Robby and Julian are featured on Alliance's Shreducation

Our up-and-coming O'Brien riders, Robby Holihan and Julian Cohen, along with other junior men riders spent last Saturday shooting with the Alliance crew and learning what it takes to make it in the wakeboard industry. It looks like they had a good time.

Thanks to Garrett, Jeff, and Patrick for taking the time to work with the younger talent.

Click Here for more.

Playin' in the Cold

It is starting to get cold in Orlando which is not cool. I know that it is colder in most other locations in the United States so I apologize for my whining, but this is Florida and it is supposed to be nice year round. With the past couple of nights getting to near freezing temperatures, I was forced to pull out the fullsuit today. The other frustration was finding riders that wanted to go out on the boat. Since that didn't happen, I made my way up to OWC to shred the cable for a bit. After the first couple of passes I could no longer feel my hands, but I knew that if I wanted to stay warm I'd just have to keep riding. I ended up having a great time playing on the rails with the Paradigm. I can't wait for you all to hop on one when it hits the market. It will blow you away.

Anyways, after riding for a while I decided to call it a day and made my way back to the truck. As I was changing out of my wetsuit, I saw Robby Holihan, one of our up-and-coming O'Brien riders, cruising around on the cable. Then I watched Julian Cohen hop off the dock. So my plans of going home and taking a nice hot shower completely changed. I grabbed my camera and made my way towards one of the kickers to get some shots of these two chargin' it. Hope you like 'em.

Wake Team Addition

I just want to welcome Jeff Langley as the newest member to the O'Brien team. I've been riding with Jeff over the past couple of years and I can't tell you how pumped I am to have him on the team. He is super fun to ride with and has tons of style. Definitely keep your eyes out for him. He'll be one to watch out for.

Pre-Paradigm Re-Edit

This footage was filmed about a year ago by Tyler Davis. Just recently he was messing around with the footage and put together a little re-edit of the original video. Hope you like it.

Sean O'Brien|Re-Edit from Lockdown Media on Vimeo.

Lachlan Burges

Lachlan on lake holden this past summer. Lachlan has been coming for the past 3 summers from Australia to ride and I am sure you will see more of him.

check out Aguaplease on Fuel.tv Private lakes

Go check out AguaPlease Episode 9 on Fuel.tv

Mike Ennen, Kevin Henshaw and myself hit up some private lakes around WA

http://www.fuel.tv/agua-please-episode-9-private-reserve/

Thanks

Nick Ennen

Dallas on Twitter

Follow Dallas on twitter @DallasFriday.

Radio Interview

Hi all,

Last Saturday, Sian Hurst and I headed to Phantom FM Radio Station (a Dublin Rock Station), where we were interviewed for 10 minutes about wakeboarding. They asked us all sorts of questions from: What is wakeboarding, to how did we get involved in the sport, etc. They had been running a competition all week during their Drive Time programme with a prize of an O'Brien Valhalla wakeboard with bindings, a bib signed by the Irish team, and a one to one lesson from me. Sian and I were interviewed during the Saturday afternoon Sports Show. At the end of the show they announced the winner but I suspect she will wait until the Spring to have the lesson as the water in the lake is getting really cold now!

The interview was filmed by Weekend Warriors - check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dp7kpv8tXMc -

It was really great to do something like this as it helps promote the sport in Ireland.

Cheers

David

Playing around in Tennessee

Here's a little GoPro footage of Sean O'Brien riding the 2011 O'Brien Paradigm on the Tennessee River. It was all shot in one set and includes all of the crashes. Hope you guys like it.

Sean O'Brien taking a set in Tennessee from Sean O'Brien on Vimeo.

Free Video Download

Go to liquidnfilms.com to download a free video called "On the Line" featuring Obrien ridders Lachlan Burges, Cory Teunissen and Jarrod Askew.

Beautiful Orlando

Got a chance to get out and ride today before dark. We have been getting lucky in Orlando still having nice weather to ride. Dallas got some pics with her phone.

Tarah Mikacich Video

Tarah at OWC . Check it!!!

http://vimeo.com/12765453

Brad Spencer video

Video of Brad Spencer at Orlando Watersports complex. Check it!!

http://vimeo.com/14428778

My new best friend

I will be more motivated than ever to get my knee back to normal with this in my back yard!!!! Thanks Malibu!! It is so amazing!!

Night Wakeboard Shoot

Hi everyone,

So, the season may be over but that doesn't mean we can't ride.

Recently we did a film shoot with Weekend Warriors. It was freezing on the lake with temperatures sub zero, but surprisingly thats not the crazy part. The crazy part is that it was in the middle of the night and dark. We put spot lights on the shore and on the boat. Peter Stewart, Sian Hurst, Nico Sweeney, Paul Johnston, Robin Coates and myself were the riders.

