Last week I started out on a mission to head over to China to ride in the IWWF World Cup. I was pretty excited to be invited to participate in the event; the payout is really good, it’s cool to go see new places, and a bunch of the other boys were going so I was looking forward to it.

Rusty [Malinoski], Trevor [Hansen] and myself all booked our tickets together so we didn't have to travel alone. The longest leg of the trip was a 13.5 hour flight from ATL to Tokyo, SO FAR!

When we finally made it to the hotel, me and Russ checked into our room and it was awesome, we were so worried it was going to be dumpy. After traveling that far and being in a different country all you really want is a nice normal clean hotel room and we got so lucky with one!  When we went and checked out the other guys rooms, they were exactly what we were afraid of getting: old, smelly, crappy, dumpy rooms. I felt bad for the guys in those rooms and was glad I dodged that bullet!

Rusty's new ride. Rattray photo

We arrived on a Wednesday and practice was Thursday. We headed to the site Thurs morning to check it out and try and get a ride in. We saw the site and it looked great, pretty calm, good for watching, then they drove the first person of practice.  Both sides of the river had 10-foot cement sea walls. So after the boat went up and down once, the river was a huge soup bowl of water bouncing back and forth off the walls, and it was like that the rest of the time. I was kind of bummed to travel that far for an event that has good money in and not even be able to hardly ride because there were so many rollers. If anyone ever went to Kelowna for the old Pro Tour stop, it was that bad! So I rode horrible in the first round and got dead last in my heat: I was stoked! The rest of the time we spent watching the event, watching the jumpers try and jump in the rough water, ate a lot of MacDonald's, and tried out different Chinese beers!

Kiling time in China. Rattray photo

Now the season is over, no more events for a while now. I'm going to Guelph for Thanksgiving, then coming back to FL and gonna spend some time learning a few new tricks. I've made a bit of a list to work on this winter.

Peace for now!

Rattray