I rolled into Orlando at 11:45 yesterday morning, fresh off the red eye from hell. (Nothing like a two hour layover in Houston instead of getting a good nights sleep.) With me was fellow Oregonian Silas Thurman, and though neither of us were actually awake, we were both ready to take advantage of being in Orlando and get out and shred.

 Oregon suffers for wakeskating in that very few people have boats, fewer people live on the water, and most people have those job things. Bummer. But in the promise land, you should be able to wakeskate or wakeboard at the drop of a hat, right?

 While we waited for the slowest baggage claim known to man, we fired up our cell phones, hitting up everyone who we knew had a boat. Sadly, some boats were broken, some people were busy setting up trade show booths and what not, and some just weren't answering.

Finally, I called up David Hanson, Alliance Wakeskate intern extrordinare. Dave is a fine young man, who is definitely going to make something of himself, so he was finishing up the Oak video and then was off to class. However, he said his new roommate Andrew Pastura was down to shred.

We headed east to the very cool apartment complex of Dave and Andrew, right on a very quiet, very glassy lake. (Only in Orlando) The jet ski was gassed up, Nick Taylor was over checking wakeskating.com and Andrew was down to pull us both, even when it started pouring for my set.

After Silas and I were both too tired to move, we headed inside to relax for a bit. Visiting grom Ben Horan and Matt Manzari showed up soon there after, so it was out to the lake for another set. This time Nick rode first and was busting boardslide front bigspins off the neighbor's sketchy dock. Then Ben and Matt rode and threw down just about every flip trick known to man. The rain started to pick up so I headed back inside, but those kids kept riding until lightning was visibly hitting the lake, living the dream. Oh, to be young and in Orlando!