You know what’s even more fun than finding excellent winching spots? Finding creepy, run-down, rotting, old houses in the middle of nowhere at the same time and calling them haunted. My friends and I have been scouting a lot lately. We found a little canal secluded into the woods, but still not too far from my home. It had concrete sides that were a little rough, but could potentially be sick for wall riding! I chickened out and only went up about 2 feet on the wall. Soon, I’m going to go back and conquer it after I put some more wax on the concrete. It’s weird how after someone buys a winch, he or she starts to develop “winch radar”. You start paying a lot more attention to water structures like you never have before. We were picking out rooms from the haunted house to stay the night in but shortly after, thought we should leave before the walls started to bleed. I’m glad we did because later on, I heard from some other mountain folk that the house was a place where people…well…cooked stuff that wasn’t exactly legal.Wake riding has been going really well too! The wake on our boat is dialed and literally kickin! After the Atlanta tour stop, I got to ride with Daniel Walden and some other Tennessee  riders on Lake Chattanooga. I also am officially done with community college and ready for Chico State next year! They have a really good wakeboard team as well so that’s also exciting! If any of you are still getting ready for finals, don’t be like Shawna, Shelby and I and fly crowded airlines the night before! Hope you all are having a great beginning of the Summer!

-Raequel

So I guess I’ll start by giving a brief overview of what’s been going on with me lately. Right now I am at home in Chico, California. There are two big new toys in my garage; one of them is an Epic boat with a spiderweb wrap and the other is a pink winch I just bought! I can’t play with them right now, but I’ll get into that later. First I’ll start from the end of winter. After a rad snowboarding season I packed up and left the mountains for Florida. Being a cook at The Wakeboard Camp allowed me to have some ideal Florida weather and training! In addition to learning new stuff on a wakeboard, I also got to learn how to curve a strike in bowling (Thanks Benny G). I found some swamps to run by, played HORSE on the trampoline with co-workers, and went to the beach. Oh, and I got 3rd place and 10 bucks in a karaoke competition at the bar across the street from the camp! I wanted the 75 dollar 1st place prize, but I had fun anyway because Rhiannon is fun to sing. There was a day when some other c-dub riders came out to film for learnwake.com that included Trevor, Bryan and Nick. My Mom and Shawna also came to visit me for a week. One of the best things about working at a camp is getting familiar with all the different kinds of accents of the world. I have fun practicing them every time I know a telemarketer is calling. One time I practiced my Aussie accent when an unavailable call was coming from my phone and it actually turned out to be my soon-to-be-roommate Amber Wing!

It’s too bad I didn’t get to spend more time in our lakefront house, but having my shoulder dislocated for a whole hour got in the way of that (hence why I came home early). My welcoming family, friends and boyfriend are helping me to feel super again and I’m sure I’ll be back riding in no time. I’ve been camping, roller-blading, disk golfing and getting caught up with school. I think I’m going to build a C-rail while I’m out too. Well thanks for reading this and have a wonderful day!

-Raequel