Latest / Adventure Sports Podcast / Ep. 1201: Bungee Riverboarding! A New Sport with Robert Geier

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Ep. 1201: Bungee Riverboarding! A New Sport with Robert Geier · Adventure Sports Podcast

0:06
[SPEAKER_00]: your listening to the Adventure Sports podcast.
0:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for adventuring with us as we discover what incredible athletes and outdoor enthusiasts are doing all over the world.
0:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Now here's your host, Kurt Lindville.
0:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Robert has been doing this sport for like 20 years, but it's a sport that people don't know about, and I love this, you know, a while back, I was talking to someone about all the new adventure sports that have developed since we started the adventure sports podcast 10 years ago, and they probably had, you know, a grassroots movement before that, but a lot of them came into popularity, while the podcast was going on, this is one of those that you may have never heard of.
1:02
[SPEAKER_01]: The name of the sport is bungee riverboarding and it's not riverboarding as in going down whitewater on a board or riverboarding like people surf a hole in a class four drop or class three drop.
1:15
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not that.
1:17
[SPEAKER_01]: This is something completely different that uses a bungee cord and a current to do some super cool stuff.
1:24
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to let the guests describe it.
1:27
[SPEAKER_01]: but Robert, welcome to the program.
1:29
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm so excited to hear about this sport because I've never seen it done before.
1:33
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you.
1:34
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm so grateful if you're having me on the show.
1:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, it's just super, super cool.
1:38
[SPEAKER_01]: So Robert invented this and he's been doing a sense he was ten years old.
1:44
[SPEAKER_01]: So this is something that he has a lot of history with.
1:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Matter of fact, he claims to be the historian of the sport, which makes sense, because he's watched it from the beginning.
1:53
[SPEAKER_01]: And he was a computer programmer, but AI has struck, and so he transitioned to promoting this full-time now.
2:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Super cool.
2:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Robert, will you describe to us what Bungie Riverboarding is?
2:08
[SPEAKER_03]: Sure.
2:09
[SPEAKER_03]: So, bungee river borders rides small surfboards that are really more like a skimboard, if you know what a skimboard is.
2:16
[SPEAKER_03]: But anyway, it's a flat, small surfboard, which, like I said, is really like a skimboard.
2:22
[SPEAKER_03]: And we ride these on rivers and we shoot upstream at 30 miles an hour on these little skimboards, which we call riverboards, and the guys that are good, experience at the sport, can do all kinds of skateboarding tricks once they're shooting upstream.
2:35
[SPEAKER_03]: So it's all powered by a bungee cord system.
2:38
[SPEAKER_03]: So what you need is you need a piece of, you need a length of rope, you need a bungee cord, and at the end of the bungee cord, what we have is called a release system, which is a six foot long piece of rope that's encased in plastic, and then at the end of that piece of rope is a small metal loop.
2:54
[SPEAKER_03]: So you anchor the rope into a rock or a tree, anything solid along the side of the river.
2:59
[SPEAKER_03]: And then the other end of that rope is where you hook the bungee onto, and it's a 20-foot long bungee cord.
3:05
[SPEAKER_03]: And then at the end of that bungee is where this release system is with a loop on the end of it.
3:10
[SPEAKER_03]: And so you set that up in fast-moving river water, then you jump in with your board, and you hook the board onto that metal loop.
3:16
[SPEAKER_03]: The boards have a hook built into the nose out.
3:19
[SPEAKER_03]: So you hook that hook into the loop on the end of that bungee.
3:22
[SPEAKER_03]: And then you go out into the current of the river, and there's a special stance that you have to have, and you push that board down into
3:29
[SPEAKER_03]: And when you push that board down into the river, then the river current hits it, and the river current pushes the board and the writer downstream, and it stretches that 20-foot bungee out to about 200 feet.
3:39
[SPEAKER_03]: And then when that thing stretched fully out, and you can't stretch any further, you basically change your position on the board, and the board pops up out of the water, and then you get in a surfer-style stance on the board, and then it bunch of contracts, and it slingshot you upstream, and we hit speeds of about 30 miles an hour, going upstream,
3:56
[SPEAKER_03]: And then when that bungee's no longer pulling, since the board was just hooked on there, the riders keep on going upstream, and that's when they can throw that board around with their feet and do all the skateboard tricks and spins and all the all the skateboard tricks.
4:08
[SPEAKER_03]: And then when your ride's done, you just grab your board.
4:11
[SPEAKER_03]: You float back down, string to where that release was, and that little metal loop, and you hook it back on, push the board back down in the river, stretch back down, string, go up, go up, then ship, stream again, and you can go over and over again.
4:24
[SPEAKER_03]: The most I've ever done in a row is 32.
4:27
[SPEAKER_01]: 32.
4:29
[SPEAKER_03]: We have a ride-a-thon scheduled for this spring, too.
4:32
[SPEAKER_03]: I have a non-profit where we take kids out on the river and because kids love this.
4:37
[SPEAKER_03]: So I'm going to do a ride-a-thon this spring and see if I can break the world record, basically, for the number of rides in a row.
4:46
[SPEAKER_01]: That's awesome.
4:47
[SPEAKER_01]: It almost sounds like wakeboarding without a boat.
4:50
[SPEAKER_03]: It is, it's like wake skating, it's a lot of wake skating, because wake skaters can do all those skateboard tricks too.
4:56
[SPEAKER_03]: But that's the thing, you don't need an expensive boat or gas to do this.
4:59
[SPEAKER_03]: It's earth powered.
5:01
[SPEAKER_03]: A lot of people have a hard time understanding that when they see the video, because we go quite a ways upstream for quite a while, and people just don't understand that it's a bungee and the river, and that's it.
5:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, I assume you're standing on the board when you're moving upstream, but how do you transition into standing?
5:20
[SPEAKER_01]: That's gotta be hard.
5:22
[SPEAKER_03]: Beginners and kids write up stream on their stomachs.
5:25
[SPEAKER_03]: You can write when you're back as fully stretched You can just launch the board up out of the we call it in the hole when you're stretching back And you can launch up out of the hole just on your knees or with kids we do just on their stomachs And it takes a while most experienced board sports people like skin borders and skateboarders It takes them about four or five sessions out on the river before they can
5:47
[SPEAKER_03]: get the actual technique down to where they can stand and write up stream like the guys you see in the videos, like in that surfer style stance.
5:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Awesome.
5:56
[SPEAKER_01]: So Robert, people that are like me that have not seen this before, are they're wanting a visual right now?
6:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Where could they go and look to see what you're talking about?
6:06
[SPEAKER_03]: We have a website, evenSurf.com, and we have pictures and videos there.
6:11
[SPEAKER_03]: We also have a YouTube channel, and evenSurf YouTube channels that has lots of videos too.
