see on a regular basis, in person. Oh, and the song is Destroy Everything You Touch by Ladytron, whom I dig.

Yesterday I got the wind knocked out of me. It was no big deal, I didn’t think much about it for the rest of the day. Today my back is a little sore from the wakeboard wreck that made me lose my breath for a bit. That got me thinking about some stuff hardly blog-worthy, which is exactly why I’m blogging about it!

As a wakeboarder, I get the wind knocked out of me from time to time. It’s kind of funny when it happens whilst floating in the water. Usually after a hard wreck, I struggle to get my mouth to where I can breath in some air, because I have just exhaled most of it upon impact. When I can’t breath when I get to that point, it’s a pretty unique feeling I suppose. I’m used to it now and just wait it out, but I imagine there are people who can’t remember the last time they had their wind knocked out. I love that phrase. It’s the only time our breath is referred to as wind, neat.

Anyway, I bet most people won’t get the wind knocked out of them 5 times their whole lives. Something I’ve only done once that I remember though, is falling down a flight of stairs. That’s another panic inducing moment. It’s one of the worst feelings because it lasts for what seems to be a very long time, and you feel like you should be able to stop yourself with each bounce, but just can’t stop until eventually you land on the floor. At that moment, your brain catches up to your body and you realize what just happened and wait for the pain to set in.

There’s no real point to this post I guess. I think I just realized that my panic level got much lower with getting my wind knocked out because of the frequency with which it happens. I wonder if other panic situations are similar in that aspect.

Neat, I just found an explanation of what happens when the wind is knocked out of a person. And as we know from Michael Scott, anybody who wants can edit Wikipedia, so we know we are getting the best possible information:
Having the wind knocked out of you.

I just got offered my dream job, woo! How much money does my dream job offer? Not much at all! Neat! So what is it? Coaching at The Wakeboard Camp in Clermont, FL. Freaking sweet.

Most people who know me don’t need to ask why it’s my dream job. But I’ll ramble on about it anyway because I’m as giddy as a school girl about it. For the past decade or so, I’ve been addicted to wakeboarding. I’ve been lucky enough to meet most of the pro riders who show up in videos and magazines. I’ve met Tony Finn, the inventor of the Skurfer, the original wakeboard. I’ve seen some pretty sweet things and been to some cool places because of wakeboarding. But with all of that, I’ve just kind of been a lurker around the wakeboard world. Most of these events have been for a day or two, then it’s back to normal life.

So now, I have a chance to live inside of the wakeboard world. I’ll explain. Wakeboarding was invented in California, and has spread world wide. People everywhere ride. But the Mecca (if you will) of the sport is Florida. And not just Florida, but more central Florida, around Orlando. And not just central Florida, but namely, Clermont, Florida. That’s because The Wakeboard Camp is in Clermont. It’s been there since 1996 and has been the starting place for many pro riders like Dallas Friday and Aaron Reed, to name two. Many top pro riders live right around the camp and stop by often to ride there and dial in some of their more difficult moves.

Many videos have been, and still are, filmed on Lake Minneola, where the camp property sits. New products are shipped there for testing and reviews. It’s THE hot spot in the wakeboarding world. And I’m planning on becoming a broke board bum who resides right there in the thick of it!

Now, the pay I’ll get to start off isn’t even worth mentioning. I’ll probably have to get a job in the evenings to even make a buck or two, but it will be well worth it. My riding will be all paid for, and with top riders from all over. This isn’t just getting my foot inside the door of the wakeboard world, this is diving in head first. I can’t wait!

Update: I just saw this awesome site linked to from the main Wakeboard Camp site: Why One Camp is Better. See, they have the best coaches, that means I’m one of them! Jolly good fun!

So a couple weeks ago I started blogging for a site called ContentQuake. They are looking for people to blog about each NFL team, so I signed up to talk about my team, the very injured, rebuilding, lost, Buffalo Bills.

If you’re curious, like I was, about what kind of situation a contract blogger (as I guess I am) has, I’ll explain. I’m required to post at least 6 times each week, spread out over at least 4 days of that week. Of course I can post more than that. The payment system works in a couple ways. First, I get my Adsense code in 40% of the page views that my blog gets, with the other 60% of the views going to ContentQuake’s Adsense code. That should work out to roughly 40% of the revenue from Google ads, but will vary depending on when the clicks come. So far, they’ve been very meager. Then they also have those automatically generated context links that show up in the content of the posts. Apparently they spread the revenue from those over the entire site amongst all the bloggers and pay them all evenly each quarter. The site is relatively young, so I doubt that will be much at all any time soon as well.

It’s been fun so far to blog about my favorite NFL team, even though there hasn’t been much interaction with anybody online yet. I seriously doubt this will turn into much money, but I’ll gladly do it, since it will only help me follow my team closer. I don’t imagine anybody is really interested, but if you are, you can check it out here.

This is a bit delayed, but I realized I hadn’t put my feelings about the draft in here. I thought it was wonderful! I was excited to hear them actually announce that Oden was the #1 pick. Their moves after that were again surprising and impressive.

I was hoping Randolph would be traded for Garnett, but that was a bit out there. They instead traded him along with Dan Dickou and Fred Jones to the Knicks for Stevie Franchise and Channing Frye. Channing Frye is a solid young player and will be a great depth addition to the bench. Francis probably won’t stay on the roster, but if he does, I won’t complain. He’s still got some 30 point games in him and can help the team out with his experience.

They picked up a couple of foreign players, including another Spaniard from the Suns, just like in 2006 with Rodriguez. What I think will prove to be their steal of the draft, however, is Josh McRoberts. I didn’t know at the time they selected him, but McRoberts played with Oden in high school I believe. They are great friends and should really help encourage each other in their respective rookie seasons. In fact, the draft commentators mentioned that McRoberts was heavily recruited when playing along with Oden. He seems to thrive when he’s on the court with the big guy. I can’t wait for the 2007-2008 season!