Together with Joe Copage's excellence we were able to put this amazing 10 minute movie together. .

Filming this reminded me how amazing wakeboarding is and how there is yet so many more creative things that can still be done.

I really hope you enjoy watching it as much as we enjoyed shooting it.

Cheers,

David

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqXSzZairLA

Team Mapple Now Taking Reservations For 2011!

After an overwhelmingly successful debut in the summer of 2010, Team Mapple is hitting the road again in 2011! Make sure you book early so you can get on the schedule before it fills up. Go to TEAMMAPPLE.COM for information.

More Aguaplease...

Check out Joey Meddocks photos from the Aguaplease Episode 5 trip to the San Juans at the Ennens Cabin.

Dallas

Check out this crazy pic of Dallas charging toeside double ups before she injured her knee at the pro tour in texas.

Josh Sanders Video

Video of Josh Sanders......Check it!!

Aguaplease with Nick Ennen

Check out Nick Ennen on Aguaplease fuel.tv winching down a spill way tucked back in the Mts. in The North Cascades.

O'Brien at the INT US Championships

O'Brien is proud to be a sponsor of the INT league. This series of tournaments is geared toward the family and novice participants. At the season finals O'Brien featured Adam Cord skiing in the semi pro division and Andy Mapple skiing an exhibition round on Friday. On Saturday Elite team skier Nichole Arthur came out and showed the crowd her form on the Elite Alpha that helped her set a new European record this season.




Adam skiing on the new Elite Quattro.




Andy skiing on the Elite Alpha in front of the INT crowd.





Adam and Andy at INT.




Nichole Arthur on her Elite Alpha skiing an exhibition round for the INT crowd on Saturday.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Orlando FL

Dallas trying new boots

Some funny pics of Dallas at Surf Expo

Dallas's Hardware

Dallas had a check up at the doc. Check out all that is going on in her knees!! Doc said she is lucky and will have a great recovery. She just spent a week in Alabama where she had her surgery with Dr. Andrews doing their physical therapy which they had her there for three hours in the mornings and three hours in the afternoon. Things are going good, lots of hard work, but she should be back soon.

Blog Of End of Season Riding

Hi guys,

Since the comp. season finished a couple of weeks ago I've been able to get lots of free riding in with my friends like Sian Hurst, Robin Coates, Pete Stewart, Fi Bannon, Joe Coppage, Ryan Craddock and Dan Kavanagh. We've had a lot of fun on the lake trying new stuff and I managed to land a couple of Slim Chances and I'm working on Batwings to blind. As I live in Dublin though I can only get to the lake at the weekends but I do a lot of trampolining during the week. The water is getting colder here now and it's starting to get dark earlier but for the moment we can still ride until about 7.45pm. I'm also back at school so that's taking a bit of getting used to but it's not too bad.

Thanks,

David

The Castle

It's been a few busy days over here of riding, going to a castle, and checking out one of the local wakeboard contests with the guys from O'Brien Japan. Unfortunately I didn't have a camera for most of it... sorry.

Anyways, there have been more and more riders showing up at the cable recently, so Yuki and I have been going out and riding with them. It turns out that the rails at the cable will be the ones used at the Japanese pro tour stop that will be held next week. Everybody is getting their practice in. I'll try to get some shots of the guys riding the cable later. Unfortunately it is raining right now.

Yuki wanted to show me a little more of traditional Japan, so after riding the cable one day he took me to the castle in Osaka. When I think about castles I picture massive rock structures that appear very dark and cold. This was not the case. Now there was a lot of rock, but that was used for walls, moats, and overall protection. The actually living quarters of the castle was made of white painted wood and it had a green shingled roof, as well as some gold trim. The way that it was lit up at night made it look amazing.

The next day I was picked up by Tetsuya from O'Brien Japan and we went to a local amateur wakeboard event. We arrived at the site at 9:00AM and the contest had already been going on for 3 hours. That's some determination. We met up with "Stinky", who also works for O'Brien Japan, set up a tent with all of the new 2011 product. After hanging out for a bit, the organizer of the event, Moto, asked me to go out and do a demo ride which I was excited to do... until it was time to ride. They day started out with incredible conditions, but by the time that I rode the wind had really picked up. It got choppy... like really choppy. On top of that, the Air Nautique started having engine troubles as soon as I hopped off the dock. We switched over to one of the normal Japanese outboard boats and it was time to ride. It wasn’t spectacular session on my part, but I still got some cheers. Luckily for me, I had an opportunity for what I like to call a redemption ride at the end of the day. It was still pretty choppy, but I felt like my riding was back up to par and I was really happy with that and so was everyone else.

