We kicked off the summer barefoot season by hosting a Freestyle Fly-in in Winter Haven, Florida at the beginning of May. We'd like to thank Paul Macdonald at Ron Scarpa Watersports for hosting the event and making us feel so welcome during our visit.  We had a great time hanging out with their students and instructors.

Getting to the Florida Fly-in had nothing to do with flying.  Andre De Villiers (who had arrived in the US the evening of May 5) and I drove from Houston, Texas to Winter Haven.  We would pick up Nolan and Chad Lough along the way.  The drive from Houston to Florida is around 19 hours.  We decided to drive instead of fly because we needed to pull the BFC boat, a completely Freestyle tricked out Sanger Outboard with tower, SFH, boom, etc..

We left for Florida at 5:30am on May 6th.  We picked Chad and Nolan up in Beaumont, Texas around 7am.  All was good.  We had great weather and an easy drive.  You point your car east on I-10 and sit back for the next 13 hours.  But as you all know, we can never have a normal trip, especially when you have Andre De Villiers in the car.

It's become tradition that Andre challenge everyone to a slugbug competition.  That's when you see a VW beatle, you slug the other person.  We don't do the slugging, but instead keep points.  Points vary based on the type of VW Beatle: New style Beatles=1pt, Oldschool Beatles=2pts, Oldschool VW busses=3pts, and if you see a VW dealership=5pts  If you call a false one, you loose the number of points equal to what you called.  It's a simple game, but extremely competitive the way we play it; reason being, the person with the most points has total control of the trip.  That person gets to pick who drives, who sits where in the car/truck, when we stop, where we eat, who sleeps where etc... Where you stand in the points ranking dictates where you stand in the pecking order in the car.  You have to obey anyone that has more points than you.  The goal seems to always be to take the power away from Chuck.  My goal is of course not to loose it.  I dread the day Andre beats me.  He's amassed a long list of losses to me and he'll revel in the payback for all the trash talk I've enjoyed giving him the last two years.  For those who care, our scores to and from Florida were:

Trip to Florida:  Chuck:13, Chad:10, Andre:9, Nolan:0
Trip Florida to Houston:  Chuck:27, Andre:13, Nolan:13, Chad:3

We arrived in Florida about 1am on Friday morning.  Alarms were set for 6:15am.  We had a full day of Freestyle video shooting scheduled for Friday, so sleep would have to be made up later.  The plan was to be on the water all day shooting videos and teaching skiers new moves.  The early morning was to be dedicated to some fun footing behind the ultra-light plane similar to what we've done in the past.  But this time, we scheduled two planes, one to ski behind and a second plane for video and photos.  We met the pilots at the Winter Haven airport to review the flight plan, skier running orders, lake we'll be skiing on (Lake Howard), speeds, height, radio communications, hand signals, camera angles and anything we felt needed to be discussed because once you're in the air, there is no stopping.

This was Nolan's first time to foot behind the plane and he was both nervous and excited.  We had always used a jet ski to do the skier/plane hook-up in the past.  Mike Salber planned to bring a jetski to the shoot later that afternoon, so the morning shoot required us to use my outboard Sanger.  It worked great.  Speed and agility wasn't an issue.  We had tried using inboard boats in the past, but they couldn't react quickly enough to the speed and drift changes of the plane. 

The early morning test runs consisted of myself in the photo plane with Andre and Nolan in the water having fun skiing behind the plane.  Chad Lough did a great job driving the Sanger for the hook-ups.  He had never done that before.  As the driver, you can't see the handle coming in behind the boat, so you have to listen to the skiers call commands and speed while worring about a plane right above your boat.  It's a crazy experience the first few times you drive for it.  It can be just as exciting as the skiing for sure.

