Irma brought plenty of the wet stuff and a few rumors… (photo: Mathis)

by: WakeZeach

As many of us remember, Surf Expo was cut a little short last year thanks to weather. Hurricane Irma forced the show to end after only one day, so everyone’s hard work putting up their booths ended up all being in vain. And if you’ve ever put up a booth at the Surf Expo, then you know how much work it is, and how damn hot it stays in the Orlando Convention Center in early September. For those of you that have never attended, it’s pretty much a three-day party for the entire watersports industry. It’s a great time to catch up with people that you don’t get to see very often, and drink beers while watching some great new progressive wakeboard videos at “Beers & Premieres” over at the Alliance booth. But not last year. Because knowing that a natural disaster is going to occur at your current location days in advance can cause people to do some crazy shit. While the stormed loomed on the horizon, we heard a lot of rumors about some of the crazy things that went down, but we’re unsure whether or not we should believe all of it. So that’s where you (the readers) come into play. Get out your pencils and get ready for our first official game of Fact or Fiction:

  • A tree fell on Rusty Malinoski’s truck during the hurricane and he single handedly lifted it off and continued to chop it up with his bare hands …
  • Steel Lafferty attempted a golf trick shot in the eye of the storm and ended up somewhere in Central America …
  • Corey Marotta capitalized on people’s frantic emotions and end up selling every available ad in Alliance for the 2018 season in just the one day of Expo …
  • Dylan Miller tried riding during the windiest part of the storm but was forced to widen his stance because the wind kept tipping him over …
  • The entire SpaceMob crew stood in the middle of a field during the peak of the storm and was sucked into outer space …
  • David O’Caoimh applied to multiple news broadcasting stations to become a reporter after highly successful vlog of Hurricane Irma …
  • Brenton Priestley started a hurricane party that is still going hard to this day …
  • Shaun Murray was seen doing American Ninja Warrior moves around the convention center during the storm and hasn’t been seen since …
  • Irma inspired Jeff Mckee to create a hurricane specific foil board that he has been working on every day for the last year
  • Parks Bonifay was there for about 15 minutes before scooping up every booth girl and heading back to his place in Clermont …