Its official, the new iwake.com movie will be titled “Momentum”! The guys at iwake.com
Chad Sharpe in Shasta
finalized it the other week, and we’re all stoked on the title. Now to the riders…Rusty, Chad Sharpe, Brad Smeele, Kyle Alberts, Joey Bradley, Austin Hair, JD Webb, and myself! Its a mixture of guys that have been in the biz for awhile and new riders bring it up to the next level, pushing each other to make a video thats not just another wake vid. The journey began in Texas, iwake.com’s headquarters, in the spring with a few of the team riders. We spent a week shooting before the PWT Dallas stop. It was the first time any of us had shot with Joey Archisz, the filmer behind Momentum, so was good to get used to his filming style and what he was looking for. Next, we took the vid to Cali, to spend a week on Shasta shooting with a RED! A RED is the best camera out at this time, shooting 138 frames of HD video a second! In the future, there are plans for the Bahamas, Philippines,
Shasta
and South America. Needless to say, no corners will be cut in the production of the video. We already have never-before-done tricks, 10’s and many other gnarly tricks that will make this vid the one to check out next year. I’m stoked! And will keep up with the updates!
I know on a lot of my blog titles I use explanation points, but this one needs to be amplified. I just arrived to Lake Shasta in Cali for the first iwake.com DVD shoot, and am as stoked as it gets! We have a week on a 3 story houseboat, Spencer Smith out to shoot pics with his loaded down Xstar, and a rider lineup of Rusty, Chad Sharpe, Brad Smeele, Kyle Alberts, Austin Hair, Alex Brown, and myself! Theres a RED in front of me ready to catch all the action and hammers that will be dropped throughout the week! About 30 mins ago I sat in on the first meeting discussing the direction of the movie, the riders involved, and the filmer’s (Joey Archisz) view on it all. The iwake.com guys never do anything medium, and i’ll be the first to say that this vid is going to hit the wake scene next year with shit that has never been seen. The official rider list will blow minds. But unfortunately, all the details of the vid, the locations, and the riders is
on lock right now. Just be ready for groundbreaking riding and a new avenue to view a vid, taking a melting pot of movies like Slick City, Push Process, Rewritten and the snow scene and blending it into the lifestyle wakeboarding brings us.
As I was flying into Denver, Colorado, I had no idea what to expect from a state that’s know for its world-class winter resorts and snow. Unfortunately, for my first visit, I was not visiting Denver in the winter, but in the middle of summer for the PWT stop 4. Upon landing, everything reminded me of a ski town, which was a cool change from the normal stops of the PWT. We had flown into Denver a day early to shoot with Sam Saslow, a old friend who lives in Denver, for an online video about our travels and riding in Colorado. Denver definitely does not have the plethora of lakes like Orlando, so our riding spots were definitely limited. We ended up at Sloan lake, a small circular lake located almost directly in dt Denver. The Hagoods were nice enough to take us out on their Super Air for a ride, which definitely was an experience. The first thing, was that Denver is pretty nice, its clean, everything looks new, and has a fresh feel. But, on top of all that, there are a lot of bums…everywhere. And Sloan Lake was no expectation. On benches around the shoreline the bums would sit, watching and even cheering, as we went by. They were definitely a different type of bum that the ones in Orlando, which are constantly nagging everyone for money and are really dirty. Also, the laws of the lake were that every boat had to go around the lake in a counter clockwise direction. So, at one point we had 7 boats circling the lake with us, which as you can imagine, created some crazy waves in the middle and just about everywhere else. We made the best of it, and had a great day. The local wake crew also built a rail off to the side of the lake in a little canal that we had a chance to winch a couple times to get some shots for the vid. It was apparent that the crew of riders in Denver were all cool people with a love for wakeboarding, and love for sharing it, which was the best part of the day! That night Sam and I hit up the downtown bar scene, which kept with the ski town theme, and was definitely too good of a time. On Friday and Saturday we went up to Colorado Springs for the PWT stop and to check out God’s Garden, which had some of the craziest red rock formations, similar to Sedona Az. The location was perfect, and the riding stepped up a notch with the perfect conditions. For a full story on the stop check out http://bit.ly/9p53IW. Once the fun of Saturday night was over, we went out to a gravel pit to ride with air chair’r Darrin Dinkel behind his 2010 Malibu VLX. The gravel pit wasn’t fully dug out, which allowed for only a 3 trick pass. If you’ve never been to Denver, because of the altitude, almost anything gets you out of breath, and turning every 3 tricks exhausted us very quickly. Still, the boat was sick, with a 450 HP engine, and the lake was completely flat so each one of us had pretty good rides, and were able to get some alright footage. The highlight of the day had to be when Kirby Liesman stomped a moby dick 5! We all went crazy, and he was all smiles for the rest of the day! Now we’re back at Sam’s place, relaxing, waiting for our flight out to Lake Shasta for the iwake.com photo shoot!
Spent the day riding with the guys who get coached by Time On the Water with me. It was me, Lewis Link, and Mark Moss out on my Malibu VLX on Pickett. I’m pretty sure we were the only riders in town as Nationals in Reno was this weekend also. The wind was definitely blowing, but we were still able to find a shoreline with some rideable water. Mark brought out his camera so we were able to get footage of our riding, and I threw together a little vid to put up on iwake.com. Check it out, more to come soon. Thanks to Time-OnTheWater.com for helping out with coaching and pushing our riding.