6:17
[SPEAKER_03]: Those are the two best places.
6:18
[SPEAKER_03]: We're also on Instagram and TikTok.
6:20
[SPEAKER_03]: We're on all the social media trying to let people know about this.
6:24
[SPEAKER_01]: So cool.
6:25
[SPEAKER_01]: So, even has a special meeting that you told me before we hit record.
6:28
[SPEAKER_01]: What does even mean?
6:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Where did that come from?
6:30
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, even as a bungee surfing slang and even as the term for, like I said, one of the things you need to learn about this sport when you're a beginner is how to stretch the bungee cord out correctly.
6:42
[SPEAKER_03]: A lot of people don't have the correct technique.
6:46
[SPEAKER_03]: So when you have the correct technique and you're stretching back, there's a point where you just can't stretch anymore.
6:52
[SPEAKER_03]: And in some of the videos you'll see guys looking over to the side and what they're looking for is the point we call even.
6:56
[SPEAKER_03]: So that's the point where when you stretch the bungee system back far enough to get a good ride, that's the point called even.
7:04
[SPEAKER_03]: That's what the brand is named after.
7:07
[SPEAKER_01]: that's fun.
7:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, let's rewind a little bit.
7:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Now that people know what the sport is, at least a description of it, right?
7:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Where are you?
7:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Where do you do this?
7:16
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm in town called Boise, Idaho, and this is where I grew up doing this sport.
7:21
[SPEAKER_03]: I've actually been doing this kind of for about 50 years.
7:25
[SPEAKER_03]: I started when I was 10 years old, but there's an old school version of this sport, and then there's a new school version of this sport.
7:30
[SPEAKER_03]: And the old school version of this sport, which I saw, I first saw when I was probably about six or seven.
7:36
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's where you take a piece of rope and you tie it to a bridge or a tree in the river.
7:41
[SPEAKER_03]: And at the other end of that rope is a piece of plywood.
7:44
[SPEAKER_03]: And again, you want the same kind of water that we look for.
7:46
[SPEAKER_03]: You want the fast mooring river water, but you want it to have a smooth surface.
7:51
[SPEAKER_03]: And we call this another bungee surfing slang.
7:53
[SPEAKER_03]: It's called, we call it fast glass.
7:55
[SPEAKER_03]: It's the kind of water that we look for.
7:56
[SPEAKER_03]: So with the old school style, you get that rope and that plywood.
8:01
[SPEAKER_03]: And you set it up and that fast glass water.
8:03
[SPEAKER_03]: And then you could do lean side to side and as you lean side to side, the board goes back and forth across the river current.
8:09
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's the old school version that I started doing when I was 10 years old.
8:13
[SPEAKER_03]: But also when I was 10, the kids in my neighborhood would experiment with different stuff in the rope.
8:18
[SPEAKER_03]: We'd braid bicycle inter-tube tires together and put it in the rope so that when you push the board down in the river, you get a little bit of a spring upstream on the river.
8:27
[SPEAKER_03]: And when I was a senior in high school, I found some silicone rubber tubing.
8:31
[SPEAKER_03]: And I put that in the rope and we got a pretty good shot upstream, but sun just ate that up and that was the only time I ever did that until
8:42
[SPEAKER_03]: Until I was in my late 30s, when a friend said, have you ever been buggy boarding before?
8:46
[SPEAKER_03]: And I said, oh, I grew up doing that as a kid.
8:48
[SPEAKER_03]: And so the next time he went out, I went out with him.
8:51
[SPEAKER_03]: And I remember that system that I had built when I was in high school.
8:55
[SPEAKER_03]: And I went on the internet and found, of course, much modern, a lot more modern materials.
9:01
[SPEAKER_03]: And started building systems much like we have today.
9:05
[SPEAKER_01]: nice.
9:07
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is Boisey.
9:09
[SPEAKER_01]: So do you have favorite rivers you like to do it on?
9:13
[SPEAKER_03]: I've got lots of favorite rivers.
9:15
[SPEAKER_03]: Some of my favorite, the Boise River, of course, where I grew up is one of my favorite rivers.
9:20
[SPEAKER_03]: The Sandy River in Oregon is a great place.
9:23
[SPEAKER_03]: We've been to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and done this, a place called the Snake River Narrows, a beautiful spot.
9:32
[SPEAKER_03]: Some of my great memories on some of the rivers, on the Sandy River, I was stretching the system out, because when you know how to stretch the system out,
9:38
[SPEAKER_03]: It's just a time for you to relax.
9:40
[SPEAKER_03]: You just sit on that board in the hole and you're just checking out nature around you.
9:46
[SPEAKER_03]: And I was doing that on the Sandy River and an offspring came down.
9:49
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know where it came from, but it came out of the sky, hit the water and when it lifted off, it had a snake.
9:55
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's... Wow.
9:57
[SPEAKER_03]: And cook off, yeah.
9:59
[SPEAKER_03]: And I had a similar incident on the Boisier River also in a town called Eagle here, and Osprey came out of that sky and hit the water and when it came out it had a fish and it's claws as I'm, you know, just checking out the scene and watching nature.
10:14
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I love about any of these adventure sports is to get you out there where you can experience that kind of stuff.
10:22
[SPEAKER_01]: you never would have seen it had you not been doing this bungee you know bungee riverboarding it it doesn't matter what the sport is those moments are so so special
10:32
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, another favorite place of mine too is the American River in Sacramento and one of the things that makes it so special is there's a lot of tuber traffic that comes down that river and so people coming down the river when they see us and like I said when we're in that thing that I called when we're in the whole yeah they're coming down the river at us all they see is ahead and shoulders sticking up out of the river right when you have the proper technique the whole
10:55
[SPEAKER_03]: board and the bungee is buried underneath the water and they can't see it.
10:59
[SPEAKER_03]: So they see this head and shoulders You know sticking up out of the river and they're coming down at it and We pop up out of the river and come stream and at screaming upstream and then start doing those tricks and they're just freaked out Sometimes they're so freaked out that they'll they'll try to get those paddle over to where we're at Yeah, if you're out what we're doing
11:17
[SPEAKER_03]: And one time on the American River in Sacramento, a guy paddled over and he was checking out the bungee and he lifted it up out of the water and he actually sniffed it.
11:28
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh no.
11:31
[SPEAKER_03]: So from that point on, because we don't really like it when people paddle over and get in our way, because we were just sitting there and we can't launch.
11:37
[SPEAKER_03]: So from then on, whenever people do that, when they paddle over and get in our way, we call those people bungee sniffers.
11:42
[SPEAKER_03]: So there's more revolvingling, go for it.
11:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Bungie sniffers.
