Strapping In

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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.

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