Tag: Jumping

Jump Jam in Waco, Texas

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Just wanted to mention that the Jump Jam is coming up on September, 18 in Waco, Texas at the Barefoot Ski Ranch. They’re offering up $17,000 in cash prizes to the winners of the two events, one of which, anyone can win. People like Keith St. Onge, David Small and Royal Wiseman are expected to be there.

The first event is simply the biggest of jump from your two jumps. Simple, go farther than everyone else and you walk away with 5 grand.

The second event takes a bit more math to figure out who wins, but anyone can win. Simple out jump your personal best from the past 3-years of tournament jumping, and whoever increases their personal best by the largest percentage will also walk away with 5 grand.

If I’m understanding that second event correctly, say your personal best is 40 feet and you jump 60, that’s a 50% increase. If another person’s personal best is 50 feet and jumps 70, that’s only a 40% increase, so you’d win, even though you both increased your PB by the same amount.

I’ve attached the flyer for the event below with more details, including contact info.

You can also watch the Austin Barefoot Ski Club’s website for more details.

15 Percent Concentrated Power of Will

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That is what it took to write this post… not really, but it has been along time coming.  Here’s a look back at some the best pictures from 2008. My photo blogging took a bit of nose dive last year after June 1st due to the lakes closing in Madison.  When you drive 45 minutes to practice and don’t get home till 10pm or so, you just don’t have that much spare time.  The camera was still busy, so here’s a look back.
As those that follow the site know, my ski season started early in 2008.  January 26th to be exact. I went south to get some skiing in, but not very far.  Just a mere 30 minutes.  The ski site looked like this…
And the water was cold…
But it wasa fun…
The the skiing too a hiatus for a few months.  It took till the beginning of May before we back on the water…
But it has to complain when your nights on the water end like this…
A week later, the Best Dam Barefoot Race took place.  It was a little cooler this year, but still a whole lot of fun.
As May wound down, we had some very nice weather, which we made good use of…


Then, the rain hit, and it hit hard…
Leaving us with this…
And this….
So Mad-City headed about 45 minutes north, to Lake Wisco, to practice.  One of the nice things about that is we had nights that looked like this at the end of the night…
And this…
And resulted in fun practices like this…


My boat also made a few trips to Lake Wisconsin too. One of the better trips was on July 4th.  It took phone calls until 1am the night before to finalize the plans, but they were finalized and we skied on some nice water in some great scenary.


When State arrived, the rain made another cameo appearance…
But it didn’t stick around too long…
And it was still a whole lot of fun…
And we put on one hell of a good show…
Resulting in this…
The following week we did a road show in Portage, so I had a chance to do doubles again…
And then the next week we did yet another road show, this time on Lake Michigan. Unfortunately, there were 4 foot rollers there to great us…

Finally, Nationals arrived.  After a season of driving, late practices and little sleep, our Nationals show went very well…

And after our show, we hit “The Bar”…

Our efforts were rewarded…

After Nationals, the Madison lakes slowly reopened, so then we just had some fun….
And more fun…
And occasionally, we needed supplies delivered…
So the nights would end like this…
But then we’d go out again the next night…
I did get to hit the ramp a little…
And the water…
Finally, fall arrived, and the last trip out on the lake…
Then winter arrived and more nights would end like this…
So that’s the 2008 in pictures.
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Time for a Crash Course

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For those of you that think that doing these crazy tricks on skis, or your barefeet, or hitting the ramp is easy, just watch this video.  It features skiers from a professional ski show trying out the new stuff in their spare time and this video shows all the crashes these people go through to land that big stunt in the ski show.

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Another Couple Peeps Doing 7’s

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Well, it has finally come to pass.  Paul O’Conner of Mad-City is no longer the sole person doing 720’s in the show ski world.  We have a couple more people to add to the role call now.

First off, we have someone from the Waterhawks in Waterloo, Iowa doing a 7 of the ramp through some fire.

Next, we have a 16-year old named Nick Wilson, from the Lake City Skiers in Warsaw, Indiana land a 7.  
Not sure how consistent either of these people are throwing them yet, but much props to them for landing one.  Me, I still spin abot 330 degrees when I throw a heli.  Makes skiing away a bit difficult.
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Free Style!!!

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Way back in the 90s, there was a little sport called Free Style Jump.  Back then, they did a whole lot more of the ramp than just flips, gainers and helis.  They’d do all of that, then they’d do it on just a single ski, throw in some 1 ski 540’s, mobes, back mobes and some other stuff that I’m really not sure what they are and you have some pretty slick free style jumping.
It still exists today to some extent.  Now it’s called show ski jump, but just a bit tamer.  They mainly stick to the three staples (helis, flips and gainers), with a handful of people doing a bit more. You see the occasional 720, some one ski helis, and the vary rare mobious, but you just don’t see them vary often.  In the show ski world, unless you can stick damn near everytime, it’s just not going to make the show.  It’s too risky when you’re going for a state, regional or national championship.
But here are some people that don’t care about scores.  They just care about making you go “what the hell did I just see?” or “wow” or “holy shit!” and occasionaly make you’re jaw drop.

Now some ski teams still push the envelope a little bit.  Mad-City has Paul O’Conner who’s one of a handfull of people who can through a 720, and probably the only one that lands it consistently.  They also have a stable of jumpers so they can put together double 1-ski gainers, or the more traditional triple gainers.  There’s also Jon Debelak who’s skied for RAJ & Badgerland that can through the Mobe and gets to pull it out once in a while.
Some other teams will put together some crazy jumps of people flipping over helis and what not, but nothing like old school free style jumping.
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And Now a Series of Crashes…

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As promised, here is a variety of crashes from a variety of people… Not gonna do a lot of commentary, I’ll let the crashes speak for themselves…

First on the dock is Ben… he has his heli’s down pretty good and is working on his front flips… here is one of his attempts.

Next on the dock is Chad… like Ben, he’s a pretty good jumper… here’s a series of helicopters.

Next up is Tommy… he’s the best jumper of the bunch and he decided to just go out on 1 ski. Here are the results…

Finally, Andy tried hitting the ramp on his wakeboard… here are the results…

Hope you enjoyed the crashes… and the ones that they skied away from.

[Sorry this wasn’t up earlier this week as promised… besides life happening, I had some technical difficulties with Google not liking the videos for some reason, the uploader not cooperating, and my internet connection being flaky for a couple nights now.]

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Jumping in The Beav [Part 1]

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Here are a few pictures of what is likely my last jump set of the year… I decided to do some ride overs since I haven’t skied a way in while because I’ve been trying helicopters off the ramp. Granted I’ve landed every one, but I have yet to ski away. Gravity pretty much ensures that I land every time. I figured the feeling of skiing away would be nice, plus, I need to get my jumping basics down again. I’ve become a little sloppy off the ramp.

Here’s the pictures…

In this one you can see I leave the ramp a little goofy… skied away though.

Here’s another one… little bit better in the air.

And the last jump of the day…

I tweaked my ankle earlier this summer and did again in this jump set so I kept the jump set short. Every landing was painful for my ankle.

I’ve got more pictures and video clips of everyone else coming soon. Some of them contain some pretty good wipe outs… Stay tuned.

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