11:46
[SPEAKER_01]: That's hilarious.
11:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, people are curious, man.
11:49
[SPEAKER_01]: I would be curious.
11:50
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's got to be a great way to meet folks, though, because they're going to, they're going to be saying, what are you doing?
11:55
[SPEAKER_01]: How does this work?
11:56
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, yeah.
11:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow.
11:59
[SPEAKER_03]: Often times kids even get mad at us.
12:01
[SPEAKER_03]: A few times at a place called Parnell Beach, which is where a place we go a lot on the pay at River near Boise, Idaho.
12:07
[SPEAKER_03]: Kids will be there, come out just to swim and they'll see us doing this and they'll come up and they'll find out that we've been doing it for 20 years and they'll actually get mad.
12:14
[SPEAKER_03]: They're like, why don't more people know about this?
12:16
[SPEAKER_03]: Why didn't I know about this longer?
12:18
[SPEAKER_03]: Why haven't I been doing this so?
12:20
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a lot of fun.
12:21
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it sounds like an amazing time, a real hoot.
12:25
[SPEAKER_01]: It just really sounds fun.
12:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so you said, smooth glass.
12:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Our fast glass.
12:31
[SPEAKER_03]: Fast glass, yeah.
12:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Fast glass.
12:33
[SPEAKER_01]: We're talking about when the river's moving with a smooth bottom and it has a solid current, but it's not white water.
12:40
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not all braided on top.
12:42
[SPEAKER_01]: So how much current do you need?
12:44
[SPEAKER_01]: How fast does it need to go?
12:46
[SPEAKER_03]: You need to find a spot where you can walk out in the river and if you can stand in the river without it pushing you off your feet, then that's not fast enough.
12:54
[SPEAKER_03]: So if you walk out in the river and you're standing there and it really kind of pushes you off your feet, then that's a good spot, usually.
13:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so I grew up in Talukwa, Oklahoma, and the Illinois River is there, and it's a big canoeing river, and it's class two, and there are places where the currents fast enough.
13:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Just like you described, we would try to stand, and it drags you across the river bottom.
13:19
[SPEAKER_01]: You can't actually stand against it.
13:21
[SPEAKER_01]: So you're saying that's the point at which the fun begins right there.
13:25
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that's the kind of water you need to look for on rivers.
13:29
[SPEAKER_01]: okay so it could be almost any river then it's just finding the right spot on the river yeah there's usually on most rivers there's more of the type of water we look for there's more fast glass than there is rapids on most rivers yeah yeah well the Illinois would in back in teleqa would be like that there's a lot of places where the currents go in pretty well but you know there's no white water so how deep do you need you need at least five feet deep five feet
13:59
[SPEAKER_01]: I know not you never don't really ever bang your head if it's too shallow you'll bang the bottom of the board and mess up your board so that's why you want five feet deep yeah okay so everybody out there if you have a river and you know what he's talking about fast glass five feet deep you're good to go all you need is the rest of the setup right correct and some training I would expect what are some tips for learning how to do this?
14:26
[SPEAKER_03]: We do have a river boarding 101 video on YouTube too.
14:30
[SPEAKER_03]: One of the things, it just takes a while.
14:32
[SPEAKER_03]: I would suggest you go watch the video.
14:34
[SPEAKER_03]: Like I said, one of the things that's hard for people to learn is the proper technique to stand on the board, to get it under the water.
14:40
[SPEAKER_03]: When people get out there, you have to have your legs straight.
14:44
[SPEAKER_03]: If the board isn't fully under the water when you're doing this, when you're trying to do in the stretching movement, then you're not doing the proper technique.
14:52
[SPEAKER_03]: Because people get out there and they'll be on their knees trying to stretch the board and then the nose of the board's up out of the water and the board just isn't in the water far enough to act like a sail against that current to get them downstream far enough.
15:05
[SPEAKER_03]: So you have to make sure your legs are straight, make sure that whole board's under the water.
15:13
[SPEAKER_03]: you bend your knees, which brings the nose of the board up out of the surface of the water, and then at that point you bring whichever foot you are by bringing my left foot forward and put it towards the nose of the board and leave my right foot behind and just get in that surfer stance and get low, too.
15:30
[SPEAKER_03]: Another thing that people have problems with is when the bunch of contracts, it starts out a little bit slow, so a lot of times people stand straight up, and then that board takes off on them and they fall off the back in.
15:42
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, stay low.
15:43
[SPEAKER_03]: Stay low because you're going to get start going fast soon.
15:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so the bungee pulls you, so you're getting pulled against the current, so as far as the water's concerned, it must feel like you're going a thousand miles an hour, but you're not really going that fast.
15:56
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sure, but what does it feel like to get accelerated like that?
16:00
[SPEAKER_03]: It's just, it's a adrenaline rush.
16:02
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a pure adrenaline rush.
16:04
[SPEAKER_03]: When that happens, and I love it when kids, sometimes we'll put video on the video camera on the board and we'll get through reaction to kids, you know, and they're a little scared at first.
16:14
[SPEAKER_03]: They start going, you see a smile, break out on their face.
16:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Nice.
16:18
[SPEAKER_03]: Another thing you need to learn too is the hooking part.
16:21
[SPEAKER_03]: You have to be a good hooker to be a riverboard, too, okay, because when you're right, it's done, and you float back downstream, that's another thing you have to look
16:28
[SPEAKER_03]: grab that handle and hook it onto that nose of the board so that you can go right again because if you don't you know if you don't do that then you get push down stream and you have to walk back up and jump back in and do it again but if you can hit that hook every time then you can just do ride after ride after ride so that's another thing that you have to learn is the proper way to grab that release system and hook it back up to the board as you're floating back down stream and that often takes people a while to learn too.
16:55
[SPEAKER_01]: So how does that release system work?
16:58
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm envisioning something where OK, the slack is now there and maybe the angle of the rope is different, but I don't understand why it releases.
17:08
[SPEAKER_03]: Because it's a six foot long piece of rope that's encased in plastic.
17:13
[SPEAKER_03]: And then at the end of that, there's a metal handle and that metal handles what you grab.
17:17
[SPEAKER_03]: And then at the end of that metal handle is a loop that sticks out of that metal handle.
17:22
[SPEAKER_03]: And so that loop is what hooks on to that hook that we have built into the bottom of these boards.
17:27
[SPEAKER_03]: okay so you have to you have to grab that handle on the end of that rope and then you have to use you'll see you'll look at the loop and then after a while you just know where that hook is on the bottom of the board and then you reach under there with your hand and hook it onto that hook the loop onto that little metal hook and then once you do that that's when you can start pushing that board down into the river current and start your stretch back catch it night that's a good visualization so
17:55
[SPEAKER_01]: When you get to the point that they're slack and the current's pushing your whole mechanism downstream and you're still going upstream, then you're just going to slide right off of that loop.
