I am lucky, there is no doubt about it. The skills and job that I have pretty much fell in my lap. Sure I worked hard and have a passion for it but really I just did what I loved and followed the path. One day I was a kayaker playing around with my outfitting and adding foam to my kayak to see what it would do and the next I was hacking away at a big piece of foam with a chainsaw making a "toy", that one day, I would get to paddle. Like I said, I am lucky. On this day I got to see another thing that motivates me rather than my own desire to paddle new things. I got to see an old friend find playboating again because of a design I am working on. If you don't know, Woody actually was a bad ass playboater a while ago. He used to spend hours dropping into mystery spots, blasting holes, throwing one arm bandits, screwing around, and doing paddle behind the neck bow draw squirts. (It hurts my rotator cuff when I think about it.) Sure Woody is still dropping down the Green and self supporting through the Grand Canyon but he has a little part of him that always wants to play the river and wooo the ladies with his play skills(no offense Kim). That is why this day was one of my favorite days as a designer. Woody, all 6'4" 250 lbs of man meat that he is came off the river and said, "that was awesome!" That is like music to my ears, like a little sugar in my coffee, like 5 sqaures of toilet paper left, its like hard rain late at night. Ok you get the picture. It was cool.
Woody and I took the prototype Freeride 67s over to the Pigeon river, or "dirty bird" if you are a local that has been around since that stanky river opened up for public consumption. The nice thing is that nowadays the "bird" is down right pleasant for paddling, and smelling. There are several fun playspots, especially at the high flows we have been having. There were many good waves in Initiation and on down to Lost Guide. The wave at the bottom of Lost Guide was really fun, quick, and dynamic. Woody was stretching his long lost play boating wings with wave surfing, spinning, but he never did pull out the behind the neck bow draw stern squirt. There are more photos of the day here.
Heres a little video. Excuse the music. I was feeling my dubstep.
Cheers
Shane