Its definitely been awhile since i’ve updated my blog. For the last week i’ve been traveling throughout the UK for Wakestock, and unfortunately didin’t have internet for much of the trip. After getting back to the US, and recovering from the “english” lifestyle, I’m back in the swing of things. I’ll be getting out a blog about Wales and England, featuring everything from Wakestock and our travels to Perth Cable park and London. Until then, check out the link to some photos our friends from wakeworld.com took when they came out to our home lake for a quick afternoon set! Click for Photo Gallery
Last weekend was the 2nd stop of the PWT in Dallas Texas. Once again, it was held at Texas Mastercraft, which always is an amazing site and one that every rider looks forward to. This year, the wake was big, and it was unbelievably hot. I rode amazing on the first two days, but came up short on Saturday, and ended up in 16th once again. Starting to get really annoyed with that position. In some crazier news, Harley didn’t even make finals, opening the door to Phillip Soven to take the win and rusty to get 2nd with a 1080 off the double up. After the comp, in flash decision, I decided to cancel my flight home, and drive up the Kentucky to stay with Mike and his family who own NicksBoatDock.com with Andrew Shear, Austin Hair, and Julian Cohen. After our all day, all night drive, we found ourselves in the middle of a true wakeboarders paradise. The lake we’ve been riding on is called Rough River, which happens to be the calmest water i’ve ever rode on! With all its curves and hills surrounding it, the locals don’t even know what rough water is. These pictures are just examples of what the water looks like everywhere. Video coming soon…..
I’ve spend the last couple mornings waking up at 6 am to shoot with Jason Lee. It was pretty intense the first day, as the last time I saw 6 am was in Brazil and we were leaving the clubs. But, with each day, it got easier, until today when it felt close to normal. What i’m most stoked about is how much more time I have in the day. Its mid afternoon, and i’ve done everything I needed to today. Now is when I wish I had Call of Duty. Tomorrow will be the test, because i don’t have a photoshoot so won’t have to wake up. I’m going to try, but not sure if its possible without the motivation. Ohh, another plus….coffee tastes sooo much better that early! And we all know how stoked I am about coffee. I can’t release any of the pics from the shoot, but they looks sick, stoked to see what happens with them! If anyone knows of any good free online games that are a good waste of time let me know, because I have a whole afternoon the burn. I tried to take a good pic this morning, but as you can see I failed miserably. Atleast I got the chase jetski in there…..
In one of my earlier blog posts I mentioned shooting with Patrick Wieland from Alliancewake.com. We had some epic mornings out on Pickett and Mills to capture all the trick my roommates and I have been working on. Stoked to work with someone who was fun to chill with, and could capture my riding exactly how I wanted it to look. Stoked to get 3 different 9’s wake to wake on film, and get it on Alliancewake. Thanks to Patrick for working with us, enjoy the vid. http://www.alliancewake.com/wake/the-east-side-rise-up/
I’m pretty excited right now about a lot of things with wakeboarding. For starters, yesterday I landed a “big Perm”, which has possibly never been done before on a wakeboard. Some have speculated that Brandon Johnson landed it about 10 years ago, but never got it on footage. I asked some of the more respected guys in the industry, who have been in it since day one, and they’ve agreed that its only speculation that it was ever landed before. So, I’m pretty stoked on the whole thing, and stoked I got it on video! Quality isn’t all there, but good enough to see the trick. It’s a toeside frontflip 720, or like an ollay crow 7! On top of that, I’m sitting on a plane right now on my way to Brazil for the 2nd World Series stop! Last month I was able to spend a week in Manaus, Brazil, which is in the northern part of the country. Now, we’re traveling to Belo Horizonte, which is in the southern part, next to San Paulo. I’ve been told the water here is a little cold because the seasons are opposite those of the northern hemisphere, so they’re beginning winter as we begin summer. I’ll be updating with pics as frequent as I can get internet.
Today I woke up at 7 am to drive out to Mount Dora to meet up with riders Alex Brown, Austin Hair, and Adam Burwell from Burwell Productions to get some footage for an upcoming web video. The drive took a little over an hour, but felt forever because of the anticipation. I spend a little over 2 years up in the Mount Dora/Lake County area, and grew to love the lakes very quickly. Mount Dora is the only place in Florida that has any amount of hills, so the lakes are the most protected in the State and always seem to be calm. I’ve definitely had some of my best rides out on them. This morning proved to be no exception, as the whole lake was butter, and we had Alex’s new Malibu VLX weighted down to ride. Alex just got the old Wakeworld VLX, so I was stoked to see how the wake was after i’d heard so much about it. It was insane, and everyone killed it. I’d been watching a lot of Burwell productions snowboard videos over the winter, so am stoked to see what he’ll do with the footage. His editing is as good or better than most of the guys in the industry, and he brings a fresh look to the vids from his snowboard background. As soon as a teaser or any amount of footage comes out i’ll be sure to throw it up on here. Untill then, enjoy the pics of the perfect riding conditions.
on lock right now. Just be ready for groundbreaking riding and a new avenue to view a vid, taking a melting pot of movies like Slick City, Push Process, Rewritten and the snow scene and blending it into the lifestyle wakeboarding brings us.
