Ten years ago, Hyperlite made a trip to the Florida Keys to work on their team video and shoot photo for their catalog. Since that time they’ve gone other places and done other things for their team trips, the past few years culminating at the now famous Radar Lake. This year, though, Paul O’Brien and Jeff Heer decided it was time to return to the calm, crystal-blue waters off the southern tip of Florida to do the catalogue shoot for the 2006 product. I was lucky enough to be able to tag along and hang out for four days in Islamorada, check out the new gear, and do some photo shoots for an upcoming issue of ours.
Everybody was there: Danny Harf, Parks Bonifay, a recovering Shaun Murray, even Scott Byerly, just a week out of knee surgery, and newest team member Emily Copeland-Durham. There was lots of riding and photo-taking, but there was also plenty of time for hanging out at the world famous Tiki Bar at Holiday Isle, going fishing, and doing other things one would find appropriate for a wakeboarding team trip. As with any road trip with a group of this size, there were plenty of secrets, broken vehicles and gossip, it was like an episode of Fear Factor and Lost rolled into one. Look for the full story and all the photos in our October/November issue.