The Famous Leif Anderson flies to Canada for the big Cojones Rodeo, and fails to compete.
If you haven’t heard of the Big Cojones Rodeo, you suck. To me, this rodeo represents everything that competition should become. It’s held on the Buseater wave on the Ottawa, and is almost completely different from any other competition anywhere. It’s an all day jam session, and contestants compete for several different categories. There is a biggest trick prize, a best ride, and even a best beatdown. You could spend the entire jam trying your biggest, riskiest tricks, and flushing almost every time, but if you stick it once, you have an excellent chance of winning. Or, if you’re a real badass, you could drop in and take one ride that could sweep all three categories. The entire event is filmed, and the competitors vote on the winner at the end of the day. This competition encourages the biggest and most progressive moves. This is exactly where I want to see the sport go.
So naturally, when Bryon mentioned that he, Seth Chappelle, Stumpy Joe, Steve Graybill, and Jeremy Laucks were going up there to compete, I went ahead and invited myself too. I got the entire week off from work, and flew from Denver to Syracuse, where I was picked up by Bryon and Jeremy in Jeremy’s RV, which I think he is calling the Rain Van (RV for short) in honor of his production company, Chasing Rain. Springriver was gracious enough to let me use their Large Flirt demo. If any of you stop by there, you could sit in and maybe even paddle the exact same boat that I used. They’re probably charging some kind of fee now, like people do when they have the guitar that Elvis used, or the shoes of, I don’t know, Superman. But it’s there. Check it out.
(Jeremy with his custom "Rain Van")
Anyway, our first stop was the Route 3 wave in Watertown, the site of the 2004 US team trials. We were overjoyed to find that someone had thrown a gigantic rock right in the middle of where the wave used to be. I’d like to offer my heartfelt thanks for putting this wave out of its misery. We took a quick session at Hole Brothers instead. It was great. All these legends that I’ve heard about bathtub warm water all along the east coast were absolutely true. I didn’t even need gloves. It was great. However, you have to take the good with the bad. While we were surfing, in the course of half an hour or so, the river dropped by about 6 inches, and the wave turned from a fun playspot to a shallow ledge. Stupid dam controlled flow. So we climbed out and got all changed into dry clothes. By the time we were ready to leave, the river had risen back to its original flow. The east coast sucks.
There were a lot of other things about the east coast that pissed me off. For example, they all speak French there. What the hell is that all about? And the ”your mom” jokes are totaly different. I guess that’s just a difference between me and the rest of the world, though. We all had a long discussion about it in the RV during the drive. See, if someone were to say, ”Hey, your shoe is untied” Jeremy’s mom joke response would be something nonsensical, like, ”Oh yeah? Your MOM is untied!” whereas my mom joke response would be something along the lines of ”Oh yeah? Well [CENSORED] your [CENSORED] I would [CENSORED] mom and [CENSORED] dogs wouldn’t even [CENSORED] shoe [CENSORED] with my ELBOW [CENSORED] then [CENSORED] untied. Just like I did last night.” Then I would go on to explain all the innuendos that I had used, in great and highly explicit detail. Apparently that’s just not how they do things on the east coast. Or the west coast. Or the midwest, for that matter. Well, you know what I had to say to that? I can’t write it here, but it involves your mom. But I figured that I should try to fit in with you foolish mortals, so I'm going to practice Jeremy style mom jokes throughout the rest of the article. Like this: (your momís going to practice mom jokes.)
But I'm getting sidetracked. Our next stop was the Habitat 67 wave, on the St. Lawrence. For the last few months, I'd been surfing tiny Colorado waves, so even though Hab 67 isn't the size of the more famous Big Joe wave (a.k.a. Lachine) it was great fun for me. There were two or three waves there. I was in heaven. The one that everyone gravitated toward was the farthest out. It had a gigantic pile that unfortunately came right smack down to the trough, so there wasn't much face, making it was hard to launch really big air. But medium air abounded, and it was obviously sticky enough to have 5 minute rides. (Your mom's sticky enough to O' wait, that's my old style. Damn.) But there was also a smaller wave near shore that was almost all green face, with hardly any pile at all. I liked this one the best, because I could really feel the speed of the Flirt and do some sweet carving. Along with the occasional sweet helix. Right below this wave was yet another feature better than everything in Colorado put together. It wasn't much by Lachine standards, though, just a bottomless loop hole. (Your mom's not much by Lachine standards.)
(You can surf everything at 67)
After a pretty short day at Hab 67, we acted on a rumor that the Haute Tension Wave (say it with an outrageous accent) was in on the Gatineau. I'd seen some video of Haute Tension on cliveseye.com, and I was really looking forward to it. When we got there, though, I realized that maybe the levels had changed a little because instead of a sick wave with a really steep pocket for huge air moves, it was a sick wave with a really steep foam pile for huge thrashings. I was the only one of our group to take more than one ride there, because I'm such a badass. I busted out this totally sick shudder rudder, and then some frighteningly quick flatspins. That was about all that I could do. But it was a great day, because there were plenty of other great waves on the rest of the run. And the water was bathtub warm again. (Your mom was bathtub warm again.) A cold bath, but bathtub water all the same. No gloves needed, and only two rashguards and one pair of fleece pants under my drypants. Unfortunately, I blew out my neck gasket when I took off my drytop at the takeout. (Your mom blew out a gasket.)
(High Tension Shudder Rudder!!!)