After the morning test flight, we headed over to Ron Scarpa Watersports to check in with Ron and Paul.  We put together a skier running order for the afternoon.  Todd Ristorcelli, Editor of Waterski Magazine, dropped in at lunch and we decided to put him in the 2nd plane that afternoon.  Andre, Ron, Paul and Nolan would be the skiers.  By lunch time, Mike Salber had arrived with the jet ski, so we would include it in the mix along with the Sanger for hooking skiers up with the handle.  So after lunch, we all took to the water again for more high flying fun. 
 

Out on the water, we met up with Geno Yauchler.  Geno is the reigning World Hydrofoil Champion and Team Eagle skier.  He and I had spoken about the planes and I had promised Geno that if he was brave enough to ride the foil at 45mph, I'd do my best to get him hooked up with a pull from the plane.

 

After a solid 3 hours on the water with near perfect conditions, we decided to call it a day.  We pulled the boats, thanked the pilots and headed back in.  We were in need of a quick nap, so the Team BFC crew headed back to the hotel to relax before the evening festivities.  It was about 4:30pm by this time and we had scheduled a tour of Banana George's house at 6pm.  It was to be a final tour of his home before the house would be sold.  Gordie Anderson, a very good friend of Banana's, had set up the tour.  For those of you who missed this rare and amazing opportunity, we made sure to video it for you.
 

After the Banana House tour, we were starving, so we called up Geno Yauchler to check in on where he wanted to meet us for dinner.  It was decided that we all meet at Harborside, a local bar & restaurant off the chain of lakes.  Geno & his wife brought a group of showskiers (swivel skiers from Lake St Louis) with them.  We all had a great time eating and reviewing the day's activities.  During the evening, I decided to turn on my notebook and launch BFC Live.  We didn't know if anyone would be interested in chatting with us over dinner, but to our surprise there were several people.  And to our most pleasant surprise, several BFC Live visitors called the restaurant and ordered us rounds of drinks.  Viewers from Wisconsin, Dallas, and California all delivered drinks to our table.  That became the talk of the team the rest of the trip.  We all voted on having BFC Live Broadcasts from bars/restaurants from then on.  We all left the restaurant full of food and in great spirits.  We had another full day of skiing planned for Saturday.

Saturday began similar to Friday.  The alarms went off at 6:30 and we headed over to Scarpa's to meet up with Paul Macdonald.  We put two boats in the water and loaded them each down with students and skiers that wanted to come out a learn some Freestyle moves.  Andre, Paul and Nolan thrilled the gang with freestyle runs as Jimmy Taylor, myself, Zane Salber tried our best to get it all on video.  Mike Salber, Paul, and Chuck wowed everyone with some amazing stunt boat and jetski driving.  Zane Salber amazed us all by being able to stay on a jetski while keeping the skier in frame as he ran a video camera while Mike was driving back and forth across wakes.  You'll be able to see the outcome of those shoots in the upcoming Freestyle Video Challenge after May 22.

I was pleased to see that there were several skiers that had an interest in learning some of the new tricks.  Skiers attending ranged in age from 15 to 50.  Everyone wanted to learn a dolphin start, side slide and how to jump out of the boat.  The more advanced skiers were eager to try the jump over the boat.  Andre De Villiers was great to have on hand as he explained to everyone his teaching approach and how he looks at each trick, boom heights, speeds, driving techniques, etc....  Hopefully everyone involved walked away with some knowledge they didn't have coming into the day.

Saturday evening, we hosted a BFC Freestyle Barbeque for all.  Paul & Jenn Macdonald arranged a barbeque buffet and plenty of drinks.  It was a great evening.  We turned on the BFC Live broadcast again and answered questions as skiers posted them throughout the evening.  We surprised Andre with an awards ceremony for his winning the 2009 Freestyle Challenge and to welcome him to the 2010 Freestyle season.  Check out the video below: 
 

Thanks to all who came out.  We appreciate your hospitality and hope to see you again soon. 

Thanks to everyone that helped make our trip to Florida a memorable one.  Special thanks to Paul & Jenn Macdonald, Ron Scarpa, Mike Salber, Rhett Radford, Todd Ristorcelli, Geno Yauchler, and Gordie Anderson