The 2nd Annual Rigolette Bayou Wakeboarding Championship

For the second year now there was a professional wake boarding championship tournament in Pineville, LA. It took place on the Red River ox-bow behind Lake Buhlow.

I decided that I was going to go ahead and make myself look pretty for the competition.



I also have half of a beard.

There were many different categories in this competition starting off with: Best Toe-Side jump, Best Grab, Best Technical Run, Best Free Style, Best Modern Free Style, and many more sub-categories were within those.

For the toe side jump each of the competitors went out for 6 jumps or 2 falls. Kristen has been practicing her toe side jump all summer long. She looked pretty good out there.



For the best grab each person was given a warm up jump, with 6 grabs to follow, again 2 falls were allowed. I tried the hardest thing for the grab. I let go with my lead head and grabbed the front of my board, well, maybe I just touched the front of the board. That was a very hard thing for me. The picture was taken just before my grab.




The technical run was a mixture of everything. It was basically the length of the ox-bow there and back, unlimited falls. I took that to mean that I needed to try anything and everything. I started off with a quick run including out of the box, heel side jumps, toe side jumps, butter slide attempts, and a DOUBLE UP FLIP! Once I fell on that trick I just started trying everything. I tried a 180 jump, I tried more butter slides, and I tried a TOE SIDE FLIP! First attempt ever! That was pretty cool.


Heel Side Flip


Toe Side Flip


BIG AIR!


180!


BIG AIR!


DAVID GOT AIR!


He landed that!


BIG AIR!

For the free style I was wearing a suit. Under my suit I had a Mardi Gras Tuxedo shirt, and a "circus" shirt and pants. The circus shirt and pants were very bright with sequence on them. The suit pants that I had on were "break away" pants. I had Amanda cut the length of the pants, then sew them back with a light stitch. That way I could grab them out on the water and rip them off! That was fun!
Kristen was wearing a dress and had music to a Mrs. America song. She had a singing contest and a swim suit contest, she ended up winning Mrs. America. David had an old Knight Suit. He went out and rocked the water with that. Charles was sports a one-piece long john suit. He had a golf club, a tee for hitting the ball, and a cup holder for his drink.






The modern free-style was supposed to be anything you wanted to do on the water with whatever equipment you had. Kristen was the only one prepared for that, see costume below. David was semi-prepared. His knight costume was reversible. So he switched sides and went "Superman" on the knee board with the song "Kryptonite". I attempted a barefoot ski, but cramped up and quit. Charles then went out and tried the barefoot. He did it on his back too. He wasn't so successful in getting up on his feet though.


She wore that when she was 11 years old!

As for who won what....

Kristen: Modern Free Style, Most Enthusiastic, Best Run and some other stuff...

Charles: Best Toe Side, Best Technical, Most Props, and some other stuff...

David: Best Fall, Most Gutsy, and some other stuff...

Scott: Best Free Style Performance, and some other stuff...

Sorry that I cant remember everything that we all won.

A special thanks to our judges Amanda and Renee. We couldnt have had this competition without you two. Thank you for your honest opinions!

Tree Work

For the first time the tree work at the house was NOT me. The city/parish (I think) is straightening the road that we live on. For some reason people don't know how to follow the speed limit with the curves in the road, so they are going to straighten it so people can go even faster down the road. The speed limit right now is 40 mph. I am sure that people will be going at least 60 mph once they finish the road. They are changing out the two lane (20 ft wide) road to a three lane (2-12 ft driving lanes with a 10 ft center turning lane) road and its going to have side walks.

Here are some pictures of the mess they are making.




Photos taken by Kim, thanks Kim!

Same Job - New Work

A change in my work schedule has occurred. I am now working in New Orleans just about every day. I am still working for Shaw, but I only get to go to my Baton Rouge office every now and then.

I am working in the 9th Ward at the Jackson Barracks. Shaw got the contract to manage the project. So we are not doing any of the design or construction. Here is what I am responsible for. I am a “Project Manager” and I oversee a couple of different projects. I am mainly working with other people, but there is one project that is all me. Basically when the architects and engineers turn in their work, I look over everything and make sure that they have included everything in the scope of work and nothing more. The way that these projects are funded is through FEMA money. There is what they call a project worksheet for each building. If the scope of work is not on the PW then we don’t have the money for that work. In order to protect the client Louisiana Military Department, LAMD, we make sure that the contractors are not building anything that they are not supposed to be building. Right now we are mainly in the design stage. We are writing up a lot of scopes of work for different areas. Once we we’re done with the design stage then we will move on to be a site manager. Again, making sure that they are doing things right. As an engineer I am not allowed to say something doesn’t look like its designed right. If I think that something is wrong, then I just tell our client about it. Then they decide on what to do. It seems like something that I will learn a lot from!

Here are a couple of pictures from one of projects that I am working on.

This shows how high the water was in this house, ~6 ft.


There are about 15 houses like this in the "Historic Garrison". For those of you who didn't know this, a garrison is a group of housing for troops. Usually meaning a place were they are staying to guard the area. I just learned that myself.


Here is me with the short door way. I don't know why it was so much shorter than all of the other doors. That was the only one like that in the house.


This is an old bee hive. They are the "Africanized Killer Bees". They had someone come out to take them away. They are already rebuilding the nest though. This shows the nest after they took a huge chunk out of it.


Graffiti from the early 1900's.


I will try and keep you updated with the cool stuff going on over here.

