This weekend....
OK...I'm going to start this by saying that we are really close. And I do mean we, because there is no way that I would be doing this with out you guys. All you guys here have really pushed me to try, and I'm getting close.
Saturday I went out about 90% confident that I would do it...but having never really had a good look at the double, I just could not get my head around it. Plus the camera that Derek (waveblaster069) brought decided it did not want to work, today was just going to be practice:wink:. I headed out with the intention of doing tons of really small rolls to figure out how to rotate as fast as possible...and just get a feel for that first. Then use the advice that Pete and Joe Kenney had given me to try it...Pete and I talked about technique a bit, but we have diffenet styles to our rolls. Basically, Pete does a little S to get the momentum started for the roll and I don't. But he did tell me to start thinking about initiating the rotation a little earlier comming off the top of the wave and what helped the most was his advice to hit the wave later than you would for a normal roll. And Joe basically said to do a roll like you would off a 6inch wave, just do it off a 6 foot wave. Ok...easy enough right. :biggrin:
While both those gems of advice seem pretty obvious, it did help me a lot talk about it a little more...still trying to get my head around it, and "see it" if that makes sense.
That morning I did tons of little tiny rolls off the smallest waves I could find. And was sorting out how to rotate as fast as possible. I came to the conclusion that the best way to do it was to keep the nose really low (like you would a flat water roll) and keep weight over the front. Again, stuff that logically is the way that you would think you should do it, but I needed to figure it out. All the while I'm trying to psych my self up to do this, but was really probably doing more to psych myself out.
After sitting with the guys outside for a few minutes, and trying to still figure out just how in the **** I was going to do this...I just sort of decided it was time and I was going to try. But I did not tell any of them. I headed north a little and decided that if I was ever going to do it, that now was the time...so I turned off my brain and went for it.
Just a little FYI for you guys out there pushing for new tricks...I have found something very helpful for learning new stuff. You see there is this little voice that always seems to creep into your head just at the last second before you try something new...and I'm not sure what yours says...but mine usually says something along the lines of "woooooow wooooow what in the **** are you about to do that for????stop you moron," well you need to just turn that off and just try it. :headbang:
The first attmept was off a wave that was about head high, and if I'm being honest with myself, I'd say I probably only commited about 80%, mostly because I could still not "see" how this was going to work. And another FWI is that you will never ever land anyting like that if you are going to go in at any less than 100% you are better off not trying.. But I threw it as hard as could and made about 1.5 and threw it away, cause I didn't see any good reason to try and hold on to that. This was the farthest I had gotten up to that point, and the biggest thing I got from it was that it did not hurt, unlike the past half-ass attmepts. And that got rid of a lot of the fear portion of the trick. But still I did not have my head around it, I did not know how i was gonna do it.
I decided to take a little breather and just have some fun...Did some backys with Runaway, watched MattSmith ride his XP like a mad man (yes, the same guy that just had his ACL replaced:bigeyes

, watched Derek and Jerry going big on the blasters...and just took it easy to clear my head a little.
In doing that the spring that closes the throttle broke...so that was the end of Sat. And I was bummed! I made a little progress, but could not figure how to get farther.
Sunday...still to come...sorry I'm so long winded about this, hopefully it is interesting.