Out of the kitchen !!!
A video/documentary project by Courtney Angus
My own personal journey with #OutofthekitchenWAKE started in the middle of May when I met Courtney Angus for the first time in Hip Notics Cable Park. I was staying there for 6 weeks training and progressing my wakeboarding and Courtney was there for a week during that time doing her 2018 Hyperlite shoot. We got along straight away and Courtney mentioned about a project she was working on with a bunch of girls. Well, fast forward a couple of weeks, and I was blown away after getting a message from Courtney asking if I could get myself to Germany 2 days after getting home from Hip Notics to be involved in her ‘Out Of The Kitchen’ project. No way was I saying no to that…
The Out of the Kitchen project was based around a group of female wakeboarders traveling around Germany visiting 10 parks in 10 days showing how the level of female wakeboarding has progressed.Courtney chose a group of female riders from all around the world, including 17 year old me, even putting that down in words still doesn’t feel real! It feels strange to say that I was about to spend the next 10 days travelling Germany with a group of other female riders, including girls that have been my biggest inspirations over the past 2 years!!
The Riders….
Me :)
Courtney Angus
Marilyn Pruitt
Angelika Schriber
Maxine Sapulette
Deanna Hatten
Elke Venken
Momo Dudzinski
Elizaveta Pruzhanskaya
Maryh Rougier
Anne Freyer
Anna Zhakova
The girls were confirmed, the dates were confirmed, the parks were confirmed, so the journey began…
It started for me by flying out to Munich in Germany early on the Tuesday morning (after flying home from turkey on the Sunday night), I was super nervous as this was only the second-time I’d travelled alone and out of the group of girls I was about to meet in Germany, I only knew Maxine and Courtney, so instantly my worries were “am I going to be left out?” “will they like me? Will I fit in?”.
Courtney organised for to meet Ange in Munich airport straight after I had landed and then together we were to go and sort out a hire car. I met Ange as organised, she was so cool and we instantly got on so well !! We made our way to the car hire place, picked up the car and started to put our board bags and suitcases in the car, they fitted perfectly!!! But…. We then realised we were meant to be picking up Lisa and Anna from arrivals in a few hours… small problem, we were in desperate need of a bigger car to use and to travel around in for the next 10 days !!!! 4 riders with 4 board bags was 100% going to require a bigger car. So, back to the car hire desk it was, where we waited for ages to try and sort it out with the man behind the desk, Luckily he was super excited about hearing Ange’s Aussie accent (although ange actually has a very strong south African accent but she seemed to go along with it anyway) and was asking tons of questions about Australia as he was going there for the first time in a few weeks, the guy was super nice and we managed to upgrade our car FOR FREE!!! It was a perfect start!!!!
Back to the car park to pickup our new ride, then on to pickup Lisa and Anna, everything squeezed in and off to our first park we go, Aschhime here we come.
At Aschhime, we met up with all the other riders and sat there on the balcony looking over the wake park. No better way to get to know each other than over pizza and beers, it was awesome!!! A good night sleep was needed as the next day the filming and riding began, a cable full of girls was AMAZING, I wish I could do it every day, they was so encouraging, so much fun and we had everyone shouting out and cheering each other on!!!! Not seen anything like this before, they were all so supportive!
Day 1 done, we hit the road for Park no.2…Our next stop was Turn cable, this was going to be yet another new experience for me as there was two cables on site, one anticlockwise cable and one clockwise cable, I’d never rode a clockwise cable before. We filmed all morning on the anticlockwise cable which was awesome, the girls were all riding so well which was super encouraging for me!!. In the afternoon I gave the clockwise cable a go, it felt so strange but didn’t take me long to get use to it.
That evening, Courtney sorted with the park manager for us to make our own unit hack on the clockwise cable, so we prepared it the next morning and was hitting it the for the morning shoot, Crazy stuff was being thrown down by the girls, Rail to rail, toeside, heelside, switch, regular, it was so good to see them killing it and the vibe on the dock was insane!!! That vibe stayed around until sunset and a few of the girls including me went out and had a sesh hitting the nico2 rail, we were screaming and shouting at each other from every side of the cable cheering each other on, and I think that set I had was one of the best rides of my life, I didn’t stop smiling for my hole set, honestly these girls had really boosted my confidence and it was only our second park together! These girls were awesome!!!
