When I checked the mail today, the “Heerenveense Courant” was in it, it is our local newspaper. When I got to the sports section, they had a nice article about my PKRA in Germany, which I informed them about. There is a nice big picture included, so I am pretty happy with the promotion 
Check it out:
Last weekend I was invited at the Jägermeister WakeRiderz in Almere. That is a wakeboarding event where the best riders of the Netherlands and some international riders show off their skills in a competition over obstacles and freestyle. The organisation invited also some high level windsurfers and kiteboarders, including me. The plan was to do a short demo-competition between the windsurfers and kiteboarders, each rider got 2 runs to show off the best tricks.
We arrived early afternoon, and we looked around the event a little bit. The level of the wakeboarders was pretty high, but not as high as we expected. However, some riders showed off some really sick moves! After about an hour our competition started. We got 1 round to introduce yourself, I decided to do a “blind judge” (railey to blind) in the 4th turn, but I crashed it.
Bas was the first to start the heat, and when he got to the other side of the competition area I had to start. I did not see what trick Bas did, so I decided to play it safe and start off with a Railey. In the 4th Turn I did a nice Railey, and landed. The only problem was my speed, because I was riding on my kiteboard the board was kind of hard to brake! I ended up at the 5th turn (where the cable tower also stands in the water) and I almost rammed the tower. Because of my quick turn the cable got slack and when it got back on tension I was out of balance. I tried to hold on to the cable for as long as possible, but after a nice long drag I decided to let go. So that was not the biggest succes, I had to swim and when I got back on the starting dock I was pretty tired haha.
So for the 2nd run I had to show some better moves, and I decided to go for the Railey to blind, followed by a Backmobe. In the 4th turn I went for the Railey to blind, but after the blind landing I dropped the handlebar and fell over, so that was the end of my heat. I was pretty sad that I did not had the chance to show my backmobe, however I probably would not have landed it.
The other boys did some nice tricks, mainly Sbends, Blind judges and some slider action. Bas managed to land a double S-bend, what impressed a lot of pro riders! The final result:
1. Menno Visser (Kite/wakeboarder)
2. Junior Ortwin Cyrus (Kite/wakeboarder)
3. Julien Taboulet (Windsurfer/wakeboarder)
4. Kevin Mevissen (Windsurfer/wakeboarder)
5. Bas Koole (Kiteboarder)
6. Tijn van Esch (Kiteboarder)
We had a lot of fun, and organizer René gave Bas and me some nice bottles of Jäger for the trip home! Bas and I are really motivated to train some more on the cable, so hopefully we can come back next year and kick some Windsurfer’s butt!
The Report-Movie by Litewave:
Nightsession
A couple of weeks ago, we had a nice nightsession at our homespot Workum. Some of the photos look really cool, so I decided to post some here: (click for big)
Invitation
Also other good news: Today I received an email from Jagermeister Wake Riderz, they organize a demo-competition wakeboarding on the cable this weekend in Almere, and they want Bas Koole and me to represent the dutch Kiteboarders! We will compete against pro windsurfers and snowboarders (on the cable), so hopefully I can show off some wakestyle moves
check out their website for more info: http://www.riderz.tv
Since I was a little short on time, the updates had to wait some days. Now I have some more time, so here comes the wrap-up!
Day 6: Today we went to the event site to check the schedule, and we heared there was only some racing this day. So we were all glad to be free for the day, we decided to pack the cars and drive to the lagoon we checked out the day before. When we arrived there, the spot looked epic! flat water and some good wind. It felt a little light at first, but the forecast said the wind would pick up later. I rigged my 10m and got my suit on. We asked some local rider about the parking, he told us it was not allowed to park by the spot. When he told us the fine would be 20 euros, we laughed and decided to move 1 car away from the spot and keep the other there. The parking is about 1,5km away from the spot, so we did not feel like walking all that way. We dropped our car, and we kept Steve’s car on the spot. When we were all ready to go, some parking guy came and told Steve it was not allowed to park here. Steve laughed and said “I know!”, then he walked away. The parking guy looked a bit confused, then he walked away too!
On the water, we had to go upwind a little but that was definately worth the time! There was super flat water behind some grass and sheer, about 1m deep with slippery mud and sandy bottom. We were trying all our hardest tricks, and some fun moves like riding blind for a while after the landing. However, after 15 minutes my knee started to hurt again. I had a little break, and decided to fly my kite on 4 lines, just for fun. I took it out, and it was not too bad, a little more jellyfishing than before but it felt like the momentum after edging hard got a little greater. I did some moves, but my knee was still hurting so I went back to the car. I had some drinks and then the others came to the car too. When we looked at the car, we were very surprised: we had no fine! I guess the parking guy did not think it was worth the trouble. We went back to the event site for some dinner, then the others did an upwinder. Because my knee hurted too much, I decided to walk there in stead of kiting, and do some filming. It looked like the wind was great, and I had some great shots. Especially Steve was rocking, he was trying one handed tricks and he did quite well. We had some fun (especially about Jelle Hak’s broken board), and then I walked back. The others where way ahead, kiting seems to be a lot faster than walking… We went home, and in the evening we went to Jelle’s appartment and had some beers. We checked out the party later on, but it was not so very special.
Day 7: We got up early, because we had to leave the appartment by 10 and there was some cleaning up to do. We sorted out all of our stuff, and packed the cars. We had most of out kite equipment in the car, from the day before. We dropped off the key at the tourist office, then we drove to the event site. After a small discussion with one of the beach officials, we had permission to drive the car all the way to the event. We packed the final stuff that was left in the kite-tent, then we said everyone goodbye. Bas and Steve decided to drive directly home, we wanted to check the lagoon again. When we got there, it was kind of abandoned, so we did not feel like going. We drove back to the event once more, but then we decided to leave for home too, so we could be at a friends party later that day. The trip home was relaxed, we drove slow (120) and even in this early stage of the day we ended up in a traffic jam (which costed abnout 1 hour in total). Eventually we got home at 18.15, so the trip back was also 6 hours. We were just in time for the BBQ party, so I said to Annie we could drive to Lemmer (20km’s of my home) easily without stopping at the gas station, so we could save some time. However, our car seems to think different about how low the gas meter can go, so 4km before Lemmer the engine stopped. We had a good laugh, and luckily somebody brought us 5 litres of gas, so we could make it to Lemmer. Eventually it got late and we were super tired, but we had a great week in St. Peter Ording. Next year we will be back for sure!
