Travel & Action Before Event: March 20-23 The trip to Cam Sur Watersports Complex started on Friday (3/20) at 4am when I left my house. Because I booked my ticket late I had to travel through Chicago and then met up with the Texas crew (Tom Fooshee, Kyle Reed and Cody Johnson) in Tokyo. We had a stop in Manila and a seven hour layover before our 6am flight to Naga so we all went to the hotel, showered and went out for McDonalds and a few drinks since there really wasn’t any time to get some sleep. The entire trip from door to door, including the seven hour stop in Manila, took a total of 39 hours of travel to make the entire trip. When we arrived at CWC at 8am (Manila Time) on 3/22 we were all exhausted but couldn’t resist hitting the lake and enjoying the cable and all the obstacles CWC had to offer. The goal was to stay awake as long as possible and acclimate ourselves to the time change, which is almost the opposite of the U.S. Without such an ideal setting I’m not sure if anyone of us could have made it passed noon. Even with the buzz of the impending tournament, I don’t think any of us made it past 4pm before we adjourned for 16 straight hours of sleep.
Watching the riders that have traveled to Camsur is amazing. On the water you can tell what region or even cable many of the riders come from because of their riding styles. Then there is a entirely different group of boat riders that are beginning to crossover and ride behind anything and everything. While there is some separation in styles on the water, there seems to be no separation off the water where everyone is enjoying the atmosphere and the friendships that can only be found in the watersports industry.
So far the biggest news has to be the Pro Boat Riders like JD Webb, who in two days of cable riding has learned air tricks like crow mobes, switch s2blinds and 90210s. Add that to his already ridiculous rail skills and you have a new rider to the cable scene that could upset a few of the international riders. While I am sitting by the lake making this entry, JD just loaded the line to early and knocked out all of the ropes in the magazine. Luckily JD didn’t catch any of them and actually landed the sbend. It is pretty ironic that such an accomplished athlete in our sport of wakeboarding is still learning new tricks, and lessons every time he rides the cable.
The most entertaining non riding event has to be taking Andrew Adkison’s ping pong paddle and watching the anxiety rise to the point where he almost deboarded the plane to try to find it. This quickly became the new game as shortly after landing JD Webb swiped it again. While Andrew knew he was being messed with, the fun for the rest of us seemed to grow as we learned just how much his paddle meant to him.
If you can’t make it to the event, keep checking back to cablewakeboard.com for event updates almost as soon as it happens!