18:04
[SPEAKER_03]: when the bungee's pulling you up stream at a certain point, that bungee's just done pulling and it has no power left.
18:09
[SPEAKER_03]: So it just basically stops.
18:10
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
18:10
[SPEAKER_03]: That point you're doing about 30 miles an hour on that board.
18:13
[SPEAKER_03]: So the board since it was just hooked on there, it just comes unhooked and then the guys keep on going up stream.
18:18
[SPEAKER_03]: And like I said, that's once it's unhooked, that's when those guys can, you know, the good guys, the skateboarder dudes can throw that board around with their feet or you can put a hand down in the water and you start spinning around and, you know, that's when you do all the tricks is once that board's released and you're flying up stream.
18:33
[SPEAKER_01]: That is fun.
18:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, what do you call the tricks?
18:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Describe some tricks for us.
18:38
[SPEAKER_01]: I know you guys have some lingo for that.
18:41
[SPEAKER_03]: One of my favorite tricks is something I call a super soaker.
18:46
[SPEAKER_03]: So when we have a bungee sniffer coming down the river, I can time it, I can time it just right so that I can come flying up stream and I'm coming at the bungee sniffer.
18:57
[SPEAKER_03]: And I turn my board sideways at them.
18:59
[SPEAKER_03]: And then I grab the front rail and when you grab that front rail, going that fast, it throws a huge spray of water.
19:05
[SPEAKER_03]: And so I can soak a six-man raft with a huge spray of water when there's bungee sniffer's coming down.
19:10
[SPEAKER_03]: I tell people, you know, if there's a bunch of you sniffing your way, don't launch, but I'm good enough at it that I can time it just right and I can come flying upstream and and throw a big spray of water, a big rooster tail spray of water on them.
19:22
[SPEAKER_03]: So, you know, I can do a 360, I can put my hand down, which makes the board spin and I can do a 360 and then grab that front rail and then throw some throw some water on them.
19:34
[SPEAKER_01]: So you're in Boisie, so I'm sure they're commercial rafting companies around there.
19:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Do the rafting guides know what you're up to and they kind of toy with this?
19:47
[SPEAKER_03]: We actually had a rafting company who was going to offer lessons, because that's one of the things I'd love to do too is get these white-routed rafting companies to do lessons, and also the white-routed rafting companies too that sometimes they do multi-day trips, you know, on the rafting trips, and it'd be a great activity when you're done for a rafting trip at the end of the day.
20:06
[SPEAKER_03]: Sure.
20:06
[SPEAKER_03]: Set one of these things up in the water and let the clients have fun.
20:10
[SPEAKER_03]: Last year I sent out over 30 emails to local nonprofits, because as I said,
20:15
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
20:15
[SPEAKER_03]: So we'd like to take, you know, the marginalized and disadvantaged youth out and have them try this, you know, in a safe condition, safe environment.
20:23
[SPEAKER_03]: And I didn't get a single response back from any of the non-profits in our area.
20:28
[SPEAKER_03]: So this year I was preparing to do that again to send out those emails again.
20:31
[SPEAKER_03]: And my wife said, well, why don't we form our own non-profit and just do this ourselves?
20:37
[SPEAKER_03]: So our non-profit is called upstream youth.
20:40
[SPEAKER_03]: and we hope to work with, you know, disadvantage and marginalize youth here in the valley and take them out and show them what a good time it is.
20:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Upstream youth.
20:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
20:51
[SPEAKER_01]: You have a website for that?
20:53
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, upstream youth.org.
20:55
[SPEAKER_01]: That's beautiful upstream youth.org.
20:59
[SPEAKER_01]: So what's so fun about this is that a lot of kids, I mean, they may not have an opportunity to try fun things like this, but a lot of kids are just bored.
21:08
[SPEAKER_01]: They're just bored.
21:10
[SPEAKER_01]: They need a way to interact with adults with each other and just to go out and experience nature in some way, maybe to settle their fears of water, even find a water sport that helps them
21:25
[SPEAKER_01]: And I can see huge benefits.
21:29
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
21:29
[SPEAKER_03]: We don't just teach them to riverboard either.
21:31
[SPEAKER_03]: We'll teach them water safety basics and, you know, how to swim in the water in a river and how to go to how to float downstream and we'll do all that too.
21:41
[SPEAKER_03]: One of the things that I like to do with kids is I don't even put them out on a riverboard the first time.
21:46
[SPEAKER_03]: This place called Parnell Beach where we take kids.
21:49
[SPEAKER_03]: The first few times I'll just jump in the river with them and show them.
21:51
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, if you fall off the board This is what you do you swim out at this spot right here as I said before.
21:56
[SPEAKER_03]: We've had kids as young as four who do this with us at a place called Parnell Beach
22:02
[SPEAKER_03]: And the kind of place that you need to look for for young kids and beginners is a spot that has really slow moving rotter right after the fast water and cartel beat just exactly like that.
22:13
[SPEAKER_03]: Right after the fast moving rotter there's a place where the river just opens up and it's really smooth smooth or really calm water after that.
22:20
[SPEAKER_03]: So, and then with the kids too, with the young kids, what we do is we'll have somebody stand up stream to catch them and help them with the board when their ride's done.
22:28
[SPEAKER_03]: And then we get somebody on the board with them behind them.
22:31
[SPEAKER_03]: And with the kids, we don't stretch them back as far as we do when we're riding so.
22:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
22:36
[SPEAKER_03]: And we'll stretch them back just a little ways.
22:39
[SPEAKER_03]: And then we'll let them go and then they go up stream and then that person's up there waiting for them in case they, you know, can't handle the board or whatever.
22:45
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, fun.
22:45
[SPEAKER_03]: We usually have another person downstream, too.
22:47
[SPEAKER_03]: Just as a safety precaution, you know, and we make the kids wear life jackets and all that.
22:52
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's so cool.
22:54
[SPEAKER_01]: So safety equipment was actually going to be my next question.
22:57
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, life jackets kind of go without saying I would think that one other things, wetsuits helmets, what do you need?
23:04
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, here in Idaho, of course, you need wet suits.
23:06
[SPEAKER_03]: The water's pretty cold and tell about July.
23:08
[SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, we wear wet suits, life jackets and helmets.
23:12
[SPEAKER_03]: Of course, the guys that are good at it and the skateboarder guys, they usually end up abandoning the little life jackets and the helmets at some point.
23:20
[SPEAKER_03]: But yeah, kids and beginners, we definitely make them where the life jackets and helmets.
23:26
[SPEAKER_01]: And I like the idea of having a spotter downstream.
