Quote Originally Posted by larry_arizona View Post
Tubing causes the worst injuries in my opinion.

I have a tube ban on my boat.
I couldn't agree more. back when I was in my late 20's we went on a houseboat trip. We wakeboarded, skied, kneeboarded until we'd felt we'd done it all. Just for kicks, we pulled out the tube. My "Friends" destroyed me to the point where I literally couldn't strap on any kind of equipment and do any more watersports for the last day of the trip. My first chiropractic visit ever followed... No thanks. My family believes that the best tube is the one you leave at home.



That said, I've been wakeboarding 23 years. I'm almost 47 now. I don't do inverts. I got to intermediate and plateaued. (a lot of it had to do with the fact that there really wasn't any coaching available to us in the late 90s. No one we knew wakeboarded!)

My tricks include wake to wake jumps, sometimes out into the flats. I can throw a few different grabs. toe and heel butter slides. Toeside 180's. That's about it. I've had plenty of times over the years where I've rung my bell like mentioned above. I now ride with a helmet (there's some disagreement about the whole helmet thing, but since I wear one on the motorcycle, snowboard, and mountain bike; I also wear one wakeboarding and on the wakefoil. I've knocked the wind out of myself. I've woke up with a stuff neck (minor whiplash) but honestly NO more dangerous than snowboarding. In fact, my biggest soft tissue injury was a torn MCL and partially torn ACL and that was from snowboarding, not wakeboarding. Even with full boot bindings cinched up tight on my wakeboard, my biggest crashes have ripped my feet out of the board. in both slalom skiing and wakeboarding, I've probably cut too hard for my own good and given myself a bit of "golfer's elbow" and I get some wrist ache from fatigue from gripping the handle.

Definitely wakeboard. There's nothing else like it. The feeling of flying thorough the air is fantastic. And the feeling of gliding and cutting the the butter glassy water. It's something that surfing can't even come close to. Like any boardsport, you pay for it occasionally. But I wouldn't give it up.



A couple years ago a friend of mine came out on my boat and did some vid for me and it completely captured my joy of watersports. Here's my commercial for that life we love! Watch it in 1080p, and if this doesn't fuel your stoke for doing all the watersports, there's honestly something wrong with you.