This Is The Most Public of My Many Humiliations

Tuesday, August 16, 2005

So I have put off writing this for long enough, so I am just gonna let it flow. It's 10:40 on Tuesday evening as I start to write this. Wakestock was this past weekend, and wasn't it one for the books.

Thursday was slow, I spend most of the day inside Kool Haus setting up for Friday's party. By Thursday at 10:30 PM the pools were built and lined, the rail was built covered with lights, and right as we were leaving
the winch showed up. Not just any winch though, a winch built into the frame of a motorcycle. Things seemed to becoming together nicely, aside from at this point on Thursday night, only a handful of tickets had been sold.
I then went home and tried to get a good sleep for the final touches that had to be done on Friday during the day.

The sleep was great, and was the most I got all weekend. Friday things started out semi-alright, the pools held water, which in my books is a good sign, no one wanted to see the kool haus get flooded. There was one small problem
the winch, didn't seem to have enough power, to pull someone off the start dock. We found this out, on a early morning test. From this point on, everyone had high stress levels. The buzz about the party being the first indoor wakeskating competition, had already hit the island, and tickets were starting to sell very quickly. Everything else got set up during the day, all the banners for Coors light were hung everywhere, The H2 was in place with the winch attached to the hitch on the back, things were almost perfect.

Except the winch still wasn't working when the doors opened. People started to slowly file in, and it started to get packed. The 'winch guys' were still messing around with sprockets, grinders, and all this other mechanical shit I know nothing about. I think people started to question if this thing was ever going to work.
The first band took the stage at 10:30, some punk band from Burlington, I cant really remember the name, but they were decent. By this time the place was really starting to get packed. People started asking about the competition, and when it was going to get started.

This is when I really started to get worried, I tried to forget about the broken winch, and left it in the hands of the mechanical genius' that built the machine.
The first band finished up, and people wanted to see some wakeskating. Im surprised anyone had the courage to ride the thing, since the could plainly see that it was still being worked on.
The winch guy gave the sign that he had finished the repairs and said it was "ready to roll".

It was near perfect timing cause this is when the wakeskaters started to arrive. The first dude went up on the starting dock, threw on his helmet and said "hit it"
with those 2 words, the winch got fired up, and Steve hit the throttle. It pulled the guy, he made it on the rail and bailed. The crowd was unimpressed, but those of us that had worked on this thing erupted in joy when we saw that it actually worked.
This is when I started to get really drunk. The second band 'Money Money' took the stage in the British retro clothed glory. They were really good, and I took great pictures of their set.

It is about 11:45, and reef asked me if I wanted to come in the limo and pick up some of the best wakeboarders in the world, Parks Bonifay to name one. I sat next to parks in the back, and asked him about his world record.
This guy has a world record for being the youngest person to be pulled on water skies. He did it at an early age of 6 months 4 days. We got back to the kool haus, I walked in the 15 riders we picked up and showed them the pools. They thought it was some of the coolest shit they had ever seen.

I took the riders on stage as the last band finished up, people started to get really drunk and started riding the winch while the band played. I was so happy everything was going well that I decided to get really really drunk. There was a few inches of water on the Kool Haus floor, but the only person who seemed to care was the owner, and he made us shut the winch down at about 12:45. Still people stayed and partied most of the night, it was hard to get people to leave around 3 am. All and all the party really went off well, and there are rumors of a world tour circulating through my group of friends.

Saturday was not to entertaining, everything had to be taken down from inside Kool Haus, the pools had to be drained and taken apart, as well with the rail. Let me tell you, no one wanted to do this at all. I hung out for a few hours in the morning and watched people work, that is what I am best at. Then I decided that it was time to go over to the island with some friends for a victory lap, and to find out what people thought of the party. We went wandered around and watched some wakeboarding. A few friends had made it to the finals for rails, and we were all pretty stoaked about that. Saturday night was the party in Montana's parking lot. The thing was an overrated kegger. Total disaster compared to the party that was thrown on Friday. Though they did have a bikini competition but that just brings more drunk testosterone freaks. I left early, and went to bed since I had got little to no sleep the night before.

Sunday was a great day, I went to the island early and watched the finals all day. It was really great cause I sat in VIP and got free everything. I am a fan of free.
We watched all the awards and headed back to the mainland at about 8.
10 of us went out for dinner before the 'end of wakestock party'. It was at after life, and was really fun. All the best boarders were there drunk as shit. Its really entertaining to watch those American boys drink.

After the party Shreef and I took a cab back to our hotel. We were staying at the renaissance @ the skydome, and had a few rooms, one with a field view where we watched a argo's game, and the Toronto police games but that is beside the point.
Over the weekend I had seen Red One in the lobby of the hotel with his boys but I never approached him, there was a huge concert in Toronto over the weekend so there were a lot of hip hop artist wandering around the city.

So I tell reef to go and talk to him. I told him it was red one, and to invite him to come have some drinks with us in the field view room. Red one agrees and says he will be back soon, as he gets in a car and drives off.
Reef and I head to the room and start rolling joints, that is when the party started. Parks Bonifay, Shane Bonifay, Brian Grubb and a bunch of other top wakeboarders came to party. We smoked about 200 joints, and then we heard a knock at the door. It was red one. He walked in, saw that we had a party of about 20 people, and said he was going to his room to get his boys. And that he did, his boys showed up and started partying, as well did Red one. They were loving the wakeboarders and asking all these questions about the sport, and the party on Friday night. It was really cool to see two totally opposite groups of people mesh into one and have a great time.

EDIT:Jen is really stoned in this picture, and she insisted that i put this here.

The party went on until about 6 am, when all the wakeboarders had to leave to catch a few hours of sleep before the flew home, that was Red One and his crews cue to leave as well. I then went upstairs and went to bed.
this weekend seemed to last for 2 weeks, even as I type this I am beyond tired.
I hope you enjoyed the pictures and the story.
Your gracious host,
Angelo

killed softly at 8/16/2005 11:17:00 PM

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