23:29
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
23:30
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a that's a very a very good idea.
23:32
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I can't hardly imagine someone getting hurt seriously doing this, but I can imagine someone getting disoriented or scared and just not knowing what to do.
23:45
[SPEAKER_03]: or sometimes people just get worn out.
23:47
[SPEAKER_03]: We'll have beginners go out there and they struggle with the board because once you know the technique on how to stand on the board and get it to stretch right, it's really not hard at all.
23:56
[SPEAKER_03]: But when you're trying to learn how to do that, it takes a lot of muscle to try to learn how to do that.
24:04
[SPEAKER_01]: I imagine it's analogous to like learning how to snowsky, you start by doing your snow plow pizza, you know, type thing, they learn how to control the skis, that's exhausting, that is so much work, but as soon as you learn how to parallel and just enjoy yourself going down the mountain, then it gets so much easier.
24:22
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
24:23
[SPEAKER_03]: One of the things too is the sport is actually illegal on the river where I grew up doing it on the Boise River.
24:30
[SPEAKER_01]: No way.
24:31
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
24:32
[SPEAKER_03]: And the reason it's illegal people ask me, well, why is it illegal?
24:35
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's illegal because it evolved from the old school sport.
24:37
[SPEAKER_03]: The old school sport that I described.
24:39
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
24:40
[SPEAKER_03]: That sport is actually kind of dangerous.
24:41
[SPEAKER_03]: What do you have that board type to the rope?
24:44
[SPEAKER_03]: Because board get turned upside down and it'll trap a kid on the bottom of the river.
24:48
[SPEAKER_03]: Or they also, that old school style you have rope that's attached to the board.
24:53
[SPEAKER_03]: need a handle to hold on to as you lean side to side.
24:56
[SPEAKER_03]: So they have these ropes that are attached to the board and kids will get tangled in that rope.
25:01
[SPEAKER_03]: So that's a problem we face is people still think we're doing that old school style.
25:06
[SPEAKER_03]: Old school style is dangerous.
25:09
[SPEAKER_03]: And another problem too with that old school style is when you were count up stream.
25:13
[SPEAKER_03]: Sometimes the rope would get piled up on your board and it could trap your legs that way too.
25:21
[SPEAKER_03]: But that doesn't happen because we've, you know, the sport is evolved so much that it's absolutely nothing like that old school style.
25:28
[SPEAKER_03]: So it's really the old school style that's illegal.
25:31
[SPEAKER_03]: And they haven't witnessed this new school style.
25:34
[SPEAKER_03]: So they still hold that old school style against us.
25:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, some sort of a distinction needs to be made, right?
25:42
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I remember when snowboarding was illegal at a lot of ski resorts.
25:48
[SPEAKER_03]: Because again, the skiers, although those snowboarders are crazy and dangerous, and they can't control those boards, we're going to run over somebody and kill them, you know, right?
25:56
[SPEAKER_03]: So, so it wasn't until 2007 that the last ski resort actually legalized snowboarding and now snowboarding is legal it at all ski resorts.
26:06
[SPEAKER_03]: And I don't know if you remember this, too, but there was bumper stickers back in the 80s that used to say skateboarding is not a crime.
26:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, yeah, yeah.
26:13
[SPEAKER_03]: because skateboarding, too, when it was new and it came along, people were wary of it.
26:18
[SPEAKER_03]: People are always wary of new sports, and especially once they don't understand, so they immediately become fearful of it when they're wary of new things.
26:27
[SPEAKER_03]: We sell riverboarding, it's not a crime.
26:30
[SPEAKER_03]: But for different India, T-shirts and hoodies on our website, so...
26:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's awesome.
26:35
[SPEAKER_01]: I've actually put a lot of thought into this, and I don't want to do a deep dive, but Robert, you might find it interesting.
26:41
[SPEAKER_01]: They're different personality types.
26:44
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, you can choose different aspects of personalities and use them to kind of build some sort of a scumotted to understand why people do what they do or that sort of thing.
26:54
[SPEAKER_01]: And actually, I find a lot of this stuff isn't so much about understanding yourself or figuring something major out.
27:04
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that's very true.
27:06
[SPEAKER_03]: We often get two reactions kind of like you what you describe.
27:08
[SPEAKER_03]: We'll get two reactions from people.
27:10
[SPEAKER_03]: We'll show the video or I'll describe it to people and they'll be like, oh man, I want to do that.
27:15
[SPEAKER_03]: I want to go out.
27:16
[SPEAKER_03]: We can go do that.
27:17
[SPEAKER_03]: And then you'll have other people to say, oh, that sounds dangerous.
27:20
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, is it dangerous?
27:22
[SPEAKER_03]: And I'll say, well, come out and watch us and watch the little kids ride.
27:26
[SPEAKER_03]: And you'll see that it's not really dangerous.
27:28
[SPEAKER_03]: So, you
27:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, one of the personality tests, the acronym spills ocean, or other people call it the big five personality test, and the in and ocean is for neuroticism.
27:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's a spectrum.
27:39
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like how fearful do I live my life is one way to think about it, or how erratic are my emotions?
27:46
[SPEAKER_01]: That's another way to think about it.
27:48
[SPEAKER_01]: And people that are high in neuroticism,
27:50
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not a crime either.
27:51
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just who they are, right?
27:54
[SPEAKER_01]: But when they see things that they're afraid of, sometimes they think no one should be allowed to do that.
27:59
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
28:00
[SPEAKER_01]: because it scares them to watch even.
28:02
[SPEAKER_01]: And I like to point that out because that's a fear doesn't, fear doesn't lead us to any good places, right?
28:09
[SPEAKER_01]: It's important to have enough fear that we don't hurt ourselves, but when some people are hyper-neurotic, I think they need to know that about themselves and realize and not everybody else feels that way.
28:20
[SPEAKER_01]: If that makes sense.
28:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Of course, I'm kind of a loan neuroticism adventure as guy.
28:24
[SPEAKER_01]: So for me, it's really hard for me to understand the neuroticism.
28:28
[SPEAKER_01]: But once you understand, it's how someone's hard-wired for whatever reason.
28:32
[SPEAKER_01]: It's easier to have the empathy and say, oh, I get it.
28:35
[SPEAKER_01]: I know why they feel that way, but I can agree to disagree with that.
28:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
28:39
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't need to do a deep dive into that.
28:41
[SPEAKER_01]: But in adventure sports, it's pretty common to have someone standing on the sidelines, screaming, what are you doing?
28:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Get out of there.
28:49
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, one example is I took my young son into a beautiful blade, the powder was so good and it was, it was an extreme black, but he was a capable skier and knew how to do a self arrest and he was, he was perfectly fine.
