Feb 29, 2012

Wednesday Wake Boarding - Leap Day (12 pics)

Its leap day and its a wednesday...so that means WAKE BOARDING BOIIEEEEEEE! We are going to try something new as well, instead of just a pic or two we will do a whole pile of pics.

Lots more after the jump as well.

Enjoy!






Feb 28, 2012

The Truth Is On A Trick Ski

It is not often that you come across a tid-bit of information that you would never believe if someone just said it to you on the street.

"Hey bro, did you know that the smoking man in the X-Files is also quite the waterskiier?"

Its true!!!

Geekosystem uncovered this awesome nugget of information recently that William B. Davis, who played the Cigarette Smoking man on the X-Files also competes, at a fairly high level evidently, in trick ski competitions.

As certified nerds of the x-files, we certainly would not have picked this dude as an athletic type, but, turns out he is.

Noted in the Geekosystem post is that Mr. Davis holds/held a couple of records for the 65-70 year old age group.  Which we can't verify through usawaterski.org, and really don't know for 100% where else to look to check it out.  But, why would you lie about something so obscure as being a champion type level trick skier when you are an accomplished actor?

*head explodes*
Thinking back on the X-Files characters, we could see Fox as a waterskier type, he seems to have the body to do so, as well as the sarcastic humor and porn watching habits that we all do.  Dana?  Maybe, but, her pragmatic nature doesn't lend itself to something as emotional as skiing.

Skinner?  See him more as a boat driver coach type guy...maybe a number of years ago he was a top level jumper or more likely speed skier, but, has put the skis away and now mainly does things from behind the desk.  Dorky guys are probably more of the behind the scenes guys, the ones who make the pdfs after tournaments or process paperwork.


From William B. Davis's personal website
Long and gangley in his youth, Davis never felt coordinated unless he had a board or two attached to his feet. Skiing, whether on snow or water, has been a lifelong passion. Most other forms of exercise, including the infamous Grouse Grind are considered training for skiing. Still, he has been reluctant to 'retire' and devote himself full time to skiing as many of his skiing friends have. His artistic career is still alive and active.
Many thanks to geekosystem for bringing this to our attention, its amazing.  Sure, lots of people waterski in this world, but, this just seems so bizarre, so unlikely, that it makes it that much more awesome.

The smoking man trick skis.  The truth is out there, and apparently it rides a trick ski.

Feb 27, 2012

Vid Day Monday

Tubes are the bane of every public lake water skiers existance. But these people have figured out how to use a tube in a way that does not make me want to stab them with dull knives. I am already trying to figure out how to set one of these up on my lake. Of course my lake is currently imaginary...and it has a space ship, so why would I need some dumb crap like this? Huh??!!?? Tell me! Yea, I bet your lake does not have a space ship at it. Loser.

Vid Day Monday

This is what vid day monday is all about. Dead presidents fighting it out on a hockey rink. We might as well just close up the site now as everything that could be said has been said by this vid.

Vid Day Monday - Karina Ruled the Aussie Open

Karina Nowlan is an incredible waterskiier, can we all agree on this? Yes?  Well, this last weekend at the Australian Open she won everything, in a weighted system she beat everyone, the boys, the girls, the men, the women, the aliens, the everyone, to win the zillions of dollars that you get by winning waterski tournaments!!!  It says so right on the facebooks! link

Look, she was covering up the big check in that picture, so we can only assume it was a zillion dollars.

However, her skiing prowess was not the only thing that Karina dominated this weekend.


In the above 6 minute video, that we recorded and uploaded ourselves (!),  Karina and announcer guy (sorry man, didn't catch your name) announced a couple of skiers and Karina, as it turns out is really really good on the mic.  Like, god damn good at it!

We recorded this clip late on friday night/saturday morning, about 12:30 our time, and if you listen close you can hear our dog hopping off the couch and if you listen real close being real irritated, but, we probably stayed tuned in for a few more hours...or until the rains came and they stopped the broadcast that night, because Karina and the other guy were so great to listen to.

They carried the webcast for the couple hours or so that we listened to it because they worked so well together.

To be fair, the whole webcast was awesome...all the various angles that they had were expertly directed...it felt like watching a real tv broadcast on our computers.  One of our complaints about the malibu open webcast was that all we really got for the jump event was a view from down lake.  Not a bad thing, but, the Aussie was done so well with in boat views, shore line views, dock views, we got spoiled we now expect something at least on par with how well this one was produced.

But Karina and the guy were awesome to listen to, there was no yelling at you to pay attention, there was no fake excitement, it was was simply Karina explaining, with appropriate energy, what was going on with her expert opinion and the other guy popping in to ask relevant questions that made sense to what we were watching.


