Wow, Brostock. It hurts so good. I just stepped out of the car (thanks Nissan, for letting us borrow yet ANOTHER Armada) after an 11-hour trip back from Lake Powell to Cardiff. I’m pretty much wiped out from the three-day wakeboarding festival, but here is the one clear thought I have right now: People always ask me what it’s like to get to travel around the world with pro wakeboarders, or what their idols are actually like in person. Brostock would be a good answer. If you want to hang out with the pros in their natural environment, go to one of the three remaining Brostocks this year. I’ll tell you why: because there is no competitive element to it, at least none that has to do with wakeboarding. (The fastest beer bong title is a whole other story.) At a tour event you can get their autograph, at Brostock you can hang out with them all day and possibly even get them to take you for a ride.

The story of this years first installment winds and weaves through hours of comedy and tragedy, but here are the things I remember most about the last 48 hours: Mike Ennen killing it every time I saw him ride, getting what I thought was a lighted bottle rocket shoved down the back of my trunks, some guy named Issac telling me he had driven all the way to Powell from Oklahoma just for Ben Greenwood’s autograph (and me replying “Seriously?”), Kyle Walton’s insistance that people can actually think themselves to death if they really concentrate, Silas Thurman spinning his magic on the mic and Corey Marotta standing in the shower for two hours on Friday trying to make the boat stop moving. There are hundreds of other stories, from hundreds of other people – go to one of the next three Brostocks and make a few of your own …