29:03
[SPEAKER_01]: But this lady skied into this little blade where we were and saw us and she looked at me with panic in her eyes and says, do you know where you are?
29:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you know what you're doing?
29:12
[SPEAKER_01]: And I just thought, of course, we do.
29:15
[SPEAKER_01]: But that was her being concerned about whether I was being stupid with my son.
29:20
[SPEAKER_01]: I get it.
29:21
[SPEAKER_01]: I understand why people feel that way, but sometimes we have to give people the benefit of the doubt.
29:25
[SPEAKER_03]: I like to learn my favorite spots.
29:26
[SPEAKER_03]: We talked about favorite spots earlier.
29:28
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
29:28
[SPEAKER_03]: Another one of my favorite spots is a spot up on the salmon river.
29:31
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's a spot called Weener Hole.
29:34
[SPEAKER_03]: And I'll tell you the reason it's called Weener Hole is because I had a friend who had some buddies who were raft guides and he said, come up to the Sam and River and we'll show these raft guides what's up with this.
29:45
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
29:46
[SPEAKER_03]: And so we went the day before and we were looking for spots to ride on the Sam and River.
29:50
[SPEAKER_03]: And when you're in the Sam and River, the mountains go straight up from the edges of the river.
29:56
[SPEAKER_03]: So any place you're on that river, it feels like you're in a hole.
30:00
[SPEAKER_03]: So that's why I got the name hole for that for that right, but as we we found this spot and we set up and I had forgotten some board shorts It's about a three hour drive up to this spot of the riggins Idaho and I forgot in my board shorts on the way up there.
30:13
[SPEAKER_03]: So I stopped in a town and I got a pair of reversible cotton board shorts at a local store in a small town.
30:20
[SPEAKER_03]: And so I'm out there riding and riding and riding and it's this is one of those spots where there's just raft after raft.
30:25
[SPEAKER_03]: of tourists coming down the river.
30:27
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
30:28
[SPEAKER_03]: And they all cheer and taking pictures and all that stuff is I'm shooting upstream right after right after right and I get done writing over at the riverbank and I sit down on a rock and I notice you know, something doesn't feel right.
30:42
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh no.
30:43
[SPEAKER_03]: I stand up, I look down, and when I stand up and look down, everything looks fine.
30:47
[SPEAKER_03]: But then I get down in the surfer stance, and sure enough, those board shrubs, I had totally ripped the crotch.
30:53
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.
30:55
[SPEAKER_03]: So every time I was riding up stream, I was flashing every raft that came by, so without knowing it.
31:01
[SPEAKER_03]: So
31:02
[SPEAKER_03]: That's why that's bought on the, and we also have an app.
31:05
[SPEAKER_03]: We have an app on our website that's called the Glass Finder, and it's a spot where you can find riverboarding locations, because that's, you know, so people don't have to go explore rivers.
31:15
[SPEAKER_03]: We have this glass finder on our website at evensurf.com.
31:19
[SPEAKER_03]: The louse people to go and find places that have already been established as places derived.
31:24
[SPEAKER_03]: So you can find weiner hole on our gas glass finder on the website.
31:29
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's a cool thing about this port, too, that relates to ocean surfing.
31:33
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, if you're an ocean surfer and you find a spot to ride, you get the name it, you know, and then there's lots of different names for those, so if you go on the glass finder, it even surf.com, you can find the names of places and places that are already good to ride.
31:46
[SPEAKER_03]: So, and then if you find one on your river, we suggest that you put that, because you can add spots on that app, too.
31:53
[SPEAKER_03]: So,
31:53
[SPEAKER_01]: very cool.
31:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's fun.
31:56
[SPEAKER_01]: It's all good.
31:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Man, it's about growing a sport.
32:00
[SPEAKER_01]: People finding something the love to do, so they'll get out there and experience it and be healthy and, you know, enjoy nature.
32:07
[SPEAKER_01]: When you tie off, you mention you could tie off to a tree or something, but I'm also thinking in terms of, well, you don't want to get slung into the riverbank, right?
32:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And if the angle is too extreme, I imagine it's going to make it harder to stretch your
32:23
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
32:24
[SPEAKER_01]: So can you describe what to look for for a tie-off?
32:28
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
32:29
[SPEAKER_03]: Usually we even tie on to the shore sometimes on to trees, but it has to be fairly close to the river.
32:35
[SPEAKER_03]: But there again we have about 50 feet of rope before we tie the bungee on.
32:39
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
32:39
[SPEAKER_03]: So when you have that amount of rope, you can see that there's a lot of
32:41
[SPEAKER_03]: You can sit on the board and this is kind of how it is like old school river boarding or old school river boarding and this aspect is that when you get on the board at first you kind of have to lean to your left or lean to your right to ping on which side of the river you're on you lean the board out a little ways.
32:58
[SPEAKER_03]: and we don't write down the middle of the river usually either we're kind of off to the side too because you know we don't we want to avoid the traffic that comes down the middle of the river in some places in some places there is no river a traffic coming down the river so it doesn't matter but you get on the board and you have to lean out to your left a little bit and to so you get in the current and away from the bank and that's the spot where you can get in the the back in the whole stance where you push that board down in the river and then get your good stretch back
33:24
[SPEAKER_01]: OK, so I'm just going to visualizing it.
33:27
[SPEAKER_01]: You can pull yourself out into the river away from the bank is what you're saying.
33:31
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, there's a lot of flexibility.
33:33
[SPEAKER_03]: So you use that old school style and you lean when you're on the board and you're starting your stretch back.
33:38
[SPEAKER_03]: You can angle the board to one side.
33:40
[SPEAKER_03]: And when you angle to that side, of course, the river current.
33:43
[SPEAKER_03]: hits it differently and it can move you from one side, you can go left or right as you angle the board.
33:50
[SPEAKER_03]: Then when you hit that current, because the current doesn't move real fast along on the side of the river either.
33:55
[SPEAKER_03]: So you have to angle out to where the current is so they can push that board down and then the river current hits it and pushes the board and right or downstream.
34:03
[SPEAKER_01]: forget what they call it, but they do that with canoes when you're going upstream and you get to a section that you can't you can't paddle up then you can put a line on the bow and a line on the stern and stand on the shore and by changing the length of the line you can get that canoe to go out into the current and you can steer the canoe from the shore by doing the same thing.
34:23
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like it's like what your lean is and so people walk canoes up and you know through
34:31
[SPEAKER_01]: by changing the way that the lines are directing it.
34:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Interesting.
34:39
[SPEAKER_01]: This is all new to me, and it just sounds so fantastic.
34:43
[SPEAKER_01]: You make me want to find a place to do this.
34:46
[SPEAKER_01]: And there are places right here, you know, I'm in Gunnison, Colorado.