It certainly does not hurt that Karina's voice is adorable as hell, the Australian accent that she has..note like 1 second in how she says wobble.  Its so good and, honestly, it adds to the product.

For her its probably not something on her mind, but, in a few years when she is done with competitive skiing, she certainly has a seat at the webcast/tv cast table.

We really wanted to get this post up that night, friday night, but we couldn't figure out how to upload a mp3 clip into youtube, we just hit record on our computer to catch the webcast, but, as it turns out is way easier then we thought.  Just have to add a picture into the upload, which is why there is Karina and a kangaroo.  Oh, real original! :)

If I was Archie Davis, the trick skier in this clip, I would feel it an honor to have these two announce me.

Now, as we have said, the gold standard in this realm is our boys Tadd and Tony, but boys...just a note, you have a blond Australian and some dude on your tail and they are creeping hard!

Feb 24, 2012

Lake Trout Carry Out

The New Zealand open runs this weekend in Auckland. The tourny this year will also be holding the Demon Energy NZ Open Night Jump, which is a freaking awesome name. Also someone at the NZ Herald might want to look at a calendar as Saturday is Feb 25th not the 26th, but fact checking and proof reading articles is boring and so on.

Lake Ginnenderra is being tested as a water ski site by the Canberra city government as the only other site in the city authorized for skiing has been closed much of the last few years due to flooding and sandbars. Wait...there are cities that take an active roll working with water skiers?? Damn, that would be a change.

Boat sales in January got a nice boost from the boat show season. Lets hope this trend continues and we can get back rolling. Or you could take MasterCrafts route and build a bunch of gigantic piles of crap and call them wakeboard boats, then hope those somehow save you. At least MC still has the 197 which is a bad ass boat.

Texas is awesome, where else would you find a wake board park and shooting range in the same complex?

Look at the picture in this article and tell me that wake board boats were causing all of the shore erosion...idiots. Their city council denied a 5 year old wake board school a permit to keep operating claiming shore line erosion as the main factor in their decision.

Snohomish County in Washington is likely to deny a new company, H3o, a permit to use a public park for a wake board park. Sounds like the group is a bit unorganized and are meeting resistance to use a tax payer funded park for a private enterprise.

We have talked about cable skiing being an increasingly important part of the waterski industry in the past, and it appears that USAWS is attempting to get involved now. Their method of getting their foot in the door is to ask cable skiers in the US to pay their own way and go to Austria to represent the US at the Cable Worlds. Odd approach...

Mitt Romney was in a meeting once when his son said he had lost a ski on the lake, Mitt left the meeting and spent an hour and a half helping him find the ski. No political point here, but at least Mitt and his family are skiers.

Lake County, Orlando area, are talking about putting Jack Travers into the Lake County sports hall of fame. Hell yes he deserves it, guy is one of the best coaches there is in skiing.

And TUNES!!

Feb 23, 2012

Legal Nonsense Getting In Way of Shredding

100% Accurate
If you have been paying attention recently to this funky story that is brewing in Abbotsford, BC...thats Canada, eh? then you will most likely be interested in the goings on and are curious as to what is next.  If you have no interest in this or just heard about it.  Allow us to recap.

The Man allowed a waterski club to use a park lake for slaloming many years ago
Cable Park dude wants to cable park the lake and make money
Waterski Club not pleased, wishes to continue slalom
Cable Park dude not pleased, wishes to start cable parking
The man must decide
EPIC BATTLE ENSUES

Oddly Accurate
Thats it.  Thats the story, basically. You can read some more of the ins and outs of this case, here, but, I think this is an interesting petri dish of things and curious as to what this may grow into in the future.

But, here are a couple thoughts about this, as CRB legal is out today and imminent domain and what not are foreign concepts to a bad ass.

1)  Its somewhat of a bummer that two groups of waterski people are duking it out over a lake.  While, I am sure that some people, simpletons, will think of this as a wakeboard vs. slalom debate, its more just two competing interests are jockying over a lake that they wish to ski on.

Regardless, its a bummer because as a waterski community, as a whole, we aren't that huge.  It would be more benificial for the two groups to work together somehow and spread love, then to do battle with knives and possibly kill each other in the process.  So to speak.

2) Its also an interesting debate/thought process of how cable parks are becoming an acceptable or more common thing/entity then when they were considered weird in the past.  Maybe its the changing landscape of waterskiing (more wakeboard type, skate type vibe) or maybe its something as simple as economics.  Boats are fucking expensive, gas is fucking expensive, if you can rig up a cable system, have fun and within a year recoup your cost?  Why not?


