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!

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!

And now for an ordered list (because I’m curious of what number I’ll reach) of what has occurred in Billy’s life over the past 30 hours at my dream job:

1. Bailed water out of a sunken boat and got it on a boat lift for the remainder of the storm.
2. Went home teaching. (It’s a Mormon thing, basically, visited some people.)
3. Got up early to tend to said sunken boat and inform the boat owner of what had happened. (The length of this sentence takes away from the un-awesomeness of this one.)
4. Organized some liability release forms so our campers could go into Orlando and ride at the cable park. (Work which should have been done by our un-awesome office manager.)
5. Figured out a way to repair another boat which had overheated and melted some plastic joints involved in running the engine. (The overheating happened more like 54 hours ago, hence not in the list). This process included three trips to Ace Hardware.
6. Replaced the melted plastic parts of second said (how do you say that properly?) boat and began to troubleshoot original overheating problem.
7. Ate a sandwich while waiting for a call from the boat shop, it was delicious.
8. Answered some emails and voice mails which were neglected by aforementioned office manager, who is on a 5 day vacation…a vacation which was made known to the camp owner and staff on day one of the vacation…yeah, not awesome.
9. More boat work, came to a point where more parts were needed, will resume that tomorrow when the parts arrive.
10. Helped Ben move his repaired couch back into his house.
11. Finished cleaning up the now un-sunk boat and put its seats, lead (to make the wake big), and fat sacs (same idea here) away nicely.
12. Got in a functioning boat with Ben and many campers and went wakeboarding…back to really awesome!
13. Put that boat away.
14. Looked for my shirt and sandals in the dark, since I was down to just shorts at this point.
15. Sat and talked with a couple Kiwi (from New Zealand) coaches, venting a bit about the day, having some good laughs.
16. Came home, sat down at my computer, hit some keys.

Lots of un-awesomeness, but ended in awesome, yay! If you’re wondering, I found the sandals, not the shirt.

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.