34:49
[SPEAKER_01]: We have the Gunnison River.
34:50
[SPEAKER_01]: It's usually fairly shallow, but we have, we have sections where this would be great.
34:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Where?
34:55
[SPEAKER_03]: I've done it on that river on the Gunnison River.
34:57
[SPEAKER_03]: There's a kayak park somewhere.
34:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
34:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Just down below town.
35:01
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and we did it, I think like at the beginning of that kayak park, so nice.
35:06
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a good current at the top of that kayak park that might be just right.
35:10
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's where we did it.
35:11
[SPEAKER_03]: We also did this one time on the Colorado River in Glenwood Springs, Colorado.
35:15
[SPEAKER_03]: We were, for a while, we were traveling around the west, selling this to outdoor shops, trying to sell the system so that they would stock them and try to sell them.
35:24
[SPEAKER_03]: and we had a demo to do for a outdoor shop in Glenwood Springs and we woke up that morning to do the demo and it was snowing.
35:34
[SPEAKER_03]: It was the end of May.
35:35
[SPEAKER_03]: I think it was Memorial Day and Memorial Day weekend and we woke up and it was snowing.
35:41
[SPEAKER_03]: And we got out to the river and we're like, well, we have to do a demo.
35:44
[SPEAKER_03]: So I got out there.
35:45
[SPEAKER_03]: We set it up on the Colorado River there.
35:49
[SPEAKER_03]: And I got out there and we had a session in the snow.
35:52
[SPEAKER_03]: It was really cool, the riding up stream and having the snowflakes hitching the face as you're shooting up stream.
35:57
[SPEAKER_03]: So that was a memorable ride, too.
36:01
[SPEAKER_03]: In addition, kayak courses, too.
36:02
[SPEAKER_03]: One of our goals, I would love for this to one day be an Olympic sport.
36:05
[SPEAKER_03]: because they already have kayak courses in the Olympics and there's always water in those kayak courses that we can use to do this.
36:13
[SPEAKER_03]: So I imagine that they judge it kind of like a surfing competition, you know, you'd go out for a set amount of time and you have judges who score the number of rides you can do and the tricks you do on that ride and so that'd be one of the things that would be my ultimate dream would be to have this actually be an Olympic sport.
36:30
[SPEAKER_03]: But right now, nobody knows about it.
36:31
[SPEAKER_03]: We got to get people to know about it first.
36:34
[SPEAKER_03]: We've actually had the first contest, too.
36:35
[SPEAKER_03]: We had our first Riverboarding contest, Bungie Riverboarding contest at, they had a thing called the River Experience, which was a whitewater river festival that they had in a town called Garden Valley.
36:46
[SPEAKER_03]: here in Idaho.
36:48
[SPEAKER_03]: And I called them up and said, you know, we're a river sport.
36:52
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, in fact, we're the only sport at that time, we're the only sport invented in Idaho.
36:55
[SPEAKER_03]: So, would you include us and it's one of the events in the Payette River experience.
37:00
[SPEAKER_03]: And they should just said, sure, come on up.
37:01
[SPEAKER_03]: So, as one of the events they had, we had a river boarding contest.
37:05
[SPEAKER_03]: And there was a local skateboarder here, Mike Bloomquist, that won that contest.
37:10
[SPEAKER_03]: So, Olympics are next.
37:12
[SPEAKER_01]: I love it.
37:14
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what's funny about this Robert, and this is a little off topic, but I want to get your perspective on this.
37:20
[SPEAKER_01]: People forget where they are.
37:21
[SPEAKER_01]: They forget what resources they have locally, you know, where they could do amazing sports, maybe they just never thought of it.
37:30
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, the idea of doing this bungee riverboarding in Gunnison.
37:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Who's ever thought of that?
37:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, but here you say no, I've done it.
37:39
[SPEAKER_01]: I've done it there.
37:40
[SPEAKER_01]: When people begin to be imaginative and creative and come up with a new way to enjoy their local area, then it opens so many doors.
37:50
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think it's so important because people think, oh, I'll never learn to ski because I have to travel too far and it costs too much and the barrier to entries too high and all that kind of stuff.
37:59
[SPEAKER_01]: But then it's like, well, do you have a river in your town?
38:03
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, rivers are everywhere.
38:05
[SPEAKER_03]: I have a map, one of my favorite things is I have a map of the navigable rivers, the United States.
38:09
[SPEAKER_03]: And if you look at that, rivers are everywhere.
38:12
[SPEAKER_03]: The only place there aren't rivers is like part of Southern California and part of New Mexico.
38:17
[SPEAKER_03]: So,
38:17
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, everywhere else, and it's the same if I showed you a map of Europe or of Asia, you know, river or just everywhere.
38:25
[SPEAKER_03]: We've had several business analysts come out and look at the sport, too.
38:28
[SPEAKER_03]: And one of the things that they tell us is, you need to have a star come out, you know, we need Justin Bieber, Bieber, and back down for all right.
38:35
[SPEAKER_03]: Somebody like that to come out and do it, and the sport would just take off, you know.
38:40
[SPEAKER_03]: But then I recently had a meeting with another business analyst.
38:42
[SPEAKER_03]: And he said, well, you know, that would maybe just be another 24-hour news cycle, like we made the front page of the Wall Street Journal, you know, and I think, oh, that's going to blow up.
38:51
[SPEAKER_03]: We were in the New York Times, you know, and we won the award for Best New Sporting Goods Product of the Year at the World's largest sporting goods trade show also.
38:58
[SPEAKER_03]: And each time that happened, I thought, oh, this is what's going to set us off, you know, this is where it's going to explode.
39:03
[SPEAKER_03]: But it was really just kind of a 24-hour news cycle in all those occasions.
39:06
[SPEAKER_03]: And what this guy said most recently, he said, what you really need is a movement.
39:10
[SPEAKER_03]: you need people who believe in this and people who will join the movement basically and help you move this sport forward, promote this sport.
39:19
[SPEAKER_03]: So that's why I encourage people these days to join our social media, we're on all the channels, and to go to evensurf.com and you can log in and when you log in, we'll send you a monthly newsletter on how you can help join the movement.
39:34
[SPEAKER_01]: that's cool.
39:35
[SPEAKER_01]: So Gunnison has once a year in the summer they have river days and it's just a week in this devoted to celebrating the fact that we have a river that people do people a surf in that in that kayak park and when I say surf I mean on surfboards.
39:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Right people of course kayak but the main traffic on this river is is people floating in rafts because they love
39:59
[SPEAKER_01]: I like to snorkele it, river snorkeling, you know, but the point is if you go to a river festival where towns are celebrating the fact that they have water sports on our river, that would be a perfect time because crowds have gathered, right?
