Happy to 17 to RJ

[ragboy]

RJ's 17th birthday was on August 11th. I asked him ahead of time what he wanted. He said he was good. I bought him some geeky stuff for school and his computer but I asked again, "what do you want?". He said, "I just want to surf, a lot." OK, so we took him out on a weekday afternoon the day before his birthday and let him surf until it was dark. He had an amazing session on his Soulcraft Fangtail 4.8 "Fangy" and landed his first surface reverse and dialed in his surface and air 180s. It was a great day. Oh, and he also invented a new trick, you can check it out in the video.



A couple highlight pics:


IMG_9019 by wake9, on Flickr


IMG_9203 by wake9, on Flickr

Landing a big air 180.


IMG_9337 by wake9, on Flickr

Here is a slidehow with 2 reverse sequences:

[jbort]

one major awesome vid - super for RJ!!

[Nobody]

Nice Birthday day.

[artvandelay]

Nice Birthday day.

That's what I want for my birthday too!

Just needs to come with boat-friendly babysitter for 3 kids, who will all want to watch and have their "my turn now" too.....

[mls6722]

Happy Birthday RJ - looks like a great day!

[MooseX]

hey hey happy b day..lucky him..he's got it all already..what else can you give him except a h**ker

[Timmy!]

Happy belated b-day RJ! Nice riding RJ! That's way more fun than I had on my 17th birthday. I don't think my parents could have afforded to buy the gas that was used for that session when I was 17 let alone the boat to pull it. We are all blessed to be able to give our kids an opportunity to participate in watersports like this!

[konajay]

Happy belated b-day RJ! Nice riding RJ! That's way more fun than I had on my 17th birthday. I don't think my parents could have afforded to buy the gas that was used for that session when I was 17 let alone the boat to pull it. We are all blessed to be able to give our kids an opportunity to participate in watersports like this!

X2! and grandkids!

[Duncan]

Ragboy, it has been a pleasure watching your kids grow over the last many seasons. I can only imagine how proud you are at an unselfish moment like "I'm good". My other fav RJ story was the elevator and impromptu "sorry dad".

[ragboy]

RJ really is a good kid. Everyone that surfs with us laughs at him because he may be a bit moody when we get to the lake, which isn't bad for him since he is very chill/good natured. The reason they laugh is after a fall or 2 when he starts surfing he starts thanking everyone. Thanks for letting me Surf dad. Thanks for letting me try the bomp pop Dennis. Thanks for getting this awesome boat dad. Its really funny because he is not kidding, it just comes out of him. If Charlie Pigeon were in the boat he would probably thank him over and over, pretty funny.

He just started school again and he just started his Junior year at Chico State as a computer Science Major. He was bummed out because the way CSU works is that he has to take 211 for his major before 311 and they don't offer each both semesters, so he couldn't take 311 next semester and would be 1/2 a year off graduating. He is already a gifted programmer so he decided he probably already knew a bunch of that stuff and at the end of the last semester talked to people and did some research. He decided he would on his own make sure he had mastered all of the 211 concepts so that he could ask to skip it come August. He knew it was a longshot, but he did it anyway. He interned for me over the summer and did this on the side and took it upon himself to create a binary tree in C++ which is a pretty complex thing to do.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_traversal

So he emails the department chair that remembered him because he is a good student and hard worker and she said no way you can skip it. But if you are willing we may allow you to challenge. That means the teacher for 211 will give him some tough assignments and a test.

He basically aced the assignments and aced the test, got 100% and today just texted me that he is now officially in 311 which means he is now on track to graduate with a Bachelors in CS at CSU. Pretty darn cool and pretty proud of him. Kid will be buying his own boat soon, hopefully a Tige. ;-)

@Duncan If you are referring to the time in the elevator when he was 6 and performed the ultimate "bro" backup to me, yes, that is one of my favorite moments with the kid.

You ever see Surf's Up? Its a cartoon that is pretty funny, kids love it. Cody says to Chicken Joe, "Hey dude we made the finals!" and Chick Joe says, "No way dude, we get to surf some more!?". That is RJs attitude about surfing and competing.

LOL, just as I typed that he texted me that he has no classes on fridays so we can wakesurf.

[kenr08]

Belated Happy B-day to RJ.

Sure have enjoyed watching all of your kids grow up through your posts on this site - yes, I have been a member for a while now but don't post much.

Let me see if I have this correct. RJ is 17 and he is slated to graduate from college with a CS degree this year? At what age did he start college? If that is true - wow! Not only will he be buying his own boat soon, he will have his own company!

Best wishes to him and the rest of your crew.

[ragboy]

He is on track to graduate with a bachelors in the spring of 2014, he just turned 17, he will be 18. He graduated from High School at 14, he has been taking classes at college (community college) since he was 12.

Thanks for the nice comments. Amy came to me yesterday and said she went back and watched our video of Jessica learning to surf, and thanked me for documenting the memories. Wake9 was just a way to keep doing that for me, and just share it. He comment made me think and I went back and looked at a few things I did before wake9. This one is great, its before the app store, when an iphone was brand new and no video or anything. I didn't have my video camera but I had this hack of an app on my Jailbroken iPhone (this was when Jailbreaking required some pretty intense work) that allowed me to use the still camera as a video recorder, this is RJ's first ever 360, in 2008.



Here is RJ, he stole my video camera and was mad I didn't take him with us for a ride. I didn't even know he did this, but found this when reviewing footage when we got home.



This was a wrap up of 2008, he started wakesurfing in 2007, but 2008 was the year we put up the wakeboards and never looked back.



But when it comes to me having fun doing videos with RJ, this has got to be one of my favorites, maybe the favorite. I almost had a heart attack laughing filming some of this stuff.

[MooseX]

damn RJ is like the Doogie Howser MD of the wakesurf world.