See the VIDEO




































TODOS PHOTOS

See the VIDEO

Just got back from surfing in Ecuador a couple days ago. I'm gonna put a big blog post up about the trip as soon as I get all the photos, video and journal processed. Here's a pic for the meantime. That's Drew Hayes doing a huge air dropin at Punta Malo.



While we're waiting for the Ecuador trip report check out the last Riot post I did about the rock slide at Wilson Creek. Video of helixes off the rock is there too...Riot Blog

We have added a Team Blog to the Riot Kayaks page. Our first big posts are already up, including Chris Gragtmans sicko descent of Elk River Falls in NC. Check out the blog. There are photos and video. Is nastilyfiednessvilleburg...SeeRiot Blog

We will be making tons of updates to this page on a regular basis. We already have a couple more ready. We just want to give everyone time to see what's on there currently.

The intellect of many of my good friends is more than often questionable. This is not an insult to those guys but more so insight for you. And maybe I'm just telling myself this to justify the fact that I associate with a bunch of heehaws. At any rate, here are some really retarted, yet entertaining phone messages I received recently. They are small MP3 files. Please download and listen at your own discretion.

Drew Hayes leaves me a surf report way too loud and annoying - Surf Report Download

Mitchell Morton serenades with a beautiful, off-the-hip tune, ASS CLOWN. A real sing along that should hit the top 40 charts before too long - Download Ass Clown. Mitchell really is an incredible musician in real life. His main band at the moment is Flav-o-rich.

Nathan McDade busts out this nasty freestyle rap after inquiring about an H2O Audio housing. Dude is hilarious. Nate Dawg Download

Israel Putnam is the least sarcastic guy I know. And I have a button I can push on my arm that makes me sprout wings and fly while fireworks shoot out of my butt. That was completely unnecessary, and so is Israel's constant badgering of "pro boaters." Not really though. Listen to Israel

4 Newses today

1. H2O Audio is featured in Wired as a Cool iPod accessory. Click to see

2. Shred Ready will release a new Water/Snow helmet, the Phly, in December. Read more...

3. New Design/R&D page here at Effort.tv with the new Charger Surf Kayak video. Check it out.

4. Plus, big surf yesterday...


Holy crap big surf at Wrightsville Beach yesterday. Joey Hall, Philip Aschliman and I surfed at Wrightsville Beach, NC yesterday. I have to say it was the biggest surf I've seen there. I may have seen it this big but not this big combined with this steep and dumpy. Though dumpy there were a lot of makeable waves out there. Getting to them was the hard part.

We were lucky to have gotten to surf this swell even though we got our asses kicked. Joey and I drove down thinking we might get into some waist to chest high surf but we were very suprised at what we woke up to on Monday morning. You'll have to bear with us on the quality of these images. These are all video grabs, but the video footage itself wasn't all that good, and some of it was close to dark.

As usual with ocean surf, you get to the beach and you say, oh, that doesn't look all that big. Then you get out in it and realize the error of your ways. Well, this day we looked at the waves and said, oh, it looks really big out there, but we should be fine. We paddled out at Johhny Mercer's pier and got our clocks cleaned before we could even catch a wave. We actually spent about an hour just trying to get out. We semi-successfully surfed a couple inside waves since we couldn't get to the outside break. The sets were relentless. One time I got washing machined so hard that all I could do was concentrate on holding on to my paddle and my lunch. The chicken dinner from Roberts Grocery didn't taste as good the second time. When we arrived to the beach Joey had gotten out in the water before us. As Philip and I got close to the outer break we see J-ho surfing in on this monster foam pile with his helmet on sideways and one of his ear flaps hanging out the side. He was waving bye to us and laughing. We assumed he had just bought it on that wave. Like I said, we tried to get out for an hour with no luck and ended up surfing some sloppy inside stuff. I ended that session landing on my head in the sand and cracking my boat while Philip laughed and hhheeehhhawwwed!!! at me.

We went back to the car and decided we'd check back later in the evening. At about 3pm we went down and looked at Crystal Pier. The wind had calmed and it actually looked like we could make it out here. The stand-uppers were getting some nice rides but it wasn't too crowded out there. The size seemed to weed out the novices. Joey and I decided to give her another try. We made it out okay this time. You can see that the size was still just as big or bigger. On the photo below it is dark but you can see Joey on his way out, just making it over the top of a huge king steamer.

We ended up getting a few rides but passing up way more than we took due to fear. We were psyched to have been able to catch this surf unexpectedly and wish we could have stayed a couple more days. Today's report was 4 ft, glassy and off shore winds. I hope someone got on it. Here are a few more photos of the evening. This is a takeoff I got on a pretty nice one. Though, I came off that wave and immedaitely got pummled on the way back out by this next one.


Despite the ass poundings received we put it down as a good day. Much better than if it had been small surf. It's nice to be humbled sometimes.

Here are a few more shots of some notables.

Joey Hall, Rion Smith and I went down to Folly Beach, SC in September. Hurricane Ophelia was churning off the coast and sending in some nice sets. We didn't get too much footage, but here's a short reel of what we captured. I've had this footage sitting here for a while and haven't had a chance to edit anything.

click to download video - Quicktime format 5.7mb

I've been trying to find an excuse to start this blog and this seemed like a good one. Green race results.