Next cable was Wake Lake, this was Anne Freyers home cable. The cable had a cool bi-level next to the main cable, most of us went to shred the big cable but after my set I wanted to go and see what a few of the girls where doing on the pool gap. I walked up to the dock... and OMG Anne was absolutely killing the bi-level rails, and once again the girls where proper shouting encouragement at each other and the tricks that where being thrown down got crazier and crazier! It was so good to see!!
Wild wake and ski was our third cable, this cable was so much fun! Although even by lake 3 my body was starting to ache, and just when I started to ignore my tired body and get back into my zone on the water, I took the biggest taco of my life!! There’s this S shaped rail, super big and super scary looking, and I can say this from experience, I’m never going to half-heartedly send it into a rail ever again, because it hurt, SOO bad! this rail had like a 45° sharp edge which my stomach met and for the next week I had a nice thin clean bruise a few inches below my belly button from that sharp edge, proper winded myself. It was the worst haha!
Onto lake 5, lake Thulba. I loved this cable! All the girls took advantage of the awesome kickers there to get some great shots and clips of huge spins and grabs. From here we moved onto Langenfeld. I was super nervous for Langenfeld as I’d seen videos and photos of some of the girls killing this cable over the past few months, especially at the LA open. There was so many technical rails there and even though I didn’t ride my best the day we was there I wasn’t too sad as I saw the others throw down some crazy stuff which meant the Langenfeld part of the edit was still going to be really awesome!
Wake beach was one of the cables I was most excited for as I’ve seen so many cool edits and shots from there, and I absolutely loved riding there, the obstacles where so much fun and it just had such an awesome layout on the water and off! By now, all of us were starting to get super tired and sore, there had already been some awesome crashes and slams, but Deanna and Elke powered through it and went out and threw some of the closest double attempts I’ve ever seen!! It was so cool to see the girls pushing it and sending it so hard!!
Next cable was The Bricks, and by this day my body was dying, I was aching super bad! The Bricks is a real small cable with an awesome set up, it was pretty intense as we only had the morning to shred and get stuff down on camera. After an exhausting ride, we done our intro shot, which was quick video of all the girls at each of the lakes that introduces each cable. We were all super tired but for the clip we had to all get in the back of the Sesitec van with our boards and then jump out and make our way over to the cable. Filming these clips was always the highlight of the day and you could guarantee each day I would either mess up the simplest things, fall over or do something stupid which made standing watching the clips back 10x funnier for me and the girls haha!
We was beginning to come to the end of the trip and we had just 2 lakes left, Terhills and Lakeside Zwolle, by this time all of us girls where coming to the realisation that it was nearing its end which was actually kinda sad, the trip had been so hectic but so much fun and we had made such a good group of friends that were about to go from living with each other all day everyday for over a week, to going our separate ways.. it really was sad haha!! But, the last 2 cables where an awesome way to end, the vibe at Terhills was awesome! Everyone was super chilled out and shredding really well, we had maryh throwing down some crazy rail to rails while Maxine was landing toe back 7s off the kicker like it was nothing!
So, our last cable, Maxine’s home lake, was a super cool place to all hang out for our last afternoon after our ride in the morning. This trip had honestly been the best experience of my life, and I know that may sound super dramatic, but being as young as I am, with the dreams I have of where I want to take my wakeboarding, this project had been an amazing opportunity for me, I’m so so grateful. The girls where so encouraging and have boosted my confidence so much, I thought being the baby of the group or the “little one” or the “pet pom” as the girls liked to call me, was going to be super intimidating, but it wasn’t at all, I really do think I’ve made some awesome friends for life on this trip and I’m so thankful for this opportunity!! I am so excited to see this finished project and show you all how much fun we had!!
Peace Out !!