I haven’t been traveling as much lately, which honestly, is sort of nice. But last weekend I headed down to the city beautiful, Orlando, FL. Now usually the reaction to me traveling to Orlando is “why would you do that,” but this time as Hurricane Bill loomed off the coast creating “the sickest waves ever bro,” so at least some people thought it was a good idea to go to Florida. Me? I went no where near the coast. Instead I was there for Surf Expo, which includes no actual surfing.

As you can imagine, a trade show in this economic climate was a somewhat depressing place. Few booths and even fewer big booths than I’ve seen in my years of attending. But hey, having fewer brands in attendance made my job easier as I had to profile each brand for Alliance Wakeskate. In addition to photos and short write ups, I also decided to make little videos with each brand, which would have been way more awesome if I had an appropriate mic, but what can you do? So far I’ve only edited one and with the magic of embeddable videos on the new Alliance site that’s set to launch ANY DAY NOW, it’s after the jump along with the rest of my trip. read more »

I’m trying to figure out how to say this without sounding negative, but I can’t really do it. I hate events. Sure, they are a chance to see some of the best riding/skating, easy content, and a gathering of friends, but for me they are work! And not just work, but work that usually falls over a weekend! So instead of getting to work in my garden, go skateboarding, or do any of the other things I would like to do with my free time, I get to hustle for the shot then go home and edit until the wee hours so that I can satisfy my own personal insanity by having the first coverage of the event up.

That said, there are worse events to go to than the Trifecta (or Bi-fecta as it ended up being this year.) Both stops were near my house, and I took a mellow approach to my coverage, not showing up until the pros started skating. The Tigard event was more entertaining than Pier Park, and 12 year olds are better at skating than most of the older dudes. (Sorry guys, being too cool to wear pads isn’t helping your career after all!) Check out my full galleries on YoBeat here.

Next weekend Dew Tour is in town, and since I don’t even care a little bit about it, and attempting to shoot it is miserable due to over-zealous security, I will be skipping in entirely. And that, is my kind of event.

This weekend I completed what I believe to be my greatest cinematic work yet, a documentary of sorts on the Weena Man, Government Camp’s premier dodgeball player. The subject is Cory Grove of Cobra Dogs fame, and in one afternoon we filmed everything I need to make this gem. The results, he and I agree, are epic. Even the perpetually salty Jared Souney said it was my best work yet (even if he did follow it up with “usually your videos aren’t funny.”) So it went live on YoBeat this morning and I highly encourage you to check it out, but it brings up an issue I’ve been debating for awhile now.

We’ve recently gotten a video player on YoBeat and technically it’s supposed to be embeddable, but for whatever reason the viral part of it doesn’t work with Wordpress. So a lot of times I will include a link to the video on our vimeo page as well so people can embed it from there if they so desire. But on this one not only did I not include the link, but I set our vimeo so that no one could embed it either. That way, if they want to see the video they have to come to YoBeat, right? read more »

This weekend I found myself covering a wakeboard double up contest in the heart of Portland. A bit out of my comfort zone for sure, but at least I wasn’t at the X Games! The Wake Jam PDX was in fact, nothing like the X Games. It was totally mellow, I only needed my media pass to get into the cheaper beer garden and of course, I could drive there in 10 minutes. After reading the barrage of hateful tweets about X, I was pretty glad my only interaction with it this year was the occasional bits I caught on TV. But enough about that…

The Wake Jam was quite a scene. It’s always amazing to me the watersports culture that exists in Portland and the line of excited boaters and random kids name dropping sweet wakers around me was pretty funny. After shooting exclusively wakeskating for the past few years though, it was a bit of an adjustment to switch to the complete opposite that is the double up.

I think my favorite part of the event had to be the Sublime cover band that played between the semis and the finals. More specifically, when I joked to one of the younger wakeboarders that I couldn’t believe they got Sublime to play he looked at me in awe and said, “This is really Sublime!?” Better than, who’s Sublime, I guess.

Check out my full coverage on Alliance Wake. Next week Trifecta is in town so I’ll be back in my comfort zone. Maybe i’ll enter. I did get second in my last skate contest...nbd.