Forward motion, headfirst & horizontal to gravity!

informal ways to compete?

Doing this on it's on forum to not take away from the discussion on organized competition.

hope everyone is on the new FLI mailing lists and read Josh's post about the benefits of competition. I hope i don't misdirect things too much with extolling informal competition, but I hope everyone will find new ways to have fun even if it isn't official competition. Rochelle and I have made an easy river that neither of us had been on before fun by racing down it for the first round of drinks, and we did it the day after we had already went tooth and nail in competition the day before.

What about just racing one rapid that everyone knows real well on your weekly trip on the river you do a lot, then cut back to leisure pace?

Or a jam session at the hole. No one is scoring your run, but you want to show off and push each other to do some new tricks.

Another thing some of my local crew and I have done was play board. It's basically like the basketball game of horse except that you receive a letter every time you hit a rock; and the lowest amount of letters wins. We did it in Costa Rica when the Payebaye river was low and not too exciting ( did any of us make it through without getting board? I can't remember ). I played it again over the summer. It was a day when the temperature reached into the high 90's, so we didn't feel like wearing our wetsuits. There we went in nothing but pfd's , board shorts, booties, and fins, and went to find out who could hit the least amount of rocks with our bare knees and shins. Then you see who can pick the best lines.

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Permalink Reply by Kevin Yount on January 22, 2012 at 6:11pm

Brian, if you get a chance to stop in at Horseshoe Bend, ID on your way back east, check it out. A few inland spongers there that do stuff such as lay back spins and spinning while sitting Indian style. The toughest tricks I've seen so far would be drop knee spins or front loops. Best routine I've seen would be some of Alex's best moments at the gutter ( flat spin, then seamlessly into spinning the board under his body, barely a pause before a rollo, etc. A lot more fluid than the rest of us that do a trick, steady ourselves, do the next trick etc., and not only does his runs look super stylish, but he simply logs more scoreable tricks in his surf each round when it comes to competition ).

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Permalink Reply by BrianJ on January 24, 2012 at 5:24pm

nice, i will have to try and check it out over there, i love a good wave. my record at this point is two spins, one reverse spin, two el rollos. i havnt been able to do better than that lately

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Permalink Reply by BrianJ on June 12, 2012 at 1:42am

so ive been surfing that barking dog a bit now and i just got the best water level the other day. really good wave. still havnt run chili bar section yet on my board. but everytime i hit that first threat wave in my raft i am looking at it wishing i was surfing it on my board!