So I’m talking to Parks Bonifay on line right now as I right this. But actually talking to him. Sometimes we video chat with the cameras, sometimes we IM, and sometimes we turn the audio thing on and just go with the voices. I guess we like to mix it up a little bit. He says “hello”, by the way. And he also thinks this might be his biggest “hello” ever. His brother Shane is in the background too, and I can hear him. I don’t know what he is doing, but he’s doing it pretty quietly, which makes me worried because that’s not like him.

One of the things Parks and I are talking about is the Philippines. I thought he had been before, but he just corrected me and told me he hasn’t. He was supposed to go, was invited but had another commitment and it didn’t work out.

Going to the P.I. is all the rage recently among the pro wakeboarders, kind of like the wakeboarding version of the Mentawi’s – everyone is talking about going there and wants to hook up with the “main guy”, who is the governor of the province and treats all the wakers like VIP’s. In fact, O’Neill sent Keith Lidberg to the Philippines last month – to a place called Carmines Sur Watersports Complex, which is supposed to be where it’s all happening — and he wrote us a story about it. But I put it on the back burner for a week and it showed up on a different website. My bad.

I had some other photos from the trip though, so I wanted to give you a deeper look at what seems to be the new destination for waking. Seems pretty nice, especially this time of year. And the locals are reported to be really into it. Go on line and look it up, and if you decide to go make sure you go by the watersports complex, it’s right next to the ocean and has a bunch of rails and boxes. By the way, Parks is bummed that he couldn’t make it and plans to reschedule the trip soon. Maybe I’m going to have to go with him, we haven’t done the face-to-face thing in a while. Happy shopping … hurry.