My updates have been random at best lately, but when trying to write articles for multiple blogs, its hard to keep them all updated! www.WakeBoardSD.net has really been taking up quite a bit of my time, so T&T is not feeling as much love as it normally does. This is ok, judging by my traffic stats, this site is pretty much just my own personal journal (haha).
Anyway, we are heading out to the river today at about 6pm. Most of the stuff is loaded up, so we just need to hit the road! WIll be gone thru monday, so hopefully the weather is good out there. San Diego pretty much sucks right now. Horrible weather for a memorial day weekend. Its supposed to be sunnier out by the river, but still in the mid 80’s. Better than SD, but still not the great weather we were expecting. I guess with tornado’s touching down in SoCal, nothing is really normal lately!
Anyone hear about this? I work a couple of blocks away, heard about it on the news, but I don’t even think I heard it or felt the explosion. Pretty crazy when that happens nearby! Hope they aren’t doing any construction on our building!
Another day of work, 3 more to go before heading out to the river. After work today - time to fix the brakes AGAIN on the truck (4th brake job!), replace the passenger side caliper. Then tweak a few things on WBSD, call Key Bank about my boat loan (Looking in to buying a new wakeboard boat and selling the Maxum - more on that later).
Can’t wait to wrap up this week and head out for 3 days on the river!
Kjo finally got his 2006 Sanger V210 running, so we took it out on the bay tonight for a quick session. This thing seriously rips! Turns out someone had previously tried to start it dry and burned up the impeller and chipped the flywheel. $600 later it runs perfectly! The wake behind it is unbelievable, not super wide but huge lips that just ramp you up off of them. I was clearing the wake pretty easily (the nice water in the bay at 5pm on a sunday didn’t hurt either). We had a much better session than going out Saturday. We finally had some sun, so there were quite a few people out, which makes it pretty much pointless to attempt wakeboarding in the bay. The clouds cold helped keep people away today too, so we got some good water. I’m pretty much over attempting to wakeboard in the bay on weekends. Thinking of just heading to the lake on weekends.
I’m trying to get a lot more serious about wakeboarding this summer, I really want to step it up. I’m looking in to a bunch of instructional videos, and maybe taking lessons. There is a really good 5 disc DVD set called "The Book" that is supposed to be one of the best wakeboarding videos out there. I’m checking out another one called Higher Education too that is supposed to be pretty good. There is a lot of good information on YouTube as well. I know you probably can’t learn a whole lot from watching a video, but for the times I can’t be out on the water I at least want to be learning.
Time to head to bed and go back to slaving away another week at work. Just looking forward to heading out to the river with Kjo and the crew for Memorial day in 2 weeks!
Another week down the tubes. Finally wrapped up some big projects at work, so thats a big step in the right direction. Also, let me just say that filling my iPod up with every season of American Dad and Family Guy was a great decision on my part. Anyway…lots of current goings on:
My parents are coming down this weeked (Today). This is awesome because my mom has been feeling really good despite chemo. She is usually a bit sick the day after, but by the next week is feeling normal again. I haven’t seen them in a couple months, so it will be great to have the family here and spend some time at my aunts house. Also Danielle’s first time meeting them, so we’ll see how that goes. Kind of weird to have been dating her for half a year almost and she still hasn’t met them. I’m just used to them being in town so often, but theres been a lot going on in my family recently, so I’m just glad they will be here.
Planning another trip to the river for memorial day weekend. Thinking of leaving Friday the 23 through Monday the 26th. I just emailed the crew, hopefully Kjo will have his boat fixed by then, and the guys from DBG can make it, so we can have an awesome time out there. I think im going regardless.
Some party out at San Vicente tonight thrown by the guys from wakesports, but I don’t know if I’m going to make it. The DBG crew is going, but I think I’d rather spend some time with my parents.
Anyway, thats about it right now.
Lets just start this off with the slideshow, because these pictures are worth more than any amount of words I can type. We headed out on thurs night to Squaw Lake, which is just north of Yuma , but still on the CA side of the CA/AZ border. I got off work around 5, and picked up the truck from AAMCO where I had taken it in to get the transmission checked before towing the boat 250 miles.