Advertising on my Blog

So as some of you may have noticed I took off the "password only" for my site. That was about a week ago. Last night I had someone make a post to my Sea World pictures. It read: "Wow, I am going to plan my next family vacation there!!" I had no idea who it was, so of course I clicked on there user name. That lead me to a web page with Sea World coupons. I don't know how that got past the word verification, but it did!

Oh well, I deleted the comment.

San Antonio Riverwalk

I didn't know what to expect for the Riverwalk in downtown San Antonio. It was a lot of fun though. Really cool to see how the river runs through the city like that. I would love to see the drainage study for the city!

We took a boat around on a tour. The tour guide was annoying, but it was a fun sight seeing trip.

More Sea World Excitement

Our trip was wonderful. I really enjoyed everything about it. The shows were all really good to watch. I have some pictures to show you from each:

We will start off with some water sports pictures. This was one of my favorite shows to watch. I was very amazed with their talents.



This was there big salt water tank. There are over 3,000 fish in there.


Amanda had fun feeding the sea lions. They are quite the vocal animals when it comes to food! Of course she made sure to feed to lonely quite sea lion.


And last, BUT not least: SHAMU

This show was something else! I am so amazed with what they are able to do with the animals over there. The training is unbelievable. I wish that I could work with whales like that. At least I know how to speak whale, thanks to Finding Nemo.

Prissy's Last Night

For the past 14 years I have been hanging out with Prissy. She was a great dog. There are so many memories with her. She is really the first dog that I remember from being a puppy to almost 14 years old.

Mom and Dad called me last week to let me know that Prissy was not doing well. She was starting to have a bad cough that seemed to be a discomfort to her. So they made the decision to put her down. Amanda was nice enough to come with me to Lafayette to see her one more time!

In memory of Prissy:

Sea World in San Antonio

Amanda and I went to San Antonio over the 4th of July weekend. I have been slacking big time in the blogging department so I thought that I could try and get something out there with this picture.

Hopefully I can make some time to tell you about the rest of the trip, for now - enjoy this picture.

Lifetime Hunting/Fishing License

I will NEVER EVER have to purchase another hunting or fishing license for the state of Louisiana. There were many gracious people who gave me some cash for graduating with my Masters in Civil Engineering and that cash went towards a lifetime license here in Louisiana. Thanks to all of the contributors.

Thanks to Stephanie and Dustin

On our way to Mexico last week we stopped in at Stephanie and Dustin's house for a sleeping spot. We didnt really sleep very much though. We had a wonderful night playing the Wii. Dustin is the guy to beat! I couldnt believe his driving, seriously.

Thanks for letting us stay there.

**NEW** EL GATO SUMMER 2008

The trip has been divided into seperate post, be sure to read all of them!

The Mexico Trip never fails. It was another great kick-off to our summer. We had a couple of new people with us this year. Kristen had some friends from Colorado with their four kids. One of the kids was in her class this past year and an older kid was in her class a previous year. Renee was also able to make it this year. You would most likely know her as the producer/manager of The Harmonizers.

Every time that I tell someone that I am going to Mexico they always ask the same questions: Are you going to Cancun? Are you going to Cozumel? My only response to them is “Nope, Better!”

There are many different things to do on the ranch. Such activities include: fishing, hunting, shooting plants (mainly cacti), taking afternoon siestas, swimming, and eating cheese nachos. Sleep at night is a rare thing.

This place really is better than any beach resort that I could ever go to. I hope to show you all of the fun things to do with some pictures.

Two Bucks

I was very happy to find something when I walked into the office at the ranch. There were a couple of racks from this season’s past kills. Two of the racks had Scott written on them. They were indeed from the bucks that I killed back in December. I was very happy to see them again. So I took a couple of pictures. The 8 point was a very massive deer. So I took a solo with it. The other picture is just me playing around with photography. It shows both the 8 point and the 9 point racks that I killed.


This rack is not a deer that I killed. I think that Rusty killed it. That deer was named “The Colts” by Russel. He thought that the brow tines looked like the symbol for the colts. I was lucky enough to see this deer alive in December. I wasn’t aware that they had killed it this past season, so it was a pleasant surprise to get a closer look at it.

Pretty Flower

The cacti at this time of the year are blooming these really pretty flowers. I just had to show Justin and Charles the pretty flower.

Huge Utters

We were running the cows near the lake. There was this one cow that we felt sorry for. She had the biggest utters that we have ever seen. We couldn’t believe that a cow like that could even run. It must have been really painful for her to run.

The Head Stand

For as long as I can remember doing head stands I have always taken pictures with Justin in random spots. Here are two more to add to our collection. El Gato and the Rio Grande.

Rio Grande

A little inside information that I didn’t know about until this past week: In the United States we refer to the river as “Rio Grande”. In Mexico they say “Río Bravo” or “Río Bravo del Notre”.

We took at trip down the to Rio Grande with the group. We actually cut through Rancho Rio Grande to get to it. That is another hunting ranch next to Rancho El Gato. Anyway, we took a trip down there just to see the sights. It was fun. We ended up having a rock splashing war. Take the biggest rock that you can find and splash someone with it by throwing the rock in their vicinity. Lots of fun. Some people even added to their list to go along with the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean. Grrrr…that makes me mad to think about it. I wish that I wouldn’t have missed out on it.

Here is a “what if” situation. So we were all walking around and playing in the Rio Grande. We are all Americans. What if we were walking down the river and a boat that was in the middle of the river started shooting at us…Which side of the river do we run for?