Aside from having just a normal wakeboard contest, they also had a kicker contest and the winner was going to take home about $5000. They held the qualifiers for the kicker contest at the end of the day and unfortunately there were no open spots so I wasn’t able to compete. It was a lot of fun to watch though and there were plenty of spectacular crashes. (Sorry for the lack of photos, I thought that I was going back there today so I slacked off and left the camera in the car.)

So to finish off the day, the O’Brien guys wanted to take me out to dinner and wanted to see me eat some weird stuff. We ended up going to another Japanese BBQ place and they just started ordering food. The first plate that came out was sliced cow tongue. I was relieved to find out that we were going to grill it up before eating it. I was a little surprised on how tasty it was. Next up, raw beef and something raw that nobody could explain in english (Yuki thinks that it might be cow intestine). The beef was pretty good and the intestines??? were interesting (not horrible but not something that I would probably order for myself). The third weird thing for the night was another thing that they couldn’t translate. I actually don’t want to know what it is. It looked like a large glob of fat, but it was probably some part of the digestive tract. This is not something that I would recommend. Of course we did have some really good meat with dinner as well as some dessert, so I was well taken care of. It was great hanging out with those guys for the day.

Cable and Pottery Anyone???

The only cable in Japan just happens to be at the marina that Yuki rides at regularly. So yesterday we decided to forgo the boat and shred the cable. With this being Yuki's backyard, he was pretty much showing everyone up at the cable. I just did my best to keep up and had a great time trying (although my abs are suffering right now). After riding for about 2 hours, we made our way to dinner, sumo style. Basically we had a large pot of boiling broth on our table and we just threw a bunch of different food into it. I have yet to be let down by the food (on second thought those rotten beans were pretty bad).

To finish off the night, Yuki had the idea to go up to the top of this hill that overlooks all of Osaka. The view was incredible and unfortunately my photo will not do it justice (and sorry for the watermark on it, I didn't feel like spending the time or money to do the panorama properly). This was the best view possible to see how large and bright the city actually is.

It rained all day today so we had to figure out an indoor activity that didn't involve working on a computer. We went with pottery. I'm not really sure how that came about, but it did and we had some fun. Yuki has never done any pottery before, but I'm pretty sure he has a new back-up plan for when he's done with wakeboarding. It was interesting having an entire pottery lesson (something that I really don't know anything about) in a language that I don't understand. Luckily Yuki was there to explain what I was doing wrong. I guess it is going to take about a month for us to receive the fruits of our labor. Hopefully they will turn out to be nice gifts for anyone that would appreciate my minimal creative abilities.... my mom.

Gotta run and grab some food. Later.

Chill Day in Japan

Not much to report over here. I had the day off, so Yuki and I hung out for a bit and then went out riding. He killed it. It was really fun to watch. When we came back to the dock, we found an eel in a bucket so of course I wanted to pick it up. After that, we all got together and had a nice BBQ and small tasting of rotten beans (see below).

Big Dawg Final Webcast

The Big Dawg finals was a huge success this weekend at the Isle of Lake Hancock. But not without a snag however. As O'Brien was has been the title sponsor of the event for the last two seasons, we have been running a commercial advertisement during the webcast. We screwed up this year and ran last years commercial in which we showed our team members from last year. As most of you will know our team has changed since last year and some members were left off. Also Chris Parrish has left our team to join Dave Goode. While it was an over sight on our part we want to be sure everyone knows Chris is still with Team Goode and below is a letter sent to Chris and Dave with our apologies for the error.


Chris and Dave,

Please accept my apology on behalf of O'Brien for the old video advertisement that was run this past week during the Big Dawg ski final webcast. It was an over sight on our part that the ad was not updated showing our current team members. We have always wished Chris nothing but the best since joining the Goode team in 2009 and we continue to do so. We know Chris is a valued member of your team and we wish to clear up any misunderstanding our commercial may have caused. 

Best Regards,

Pete Surrette

VP Sales and Marketing 

O'Brien

Day 2 of clinics in Japan

Yuki and I wake up at 6am to hop in the car and head to our next clinic, which starts at 8am. It was about an hour drive out to the countryside. It was gorgeous out there. We drove past all of these little farms and saw more of the traditional side of Japan. We could also see the mountains in the background. What a setting for our day of riding.

Everything about the day was going great. Perfect weather and talented riders that were landing new tricks. Then at the end of the day I was blown away. We had two kids come out who were 9 and 11 y.o. and had only been riding for 11 months. These kids were charging it. The 9 y.o. was getting booted off the wake was was going just as high as everyone else. He then decided to start trying backrolls and ended up getting really close. The 11 y.o. was pulling of some big grabs and 180s and ended up trying some 360s. There is something in the water over here. Everyone kills it.

At the end of the day, everyone met at the local wakeboard shop and then we all went out for a big group dinner. We must have had 15-20 people and we fully took over an entire restaurant. They served us a ton of great food and it was a really nice relaxing end to a fun day on the water.