holidays and other fun things

we’ve been on holidays in august, 2 weeks were spent camping, wakeboarding, hiking and enjoying life in general. here’s my report!

our first stop was in upper austria in linz. we went wakeboarding at the ausee, at the jetlake and visited fetzy at his private wakeboard lake. i survived my first backroll attempts there

ausee

camping linz.

camping linz.

after that, we paid a visit to salzburg. first, we checked out salzburg city, where we were able to stay at my sisters flat. we did some sight seeing, cycled around town and gave downhill mountainbiking a shot. the chosen track was definitely too hard & scary for me, but i enjoyed trying something new. if i had the time & money, i could absolutely see myself riding mtb aswell.
on our last day, we went to see the almwelle. this is a riversurfing spot in salzburg. since we don’t own a riversurf board, we thought why not try it with a wakeskate? funnily, it worked out and we were both able to ride a little bit. what a great, fun sport! i wish we had a riversurf spot in vienna aswell!

salzburg.

mountainbiking. i was scared and didn’t dare to ride down the course. later on, my sister informed me that 5 years ago she didn’t dare to ride the track aswell and that it’s not suitable for beginners…
good that i didn’t fall in love with it, i can’t afford picking up a new hobby… and mountainbikes are fucking expensive aswell.

riversurfing in salzburg! (that’s someone else on the picture) it was fun! i never thought we’d be able to ride this with a wakeskate (which is too short and doesn’t have enough volume at all to surf), but we did it. yeah, haha! (check out the funny dog on the right!)

repairing my wakeboard at my sisters flat… surprisingly, it held up and it’s still okay

after a few days it was time to leave the city again. off to zell am see we went. we’ve been there a lot of times already and everytime again we are overwhelmed with how beautiful this place is.
we found a GREAT camping site (it was so luxurious they even had music blasting in the bathrooms ) with a small lake and were able to enjoy our stay there a lot. we went hiking twice, altough it was super hot. the highlight was the wasserfall weg (waterfall hike) at the grossglockner hochalpenstrasse. dreiwallnerhoehe (= maiskogel) was very nice aswell, the view was great, but all in all not as superb as the waterfall.

we went hiking on the wasserfallweg near the grossglockner. summer heat & waterfall = good idea!

the waterfall

underneath the waterfall

waterfallllll

waterfallllll.

pointing random shit out.

waterfallllll.

fed goats in the valley after the hike <3

that’s the kitzsteinhorn.

on the next day, we hiked up to the dreiwallnerhoehe. it was too fucking hot, so we decided to ditch walking to the valley and took the gondola instead.

our final destination was germany. while the scenery was not able to hold up against sweet salzburg, the wakeboard park was A-MA-ZING!
they have 2 cables there, one runs clockwise, the other one counter-clockwise. it was a funny feeling to ride a clockwise turning cable.
both cables offer various obstacles, so we could widen our obstacle experience a bit.

turncable. thannhausen, germany. a one of a kind wakeboard park.

the second camping we stayed at in germany. the first one was pure shit. this one here was great! really beautiful.

sunset at the lake at the camping i mean… awww!

roman cooking our last camping dinner.

turncable once again on our last day.

 

 

after those great days, we went back home.
luckily, we are still able to enjoy some sweet late summer days, for example 3 weeks ago, when we went longboarding in lower austria:

 
i hope autumn will offer good weather for various outdoor activities. i plan to go longboarding as much as possible, go hiking a lot, maybe also climbing outdoors, because i want to be in the best shape ever for the upcoming winter. we have lots of plans already and can’t wait for winter.

my first wakeboard contest

on the 24th of july, roman and me were helping out a bit with the organization of the austrian wakeboard cup tourstop in vienna. in the morning, we brought some speakers, a mixing desk, etc and started to build up everything.
after a while, austrian wakeboarder astrid schabransky approached me and asked if i wanted to participate in the open women category, since only herself and another girl were going to compete…
i had not planned to compete, because i’ve only been riding for about a year and so far, my trick repertoire isn’t really big. i didn’t practise for the comp or anything… but still i thought that i should give it a shot and try my luck, just for fun and to see what a wakeboard competition feels like.

luckily, i was able to nail at least SOME of my tricks (in the qualification… in the finals, not so much ) and so i came in second – this came as a total surprise for me. thanks to the awc vienna for the awesome trophy and thanks to liquid force and corona for the nice goodies
i had an awesome day, even though the weather was absolutely horrible (cold, windy, rainy – lots of waves on the water).

next week, i will be attending a wakeboard camp in upper austria. i’m hoping for the summer to return for at least that week, because i guess camping in the rain won’t be lots of fun. i want to try new things and maybe learn one or two new tricks… i can see myself competing in other wakeboarding contests in the future, but for now, it’s all just for fun and i still have loads to learn.

 

 

3 weeks camping trip through europe – video #2

as i posted yesterday, we filmed a bit in our holidays. here is a video that we recorded in portugal, where we stayed at the mellowmove surfcamp.
one day, we borrowed 2 of their longboards and went for a little ride.

wakeboard coaching by fetzy

salmsee steyregg

after trying & falling in love with SUP on saturday, we had a special plan for the next day.

so on sunday the 15th of august 2010, my boyfriend roman, 2 other friends and me went to upper austria to be coached by austrian wakeboard pro daniel “fetzy” fetz.

we were really lucky with the weather, because when we got up at 8am, it was pouring down but it stopped shortly after and turned out to be a wonderful, hot and sunny summerday.

roman working on backrolls.

we arrived at the lovely salmsee near steyregg at about 11am.
first, we did a warm up wakeboarding session.
after the bad slam from last sunday, i was a bit afraid to try to jump again but hearing fetzy’s voice through the walkie talkie in the helmet helped me a lot. he encouraged me to try it and applauded me for every little shit i did

later on, our friends arrived aswell and we tried our best on the trampoline.
from the basics to handle passes, rotations and backrolls – we soaked up fetzys instructions and had a lot of fun jumping around although it was mega hot.
i even managed to nearly do a frontflip! wow! i never thought i could do something that scary so easily. i loooved jumping on the trampoline!

me nosegrabbing the guru board.

afterwards, everyone got to ride behind the boat with the walkie talkie helmet on. fetzy steered the boat and commented on our efforts.

it was so good, one of our friends even rode for 40 minutes and didn’t want to quit. i guess he was rather tired afterwards

in the evening, we headed back home and everyone was really happy.

i can only recommend signing up for being coached by fetzy. everyone of us gained so much confidence and had a great time, it was priceless!

check out fetzy’s website including information about coaching here:
->
http://www.fetzysworld.com/

slammin’!

my neck still hurts…

preparations

yesterday, i bought a long, warm wetsuit and washed my sleeping bag…
next weekend i wanna go wakeboarding somewhere else for a change. let’s see, where i’m gonna end up.

i really hope the weather will be fine. or let’s say, fine enough. i’d be content with that already, seeing how often we have bad weather at the moment.