Note: its way way harder to booze cruise, float around in the sun, have carnal passions in full view of other boaters at a cable park.  The rope you are attached to cant' float freely, its way harder to get it on when you are being dragged around the water, etc.

3) Financial implications.  Touched on it above, but, if the cable park can come in and generate income for the city/township/community, by providing a service...whats the harm??  One would think in this era of taxes and struggling commonwealths, that a productive, active undertaking such as this would be good for the community.

4) Social concerns.  Do cable parks hurt/harm or help the ecology of the land, do they hurt the surrounding areas, esthetically is it pleasing to the eye?  I.e, does a cable park do more or less "harm" to the environment, be it looks, clientele or carbon foot print.  Same goes for the gas boat slalom dudes...do the boats put out to much noise, pollution?   Its the prius vs. pick up argument.  In the life of a prius, does the whole supply chain along the way produce more harm then good?

These concerns are probably trivial in this case, but, it is an interesting item to follow and see what happens.  Having never been able to ski at a cable park, it would be hard to form a proper opinion of the ski value of a cable park, but, we do love wake surfing and you haven't seen a 1/2 whirleybird to face/groin until you hang out on our boat for a day, so, needless to say, we have no dog in the fight.  But, one does tend to think the ripples from this could effect us in more ways then one.

Feb 20, 2012

Vid Day Monday

90% of all public lake water skiers have at some point found a rope swing and rocked it out. Even some private lakes have rope swings, at Coble's there was one back in the woods near a cool ledge you could jump off of. April and Chris might not have been all that happy if they knew we were taking their golf carts back into the woods to jump off ledges, swing on a old ropes and get stuck in muddy ruts that pushed the limit between a rut and a trench. Whatever, it was awesome.

Well I digress back tot he video at hand, rope swings are crazy fun, but this rope swing makes anything any of us have ever seen look like a barbie doll swing. Freaking sweet, I want this in my back yard, right next to the snow half pipe I built*.

*my back yard is smaller then most bathrooms, so there is no half pipe. /sad face

Vid Day Monday

Before we got all old and responsible (by responsible we mean getting a job, not actually responsible) we used to load up a truck and go looking for flooded stuff like this any time there was a big rain. Flooded ditches work well but even better we found was flooded soccer fields. You could go forever. The moral of the story is go find a damn soccer field and ski or board on that shit. DO IT NOW!

Vid Day Monday

From the Midwest college ski teams comes this great example of why sending skiiers off the ramp for the first time at tournaments is a good idea.

Feb 18, 2012

CRB Brings the Sexy

Kate Upton is proving to the modeling world what those of us in the water sports world have known for a long time, scrawny is nasty. Give me a girl with a real body, a healthy girl. Water ski girls are the cats pajamas. Something about skiing just builds them just right.

/ODBF creepy time over

This vid is pretty much awesome.





Feb 16, 2012

Ron Scarpa Will Build Your House

Ron Scarpa, barefooting legend and certified bad-ass, has decided to close up shop on his ski school to focus on building your new house! Or more accurately, a week or so ago he changed his website to say that he is closing down the ski school to focus on his construction business, but, that shouldn't stop you from having him build your new house.  I, for one, would not want to go against a bald man who would front to back your face off.



For whatever reason I remember back, maybe 15 years ago, that Scarpa was on TV in a barefoot tournament and did a flying start from this crazy tall life guard stand, came up like it was no big deal and then melted off my face with tricks that to a little kid seemed like he was some sort of super hero or god like creature.

This was before he was bald!  And as everyone knows, dudes who can rock a bald dome are 2 times more badass then those with hair.  Thats science kids, look it up.

Its amazing to think of, but, he won his first National Overall Title in 1980 at the age of 17, after competing in barefoot worlds on torn ligaments in his ankle from falling down the stairs.  Sure, your thinking, well la de da your heiness what have you done for me recently?  To that we say, he won his fourth and final title in 2000.  20 years!  20 damn years of being the awesome.

He retired from major competitive barefooting in 2005 and now in 2012 is closing the doors on the ski school.

There will always be certain skiers that we watched in our youth that will maintain some form of idol-type placement within our minds.  Guys like Sammy Duvall, Patrice Martin (crb patriarch), Kim Laskoff, Freddy Krueger and Scarpa.


There are two things we think of when we see that video.

1) "Yeah, whatever Ron, I can do a tumble-turn"
2) If only they had 20 foot high booms back then...and trampolines in the boat, he would really be good.

So, next time you have a construction project on your to-do list, betcha Scarpa could do it with just a life-vest on in a back toe-hold, while you cry to your mom about a sliver.  Pussy.

