on the go

Thursday, April 29, 2004, at 03:38PM

By Eric Richardson

Today was a busy day for me. I started off making the drive out to Woodland Hills to Sports Ltd. The waterski team needed to spend the rest of its money before the semester was out, so I ended up buying two skis and a wakeboard. Steve's a good guy and gave us a great deal, so I was happy with what we got out of it.

First on the list was getting a ski for the ladies. We haven't had a good girls' ski for the team, so for them I picked up a 63" HO (flash site, you'll have to navigate in on your own) Odyssey with the Venom high wraps. It's part of HO's comp/freeride series, so it's a little wider and a little more forgiving than their regular competition line.

Next on the list was a good 66" ski. Here I got a Truth with double Animal boots set up left foot forward. The Truth evolved from the CDX, which is a ski I loved, so I'm definitely excited to get out on this one.

I wasn't planning to get a wakeboard, since we bought two last year, but it came to mind that we could really use a board with a flatter bottom for trick at tournaments. Tricking at a tournament is really entirely different than just going out and wakeboarding, and because of that you have different priorities in how you want the board to be set up. For normal riding you want the board to have lots of grip on the water so that you can cut harder and get more speed heading into the wake. To get that grip you see a combination of channels, molded fins (part of the board itself), and screw-in fins. For waterski tournament tricking, though, since you only have 20 seconds, a lot of what you score with are surface tricks, just spinning the board on the water. While you can get fins to break loose to do surface tricks with them in, it's a lot harder working against them than it is not having them there. The board I bought, a Liquid Force Litmus has only very shallow channels in the bottom of the board. It has six fins, but all can be removed. The middle of the board also has a rounded edge that makes it a lot less likely to catch on the water when you're doing stuff on the surface. That makes it a great board for tricking, and also a great board for beginners, since that's most often how they fall.

Now to get reimbursed for all that...