Spring Break is often the beginning of the “real” wakeboard season for many riders in Northern California. Riding in Northern California usually goes down year-round, but spring break is the first time when riding gets a little more serious. In search of warm wakes and spring break excitement, Shelby Kantar and myself decided to hit the road and head south.
We wanted to ride before we hit the road, so we headed out to Folsom Lake to ride with our good friend Spencer Smith. I took my first ride in over 9 months, Aaron Aubrey and Spencer took a really sick doubles run, and Shelby stomped a clean five in some butter. Soon after, we were en route to Canyon Lake to spend a few days with Melissa Marquardt and Kyle Murphy.
Between good friends, smooth water, and progressive riding, Canyon Lake is always a fun time. Melissa was kind enough to let us stay at her house, feed us, and take us riding every day. Melissa was riding really well, charging hard, and getting booted off some huge double-ups. Randall Harris came out to ride and I must say that I felt honored to watch him tear up his home turf. Watching Randall ride in person is unbelievable; every trick is done huge and with style like no other. After some good boat riding, Kyle and Tyler Killingsworth began to session a parking lot gap with a winch. They would ride on a skateboard and then ollie (Kyle nollied) over a huge gap into the lake. The last night at Canyon Lake, Melissa had a family barbeque where we met an up and coming rapper named Choc Nitty. Choc was the most gangster guy that either of us had ever hung out with and he even hooked us up with his mix tape. After a few killer days at Canyon, Shelby and I moved over to the coast to check out Liquid Force and Alliance.
It was rad to get a behind the scenes look at Liquid Force and Alliance. We found out that no one at LF works, they just play poker and eat burritos from Chipotle. Alliance was quite different, when people would stop typing on their keyboards Bill McCaffray would burn them with a hot piece of metal and say “when in Rome”; I guess the Romans don’t ever stop typing. The next morning we headed out to the Carlsbad Lagoon to shoot with Keith Kipp. If you didn’t know, Keith Kipp was the man who invented the Moby Dick and in respect to Keith’s radness the Moby Dick should be renamed “The Kipp Flip”. The Lagoon was sick, we got to see some old friends and throw up some salty spray.
After the Lagoon, we headed an hour north to meet up with team Body Glove. We packed our things in Greg Browning’s RV and stopped by the Body Glove factory on our way to the Tiki Shack on the shores of the Colorado River. We arrived to a warm welcome from Body Glove family man Billy Meistrell. Over the next three days we were treated to smooth water, warm weather, and amazing hospitality from the Meistrell family. Everyday we woke up around 5:30 am and got the boat ready to shoot photos and video with Grind TV. After we got business handled the rest of each day was filled with group tubing, hydrofoil boarding, and wakesurfing. The trip with Body Glove trip was a great opportunity for both riders and Body Glove employees to get to know each other.
We left Parker on Saturday evening and spent Sunday at Magic Mountain. At the end of the wakeboarding trip it was nice to spend a day goofing off, which included eating funnel cakes, getting our caricature drawn, and riding roller coasters. The best ride there was called X, for extreme, because it was. This was the last part of our journey as we continued north to Sacramento. In the end we saw old friends, met new ones, and rode our asses off; however we were left dreaming of summer as we sat back down to college classes.