The blown gasket didn't concern me, though, because I figured hey, the Ottawa is our next spot, and that's a total paddling mecca. (Your mom's a paddling mecca.) There's bound to be a few shops there that could fix it. No. Wrong. Completely unfounded. Couldn't be farther from the truth. But there was some duct tape there, so I used that. I think that I've learned a little from this experience (I'd say that I learned a lot, but damn. I already know so much), so I'm going to go on a little side track here and talk about lubricants. You see, there are three categories of lubricants on the market today. There are petroleum based lubes, like vaseline and petroleum jelly; there are silicon based lubes, like the stuff that you can buy from those guys that make aquaseal or from Brian Fields of Rhino Plugs; and there are my personal favorites: water based lubes like KY Jelly and Astroglide. They all have their advantages and disadvantages. Petroleum lubes are persistent and pretty slippery, but I strongly advise against them. See, petroleum products will erode latex! Do not use vaseline. Silicon lubricants are persistent (they won't wash away too quickly) but they lack the slipperyness of water based lubricants. Water based lubes are incredibly slippery. It's amazing. But of course, since they're water based, once things start getting splashy, they're gone. It's a tradeoff. I really recommend different things for different situations. If you're on a multi day spree, start out with silicon based. This will prevent any chafing. But if you're a little too eager, and either forget your lube on the first few days, or get chafed anyway, add in a little water based lube at the start of the next few days, so that you have a mixture. The water based lubes will make everything feel silky as you get warmed up, so that you don't notice any chafing. Once you really get started, the water based lube will wash away, but you shouldn't notice if you're having a good time. The silicon lube should help prevent further damage. And remember, never use petroleum based lubricants! They may have played a major role in my last blown gasket. This has been Lube Tips with the Famous Leif Anderson. Hopefully you can now avoid both neck gasket erosion and chafing on multi day trips.
But where was I? Oh yeah. The Ottawa. We had arrived one day before the competition itself, so that we could get in a little practice. (Yeah, practice on your mom. Wait, I'm drifting back to my old style.) I'd never been to the Ottawa, so I had no idea that to expect. I was blown away. First we stopped at this awesome wave called gnarlburetor. It was a little hard to stay on, but you could do the occasional spin or roundhouse. I loved the speed and size of it. But all everyone else did was bitch bitch bitch. They couldn't shut up about some other wave that came in at lower water. They called it the carburetor, or the garburetor, or something. Whatever. I bet it sucks. Then right downstream of there was the infamous Buseater. They had the rope all set up to tow in, but nobody seemed to be trying it. I have to say, in the videos, the wave looks more like a wave than a mean pourover. Oh well. (In videos it looks more like your mom than a mean pourover. Yeah, your heard right, Jeremy.) There was some other wave next to it, and it was sweet! If you got lucky, you could roundhouse. And it was hard to stick ëem, but flatspins were definitely possible. But again, bitch bitch bitch, let's go find a real wave, etc.
I could go on like that about great the whole run was, but I'm sure you get the picture. I will talk a little bit about the Big Kahuna wave though, where the competition was held. It was indeed a big wave. It looked like a nasty full pound of juicy beef, but it turned out that it was a little hard to stay in. (Your mom looked like O' never mind.) And it was really hard to stay in control enough to work the bounce and throw any tricks. But we played there for a while. It was great fun. Steve Graybill had a really interesting ride. We were all convinced that it would have won the thrashing category if it had taken place during the comp. He dropped in without seeing a raft that was coming toward him. When he did look up and see it, he tried to carve over away from it, and, when he realized how close he was cutting it, flipped himself so that if the raft did hit him, it wouldn't hurt as much. Well, it sort of worked. He flipped, and the raft was looking like it would avoid him. (Your mom was looking like she would avoid him.) But a lot of things were happening at once. Just when it looked like he might escape, the raft pivoted 90 degrees and Steve's hull was suctioned to the bottom of it through most of the wavetrain, until he popped out when they hit a larger wave near the end of the rapid. There was a lot of applause. Hell, I think even I might have clapped.
Considering the awesomeness factor of the wave that the competition was going to be held on (about a 6, really, but the awesomeness scale is slanted and goes from minus 5 or something up into the high twenties), we decided that it would be more fun to go run the Petawawa, which we did. (Yeah, more like the pet-your-mom-a.) It was a great time, which is what boating is really supposed to be about. We cruised back in time for the awards party, and saw all the footage from the day. There were a few pretty big moves, but there were also a lot of flushes. Overall, I think that the gigantic moves we were pulling on the Petawawa were way sicker. Moves like the quadruple-surf deck dance. You don't see that every day. Nobody was throwing that one at the so called "Big Cojones" rodeo. Fluid kicks ass. And I'm badass, like a disobedient donkey. Oh yeah.
(Leif was too busy talking about what a badass he is that he forgot to mention that he took a swim rite after this picture was taken.)
Having declared ourselves (well, having declared MY-self) the best boaters in the state of Canadia, (despite some ambiguous rodeo non-results) we took a victory surf at corner wave the next day, and then drove down to Watertown and took one last session at hole brothers before I flew back to Colorado. I congratulated myself on a truly productive trip, having earned much fame and fortune in the name of Fluid. Then I checked my bank account balance, and decided that in retrospect, I really hadn't done too well in the fortune department. And since I didn't actually compete, there are probably those that would argue that I didn't totally kick ass at the whole fame thing, either. Good thing I'm already so famous. (Your mom is famous.)
Rock on- the Famous Leif Anderson
(photos by: Bryon Dorr & Leif Anderson)