Jul/091
Show Skiing
The path to show skiing success has been going quite well. Joining the team a third of the way through the season has been tough, but it hasn’t taken long for me to regain the status I had left there two years ago. Now I am at the point of surpassing this. In the past three weeks I have relearned how to freestyle jump ski, which has always been my favorite part of being a part of the club. Currently I have relearned long distance jumps (which are currently closing in at 100 feet), helicopter spins (a 360 degree spin with a wrapped handle) and front flips. I am also on the verge of teaching myself to throw the elusive gainer, which is a backflip while moving forward. After many failed attempts I managed to successfully land this last weekend.
Another great thing about the club is the untapped talent of the other skiers. I just recently taught my friend Adam to land his first front flip off the jump. This will be a great addition to the team jumping we do in shows. I have also taught many young skiers the basics of water skiing and they should be working on to get spots in the show and out of the beginner training. Teaching these young skiers brings such a good sense of accomplishment for myself. I love seeing the excitement in their face when they have accomplished that next step 
So for future posts I’ve decided to focus on show skiing technique. I would love it if this spawned a network of show skiers offering advice and making posts in their respective talents, as there are many facets of the sport I don’t even touch. I am currently getting ready to head to the midwest regionals tournament this weekend and I am excited to meet some of the other talented clubs in the area. In the meantime, check out this video that encompasses the freestyle jump skiing world.
Jul/091
Embed YouTube Videos In Your Wordpress Blog
In my previous post I had embedded a YouTube video using the nifty Wordpress plugin Smart YouTube. It’s very easy to use once activated. The plugin parses through your posts and comments looking for any urls that have the resource type:
- “httpv” for regular video
- “httpvh” for high quality video
- “httpvhd” for HD quality video
- “httpvp” for video playlists
So all you have to do is copy the url of the YouTube video you want in your post, paste it, and change “http” to one of the resource types in my list. No tags required, since the plugin does all the work for you. It appears in your post just like it would appear on the YouTube site itself. This allows viewers to use the various features that YouTube allows, such as full screen viewing (which is a big deal for me). Check out Smart YouTube Plugin for more information.
Jul/092
Crazy On You Intro Cover
Lately I’ve been getting into diligent practicing of my guitar and trumpet. I decided to find some material to cover to build on my skills and provide a challenge for myself. After hearing The Decemberists cover Crazy On You by Heart, I was enticed to learn the crazy acoustic intro to this song. I posted it up on YouTube and embedded it here. Hope you enjoy!
Jul/091
First Day Back At Sioux Falls Water Ski Club
Two Man Heli
I’m finally back to doing what I love. Today was my first day back at the Sioux Falls Water Ski Club, aka Catfish Bay. Unfortunately the practice was called off early due to severe weather in the area. However, I did happen to get a jump set in. This is definitely my all time top favorite stunt to perform in the show ski world. It has been two years since I’ve been able to hit the jump and surprisingly things went quite well. After successfully landing two ride overs on the jump, I decided to go for the heli (a wrapped 360). Lo and behold those two years of rust did not phase me and I landed the first one. I got two more chances to try again, and only failed at one (but two out of three ain’t bad). To give you an idea of what this looks like I pulled an old photo from a few years back out of my facebook photos. In the future I hope to post video footage of the kind of stunts I perform as well as what some of the other amazing performers at the bay have to offer. I also have posted another photo of me in the barefoot line from about the same time period. This is probably one of my favorite pictures ever captured of a barefoot line. Looks
pretty rough, which it really is. I typically enjoy being on the outside of such a stunt, since a face full of water while going 40 mph is not typically comfortable.