Probably best friends

GTF of the Month

So it would seem that we are a bit slow this month with the new GTF calender girl of the month girl, Marion Mathieu. We will blame all the green beer we drank on our error. Its not St. Patty's day you say? F that, we don't need a holiday to drink green beer!




Check out Marion and all the rest of the GTFs at www.girlsthatfly.org

Feb 15, 2012

One Leg Wake Boarding is Cool

Pro kite and wake boarder Sean Reyngoudt not only has an awesome last name but also is missing his left leg. He lost the leg when he was run over by a fork truck at a fish market when he was 19. Not only did he get over the loss of the leg and get back at it he is damned good. He has won many kite boarding competitions and as this vid shows is a wicked good wake boarder.

I have both my legs and I suck at wake boarding, perhaps that is where my disdain for the sport comes from. Or its the general D-baggery that is prevalent in the sport. Of course after reading tweets sent by a fair number of water skiiers I don't think we are immune from said D-baggery.



check out his site here

Afternoon Ahhhhhh

Lake Trout Carry Out

What kind of low life steals from an adaptave waterskiing organization? The CRB staff have all worked with several of these groups in the past, and I can tell you that there is no better feeling then the feeling you get seeing the smiles on the faces of the kids.




A new ski and wakeboard lake has been built in Hawke's Bay New Zealand. See how this works Abbotsford wakeboarders???? You can have both if you work together, or you could just continue to be jag offs and act like you own the world.

This dog skis and "drives" the boat as well. Whats up with my lazy ass dog??!!?? All he does is lay around and get tangled in the ropes and bark when I'm skiing. Lazy bum.

In Australia the Latrobe International Waterski Tournament returned after a 3 year hiatus. More events the better, lets bring back some other old events...like the US Open! DO IT.

The minutes from the most recent annual meeting of USAWS are now posted online. Reading some of this just makes me think we need new faces at the top, some of these guys are clueless about the world of waterskiing.

The owner of the Toronto Argos football team taught Ricky Williams how to waterski. With the amount of pot that guy smoked I would think wake boarding would be a better fit...

Feb 13, 2012

Vid Day Monday

Harley Clifford is the current hotness in wakeboarding. And for good reason, the last two mins of this vid are freaking sick.

Vid Day Monday

If you have never watched "The Wire" then you are missing out on the greatest TV show in history. Cheese was one of the few characters that made it from season one to the last episode, but its all in the game yo.

I suggest you hit up netflix and start with season one and watch it straight through. It is addicting how good this show is.

Feb 6, 2012

Vid Day Monday

After the Wake board pool burst at the Atlanta (i think...) boat show a month back I thought we were done with wake board boat show fails...but alas, the good people from ABC channel 12 in Milwaukee Wisconsin helped us out by showing a guy with a awful winch operator.

Vid Day Monday

The game is over, the Giants won...my team sucked it up and bailed out early...so how bout those commercials? Our favorite was the Clint Eastwood Chrysler commercial, good message and Clint Eastwood is a bad ass.

Here are a few others that were good.

Silvarado














M&Ms


Budweiser





















Vid Day Monday

Chrysler had one of the best commercials during the super bowl last year with Eminem driving the Chrysler 300 and talking about Detroit getting back on its feet. This year it was bad ass Clint Eastwood talking about America getting back on its feet. I like the concept and the message, not that it will really do much good as our political system is a mess of people who love to point fingers and scream at each other instead of doing anything useful. But whatever, ODBF liked it so that is all that really matters, the whiners can all go jump off a cliff, but don't go floating into my slalom course, because dealing with dead political fanatics when trying to round 4 ball is just a pain in the ass.

Vid Day Monday

This looks pretty ballsy, I'm in, lets do this shit.



Just fixing my tie bro

Feb 3, 2012

CRB Brings the Sexy - Super Bowl

The Super Bowl is on Sunday, so CRB sexy is bringing you hot girls in Giants and Patriots gear. My team decided to suck and not make it to the big game, so I will be flipping a coin to pic who I want to win. Then sometime around Madonna hitting the stage I will probably trip and fall into the snack table and pass out in a mess of chips and salsa on the floor.

Many more pics after the page break.



Feb 1, 2012

Wednesday Wake Boarding

I bitch and moan that its to cold to ski...well pro kite boarder Andy Hurdman calls me a big pussy. Then he busts out a wakeboard and hits ice burg sliders. He wins the big prize.

Alaska Wakeboarding Teaser from Catchin' Air Tv Show from UpDown Productions on Vimeo.

He does not win the grand prize for cold wake boarding as that goes to this guy.

Yes that is snow in the background and it was 5 degrees.

Many more good ski pics here

Morning AHHHHHHH