Side note: We got fucked on that truck. Still not a bad deal, but Craigslist karma finally caught up with us. On a truck that was seemingly in good condition, we spent the following:
New brake rotors and pads (All 4 were warped to shit, worse than I have ever seen, and I’ve done a lot of brakes): $500
4 new tires, since the ones on it were actually passenger tires, not Light Truck tires, and were completely worn out. They weren’t even rated to handle the weight of the truck, let alone anything in the bed or being towed: $815
Oil Change, Fuel injector cleaner: $30
Transmission Service @ AAMCO - the guy we got the truck from said it was rebuilt 10k miles ago. However nothing else he said turned out to be true, so I wanted it checked. Turned out this was true, but differential oil had never been changed, so I had that done as well: $210
Finally, there was a current 2008 registration sticker on the truck, so I thought we just needed to xfer the title. Upon going to AAA, turns out the sticker was stolen, and the truck hadn’t been registered since 2006. Had 2 years of backfees on it: $820 (no wonder he conveniently “forgot” the registration card”
Insurance: $126 for 6 months liability
The fact that both of our trucks broke down in Carlsbad on him and he had to have them towed to Ventura, didn’t get in the 5am the next morning (He was warned this might happen, we disclosed everything):
Priceless
Anyway, I pick up the truck, and head home to load everything up. Dani, Evan, Anderson, Kid Nickles and I all hit the road around 8 and jumped on the freeway. 200 miles and $200 in gas later, we pulled in to thecamp site and set up shop, cracked open a few beers, and got a couple hours of sleep.
I woke up around 6:30 and Dani and I loaded up the boat. The rest of the day consisted of arguing, drinking, blasting music, and wakeboarding, and was pretty damn good overall. Got back around dark and pulled the boat out of the water, ate and crashed out.
Somehow made it up Saturday morning and got the boat ready again with Dani. (See the pattern here: 3 other lazy asses!) We were expecting Kjo to make it up around 10am or so, since he was supposed to be heading up after getting off work around 5am, with his new Sanger wakeboard boat (More about that in a minute). We cruised over to hidden shores to fill up on some gas, and then went out for some more wakeboarding. Lots more people were out on the river on Saturday as opposed to friday, Sandbars were packed with boats and drunk people.
Beer was flowing like water, and the wakeboarding was awesome. We chilled over near the cliffs and jumped
off them for a while, anchored the boat and just laid around blasting some tunes, drinking, eating lunch, talking shit, and waiting for Kjo. He finally called around 4, and said his new boat wouldn’t start and he needed help, so we headed back over to the Squaw Lake campground. He had made it about 100 yards off the boat ramp before the engine cut out on him. We tied up next to him and Evan and I took a look at it.
Upon starting the engine you would just hear a clunk sound, and then grinding. I have heard that before: a telltale sign that your starter has chipped or sheared a tooth on the fly wheel. It was a pretty grim diagnoses, and it looked like he was going to be out of commission for the rest of the trip. Shitty thing was that he had just bought the boat that week, and had rushed to get a loan through in time so he could bring it out to the river. He called the lady he bought it from, who had just had an $800 service performed on it (its an ‘06 with only 45 hours on it). Sounds like she agreed to pay to fix it once hes back in town.
We still had daylight left, and couldn’t let the party die, so we hitched up his boat to ours and towed him quite a ways back over to the cliffs so we could get some last minute partying in. This was pretty awesome, and at least we got him out on the water to enjoy a few beers on his $30,000 floating ice chest. (He got ripped on pretty bad for this mishap…not his fault, but thats the kind of people we are).
Headed back around dark, killed some more beers, then passed out to get up at 7 to pack up and drive home. Overall, an awesome trip, and definitely worth the 3.5 hour drive to get out there and do some camping. I have a feeling we will def be back multiple times this summer, not to mention the Havasu trip planned for end of June!
Heading to the River!
