Words: Greg Young
Photos: Ray Durkee, AJ Koenig, & Richard Docter

For years now, riders living in the great Northwest have wondered how many boardsports could be conquered in one day. I remember talking with some friends who once went snowboarding and wakeboarding in the same afternoon. At the time, I thought that was one of the coolest things I’d ever heard. For the past couple of years, my friends and I have toyed with the idea of adding another sport or two to the list and seeing if three or even four boardsports could be crammed into a day or weekend. We always knew that making our little challenge happen would take a lot of planning and would ultimately depend almost entirely on cooperative weather (something not easily shared between so many weather-dependant sports). Essentially we knew that a trip involving so many variables was nothing more than a hail Mary pass.

In 2006, we almost tried to go wakeboarding, snowboarding, and skateboarding but just never seemed to get around to it. In 2007, we pondered whether surfing could effectively be thrown into the mix, but still no one stepped up to the plate to make it happen. This year, we thought our chances of making it happen would fade with the melting of the snow. The great thing, however, was that it was the middle of April and the snow was still falling. We called some friends, held our breath, picked a date, and hoped everything would come together.

Our plan for Cinco Sporto Cero Ocho (loosely translated as 5 Sport Day ’08) was for nine of us to go wakeboarding, snowboarding, skimboarding, skateboarding, and surfing within one calendar day. Everyone met at Northwest Riders Clothing Co.’s home office on Friday, April 11th to go over the plan, pack up our gear, and shoot a few games of pool before our early departure on the 12th. The plan was pretty simple, and depended on everyone understanding that with such a big group, the thin line between failure and success depended on everyone cooperating and sticking to the schedule.

With some of our crew arriving at the office as late as 1:30 am, the five o’clock wakeup came early for all of us. Our gear was already packed (which was lucky considering how slowly some of us were moving that morning) so all we had to do was hop in the Northwest Riders bus and head to Lake Sammamish for the first task of the day. Our crew consisted of myself, co-owner of Northwest Riders, Zack Clark, two members of our skimboard team, Bryce Hermansen and Richard Docter, our newest team skateboarder Jake Waldrop, and our good friends AJ Koenig, Ray Durkee, Chris Hudspeth, and Kyle Klube. Ray and AJ would also play the roles of photographer throughout the day.

Our first mistake came early, as we all agreed (with my initial suggestion) that we should stop at an espresso stand to get enough coffee to wake us up. We stopped at the local espresso stand and happened to get a girl working by herself on her fifth day on the job, and working with a broken cash register. After waiting almost fifteen minutes, I was the only one to get a coffee. We filed back onto the bus and drove to the next available stand, where it took another fifteen minutes for the other eight to get their morning mocha. Although we were already running a half hour behind, we pulled up to the boat launch just as it opened.

Wakeboarding went pretty smoothly, although as it turned out, the water in the lake was a few degrees colder than it would be at the ocean later that day. The temperature was hovering between 49 and 50 degrees, and because it was only 6:30 in the morning you could feel every degree as it nearly froze the blood in our hands and feet. Everyone had a pretty good ride considering it was the first day of most of our seasons, although Richard caught an edge pretty hard (and fell equally hard when he slipped on the dock), and Zack folded his ankle bad enough to effectively ruin the rest of his day. We even managed to somehow make up some lost time, that is until we got the rope stuck in our prop on our way back to the dock. Just as I started swimming the boat back to shore, Ray was able to flag down another boat and have them tow us home.

After cutting the rope loose from the propeller, we dropped the boat, Zack’s truck, and all of our wakeboards off at Bakes in Issaquah. A healthy McDonald’s Breakfast was wolfed down on the hurried drive to the mountain. The whole time that we were driving we could feel the temperature getting warmer and warmer. By the time we pulled up to Snoqualmie (and were generously hooked up with lift tickets) it had to have been in the mid-seventies, no joke. We had just enough time to take four or five runs, shedding clothes the whole time as the temperatures kept getting hotter. I was wearing a T-shirt with no gloves or hat by the end and was roasting. It was tough to leave, as we could have easily spent the day doing some pretty epic spring riding, but we still had three more sports and a whole lot more driving to conquer.

Although it was only about noon when we left the mountain, most of us were already worn out from the first half of the day and fell asleep for at least part of the drive to Dash Point. We were pretty stoked, as this was the most people that we’d taken in the bus since we finished it a month ago. Even with 27 different boards and all of our gear, there was enough room for everyone to spread out and either take a nap, play cards, or catch up on some light reading. The other great thing about the drive was knowing that we were running on vegetable oil, as the bus is converted to run on used fryer grease.

When we showed up to Dash Point State Park, we were surprised by a few different things. First, Bryce’s mom lives nearby and showed up with two trays of freshly baked cupcakes, which, combined with the Oreos, Chex Mix, and Chips Ahoy we ate on the drive down served as lunch. Second, it was 80 degrees out. A week before there was snow on the ground, and now we were applying sunscreen. Lastly, there were about 20 other kids already skimboarding at the park. For any of you that haven’t seen the DB Skimboards crew ride before, you would be blown away to see what they’re doing on skimboards. Not only can they somehow do huge ollies, 360 shuvs (landing one footed) and some other crazy stuff, but they also hit rails. Because we were on a tight schedule we didn’t have time to bring out sliders of our own, although some local riders had set up a pretty small one that Bryce and Richard sessioned for a few minutes. Check out their website at dbskimboards.com to see some photos of these guys on some of their own gnarly rails. The stuff they do on skimboards will seriously blow your mind. I think most of us would agree that skimboarding was one of most fun things we did that day, especially since it was as hot as any day in July.

We had a bit too much fun at the beach and stayed way past our scheduled departure time, making it a mad dash to make it to the skate park and the coast with enough daylight to finish our quest. Temperatures were still climbing by the time we hit the skatepark in Olympia. While some of us were only amateurs at best on a skateboard, we got to see Jake, Chris, AJ, Bryce, and Richard rip for awhile. Jake is brand new to the team and his riding was definitely impressive. He kickflipped an 8 rail on his third try and was shredding in the bowl while Ray snapped photos for awhile. We only skated for about an hour, and then it was off to Westport to finish the day off with a refreshing surf. With each sport that we successfully crossed off the list, the energy in the bus was getting more and more triumphant and with the sun out and the radio cranked up we were all in a damn good mood. A week before Zack and I had figured out that the speedometer in the bus was way off. While following me to the mechanic we realized that when the speedometer in the bus said 63, we were really doing about 75. The speedo on the drive to Westport rarely dropped below 75, so needless to say we made some pretty good time.

Westport was about fifteen degrees cooler than Olympia, but it was still warm enough to gladly slip back into a wet wetsuit. The surf shops in town had closed way earlier than we thought, so only half of us had boards. We ended up taking turns surfing and hanging out on the beach. The waves were actually pretty good, especially for the jetty where waves are usually as predictable as the crazy bagger at the Albertsons down the road from my house. By the time the sun disappeared, some of us had gotten about two hours of surfing in. After such a long day, that was more than enough.

Before the long drive home, we decided it would only be fitting to have a nice celebration dinner. After a round of drinks (for those of us of legal age) and some great food at the Islander, it was time to toast our efforts and head home. The fact that I’m writing this article a week after we got home is a good indication that we were all exhausted and far more sore than we anticipated. After talking to everyone involved in Cinco Sporto, most of us didn’t recover until at least halfway into the week. But regardless of how tiring the day was, we were all stoked and perhaps a bit surprised that we actually pulled it off. Our accomplishments in Cinco Sporto Cero Ocho only ask the question… “is Seis Sporto possible?”

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