I placed 5th in the short boat category with a 5 min. 15 sec. time in the Riot Magnum.
This was my race line at Go Left.



My friend Chris Gragtmans placed 2nd in long boat with a 4:40 in a Tornado. Gragtmans also placed 7th in Short boat and was the ironman (racers who do long and short boat class. you have to hike back up the river and get your short boat after you race long boat) winner. I think he won the impromptu head-2-head race as well.
Chris' line at go left in the short boat class.

photos of Chris and I are courtesy of

We both used our iPods with H2O Audio housings in the race and loved it. It's an awesome motivator to have music in your ears when you're doing something like this.


My good friend Caleb Coaplen placed 8th in long boat as well with a 4:58.
Caleb is pictured here charging through speed trap below gorilla.

photo by

Here is a link the full Green Race Results '05 at Jackson Kayak's site.

New H2O Audio Video Clinic. See all about how the H2O Audio Housings work. It's in the video gallery.

email 1 - 10.30.05





hayscratchem720 wrote...

Your website is just super. I ran across it while looking for some on-line resources for fort building. We had all of the cushions off of the couch and a blanket to work with but still needed some help. Our search for efort.tv lead us to your site. Although we never got the help we were seeking with chair integration into our new living room fort rollout and bedroom fort migration procedure we thoroughly enjoyed the simplicity and childlike elements of your website.



Thank you for the memories,



Bart, Manuel, Ronny, Jimmy, and Spot



PS: Do you find poo funny too?



Pps that web site is WEAK! Bill (my friend Vegas Bill no likey)

Effort.tv replied

Dear scratchem,

Thanks for your heartfelt comments and critiques. I haven't laughed that hard since like ten minutes ago. You're crazy. Wear a helmet.

email 2 - 10.30.05





yardapultjones wrote...

Wicked cool, now get outa my yard.



Sooo….now that you’re back on team Riot…I’m a 3 pound circus monkey, can I flatwheel a 007?

Effort.tv replied

Dear yardapultjones,

I'll answer your question with another question. How much does a car weigh?

email 3 - 10.30.05





puttyhead wrote...

Well, well, well, what's that old proverb about a dog always returning to it's own vomit? Nah, I'm just joshing you. You suck.

Effort.tv replied

Dear puttyhead,

I don't get it. And what's up with me sucking? What'd I do? You're on junk filter from now on.

News addendum: Chris Gragtmans and Joey Hall join Team Riot. Announcement.

I got some more email feedback about the site.

hayscratchem720 wrote...

yardapultjones wrote...

puttyhead wrote...

New Video up today - featuring Colin Kemp at Valley Mill Boat Shop - Click here to download



This is the coolest thing for anyone who is using a Mac and running the Tiger OS. John Weld from IR sent this to me this morning. It's a widget that you can run in the application, Dashboard, called River Levels and it gives you a constant monitoring of...you guessed it, river levels. Here's where to download it http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/19727

Today I got my first email feedback on the new site and it read something, well...exactly like this,

"just want you to know your website sucks and so do you! yippeee! "

This site has been launched. That's news.

In other news this site has not not been launched.



Features of possible entertainment may include:



I have joined the Riot Kayak Team - more on this



Featured Dealer - Colin Kemp at Valley Mill -

more info about Valley MIll



My first short film "the TRAVELERS" - Visit the video gallery to download it.



Featured Product - H2O Audio

October 20th, 2005



I am pleased to announce that I have joined with Riot Kayaks as a team paddler. From 1997-2000 I was involved with Riot as the Southeastern sales rep, and have always been a fan of their boat designs. I feel the company has come a long way since then, from boat design to customer service. They really seem to have their ducks in a row. The '06 line looks awesome and I'm really looking forward to paddling the boats. I'll be working on several levels with the company: With R&D to help design future Riot kayaks, networking with the dealers and Riot sales reps, providing continual, up to date video, photos and stories for the Riot web site, and much more.



October 30th, 2005


I am equally happy to announce that my two great friends and paddling comrades, Joey Hall and Chris Gragtmans, have joined the team as Riot Pros as well.



Additionally, Joey and Chris are team paddlers for Shred Ready and H2O Audio. We three work together really well and will, as usual, be teaming up for paddling missions, filming, demos and web posts.

The three of us are pictured here hanging out together. You may notice that Chris looks much smaller. It only seems that way because he's so much younger. He just turned 20. Sometimes we let him actually stand up in the back of the truck. But only when he's been a good boy.




Riot is getting us set up with access to their web site so we'll be making posts on their news section as well as here at Effort.tv. Now we're just waiting on a shipment of boats so we can get started. We have some Magnums, Astros and more on the shipment. Drop us an email if you want to borrow a demo boat.

Joey - deadmanprd@earthlink.net

Chris - c_gragtmans@hotmail.com

Spence - hhheeehhhawww@earthlink.net

See you later. Until then, keep fighting Mr. Tooth Decay.



Sincerely,




Spencer Cooke