With
Beans and Dawn
All photos can be viewed larger if you click on them
My brother Beans (Glen) and his wife Dawn started wake boarding at the end of last summer and now they're full blown enthusiasts. They bought a boat and all the gear and even went to Florida for a week during the winter to practice with a Pro wake boarder. So while I was in Michigan for Sasha's baby shower I spent June 9th, Beans birthday, on the water with them as they tried to show me how to do it.
Basically wake boarding is like water skiing with a snow board. Now if you're like me, you've never gone water skiiing or snow boarding so I was immediately at a disadvantage. It's not really like surfing or skateboarding either (which I have done and still do) but I suppose it's closer to skateboarding.
Besides just being towed by the boat, the ultimate goal of the wake boarder is to do wild huge jumps off and over the wake of the boat. The boat itself is weighted and designed, unlike most boats, to create a huge wake for just this purpose. Here's Beans executing a few great heel-side jumps.
Bean's friend Andy said that it's better to not have the water skiing experience because you have to un-learn, but he may have just been trying to make me feel better because I couldn't do it at first. Here's some sequential shots of me my first time out:
All geared up and ready to try. Beans feeds me the tow rope.
They start the boat, I hang on as long as I can, but I never even get up before the rope snaps from my grasp.
This time I got pulled up and over the board before I ....
...face-plant splat back into the water. After about 15 more tries, beans got in and tried to show me what I was doing wrong but I was too tired to continue.
Here's some great jump sets by Beans. This is what real wake boarding looks like:
Emboldened by my failures and Beans awesome jump style, Dawn attempts and lands perfectly her first-ever wake jumps:
Air-Dawn heel-side!
Hurray
for Dawn!
The next day, after my sore arms recovered a little and I watched some wake-board training videos, I was ready to try again. After a couple of failed attempts I figured out how to get to my feet. The following is a sequence of two rides combined into one to make it look longer.
I couldn't jump, in fact I fell every time I crossed a big wake, but at least I can say I've wake-boarded. I'll work on my jumps next summer.
At least I wasn't the only beginner out there that day. Dawns little cousins joined us for a while. One got up and the other stayed down.
Here's a couple more series of Beans "taking us all to school":
