Canyon Lake - learn to wakeboard day, Aug 2 2003

What a turn out for our “learn to ride day”. There were over 60 people, which was a lot more than our 1st learn to ride day this year. We had only 2 boats going, the third would not operate correctly. The Valdez's kindly used their Tige and had what seemed to be a rotation of 4 coaches. Jeff Frew and I spent the day in Greg's Super Air. We were on the water from 8am till about 6pm helping people learn to ride and meeting a bunch of cool people. Jeff did 99% of the teaching though in our boat. Even though the day was really long I had a blast as I felt very happy that a lot of people wanted to learn. I even think in our boat about 7 people or so were water skiers and wanted to learn to wakeboard. It just shows wakeboarding will be around for a while.

I want to say thanks to Darin and Carrie Medley for hosting the event at their home and giving people a cool place to hang out while they waited patiently for their turn. I also want to say thanks to all the people who helped make this event go and most importantly say thanks to all the people who attended.

Richard, thank YOU for your driving all day, what a blessing! And you are right what a long day it was. It was so nice to finally relax in the pool and jacuzzi that night and finally wind down. We were looking for you and the frew crew to come back over! Also want to throw huge props out to the medly crew and to Damian Klaas for forgoing his trip to Mexico to further to sport of wakeboarding.

What a day! 7:45am, 60 riders in Darrin & Carrie's back yard, and one boat broke down, another with a car parked in front of the trailer, no way to locate the owner! I was really worried! Not to mention the Press Enterprise did an article and mistakenly printed my cell phone number (I got about 30 calls over the last 3 weeks).

Thank you so much Richard (cws kahuna) for driving/helping all day & putting up with me, Henry and Robin (TeamValdez) for all the driving and coaching and the use of your Tige, Rory (Knee Brace Boy) for coming down to coach in the midst of some extensive home remodling, Damien Klaas for forgoing Mexico to help out, and Darrin & Carrie Medley for opening up your house to all in the name of the sport! Thank you also Greg Dick for letting use your Super Air.

I have received quite a few thank you emails for some of the participants, it looks like we did some good!

Hey Jeff, we have done these learn to wakeboard days many times, every time I forget how long a day it is, but one other thing that I forget too easily is the face of a kid that gets up for the first time. It makes it all sooo worth it.