40:13
[SPEAKER_01]: People could see you doing it.
40:15
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, we need to get involved in more of those.
40:18
[SPEAKER_03]: Boise also has a white water park that they put in in the early 2000s.
40:22
[SPEAKER_03]: And when they first announced that white water park in Boise, we immediately went to them and we said, well, we're the only sport and vented in Idaho, we're a river sport, will you include us in the plans for this white water park?
40:33
[SPEAKER_03]: And they told us, well, the,
40:35
[SPEAKER_03]: Plans for phase one have already been cemented so we can't include you in that, but we'll include you in phase two of the whitewater park plans, and then phase two came out, and they didn't include us in fact they put a sign up that says no bungee riverboarding allowed in the whitewater, yeah, so then I called them up and I said I thought you're going to include us in the phase two of the whitewater park, and their answer basically was well raise your own money and build your own whitewater park, so
41:00
[SPEAKER_03]: That's one of the things that through the sale of our brand or even serve company brand and all the other stuff that we do, I hope that someday we can raise enough money to build our own whitewater park here in Boise for riverboarding.
41:12
[SPEAKER_03]: I know a couple of great locations in town that we could do it at, so someday we'll get that done.
41:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, Robert, sometimes it's a matter of educating people on the value of something.
41:22
[SPEAKER_01]: When it catches on and people want to do it and it starts bringing people to your town or whatever, then it's like, oh, there's an economic reason for us to encourage this.
41:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Something else, another couple of dots to try to connect.
41:36
[SPEAKER_01]: They are building kayak parks in cities without rivers now.
41:42
[SPEAKER_01]: where they pump the water and it's a totally artificial kayak park, just so people can learn to kayak and enjoy kayaking, but they could accommodate what you're doing in those designs as well.
41:54
[SPEAKER_01]: A paid-a-play version, you know, in a city without a river.
41:59
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that's interesting, because I thought about that, because as I mentioned, their rivers are everywhere.
42:04
[SPEAKER_03]: They do crazy stuff in places like Dubai now, and Dubai, they have the indoor skiing place where you can go skiing indoors and Dubai.
42:11
[SPEAKER_03]: And we were talking about that one time.
42:13
[SPEAKER_03]: That's something I said to somebody.
42:14
[SPEAKER_03]: I said, well, you could build a canal in Dubai, and you could,
42:19
[SPEAKER_03]: pump the water, you know, set the canal at the right angle and pump the water up at the top and you'd have perfect, perfect, perfect, fast glass and then people could come do this riverboarding then and do buy.
42:29
[SPEAKER_03]: And I didn't know they were already doing that in towns without rivers.
42:32
[SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, they are doing that.
42:34
[SPEAKER_03]: They'll include us in this also.
42:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, in water parks, all across United States, where people go down water slides and that kind of thing, they're now putting wave pools and
42:48
[SPEAKER_03]: I've tried to work with the Idaho tourism councils and all the people that promote tourism in Idaho because when people think of surfing, they think of California, they think of Hawaii, right?
42:59
[SPEAKER_03]: Well when this sport takes off and it gets big, I'd love for people to think, oh well where's the best place to do this?
43:04
[SPEAKER_03]: Well it's Idaho.
43:05
[SPEAKER_03]: So for years, I've tried to work with the tourism councils and the tourism boards.
43:09
[SPEAKER_03]: We have a place called Visit Idaho, and I used to hassle them all the time on Twitter, and they'd be out at some event, an expo in Arkansas or somewhere.
43:18
[SPEAKER_03]: And I'd say, well, are you telling them about Benji Riverboarding?
43:21
[SPEAKER_03]: And they'd be like, what are you talking about?
43:22
[SPEAKER_03]: And eventually, they'd block to me.
43:27
[SPEAKER_01]: well Robert you're going to get there you have the passion for it and it sounds like such a fun sport okay let's talk about benefits of the sport for a little bit how is it benefiting you how does it benefit others
43:41
[SPEAKER_03]: It benefits me the thing that I love most about this sport is introducing it to these young kids.
43:46
[SPEAKER_03]: Like I said before, we have kids that actually get mad at me down at the river sometimes because they'll discover it and I'll tell them that we've been doing it for 20 years and they're like, oh, I know more about this.
43:56
[SPEAKER_03]: Why haven't I heard about this?
43:57
[SPEAKER_03]: And so it's just that thing of taking kids down to the river and letting them have a good time and seeing the joy on their faces.
44:04
[SPEAKER_03]: And then seeing the passion that they get from doing this
44:10
[SPEAKER_03]: Once you learn how to stand, which takes a while, and people become obsessed, they're be like, oh, this time out, I'm going to stand like you guys do, and I'm going to learn how to lie.
44:18
[SPEAKER_03]: And then once they learn how to stand, then they're like, oh, I'm going to learn how to do that shove it.
44:21
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm going to learn how to do a massive Ollie so that I can start doing other tricks off the Ollie.
44:26
[SPEAKER_03]: So there's always that next thing to learn.
44:29
[SPEAKER_03]: So for me, that's one of the things that brings me the most joy is when people discover it and letting people discover it and showing it to people.
44:37
[SPEAKER_03]: And on their level, too, it's just that joy that it brings them, and I love that, too, because that hopefully that brings them more time in nature, you know, it's letting them discover something that hopefully will get them out in nature more often, so that's the thing that's my passion.
44:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Man, I'm all over that.
44:55
[SPEAKER_01]: What about athleticism, how strong do you need to be to try this?
45:00
[SPEAKER_03]: And we actually bring up another point, we have two forms of this.
45:03
[SPEAKER_03]: We have the form where you can hook the board to the bungee, and then we have another form where you can put a handle on the end of the bungee.
45:12
[SPEAKER_03]: And that takes a lot of strength, because in the handle writing form, you have to hold onto the handle.
45:19
[SPEAKER_03]: with your hands, of course.
45:21
[SPEAKER_03]: And then you just place the board on your feet and then you get out in the river current and the board pushes you down stream as you're holding onto the handle.
45:26
[SPEAKER_03]: And that actually takes, and then when you get back to that spot, you just kind of rotate the board around while you're holding onto the handle and it shoots you upstream.
45:34
[SPEAKER_03]: But you have to be a little bit strong to do that version of it.
45:37
[SPEAKER_03]: Whereas the version where you hook the board on, like I said, we have young kids that get out there and do that, because the board is doing most of the heavy work there if it's just hooked on.
45:49
[SPEAKER_03]: But still, you know, you have to be somewhat athletic to do it.
45:53
[SPEAKER_03]: A lot of people have a hard time at the beginning too because when you're trying to master that technique, you have to use a lot of muscle to get the board in the right position so that you're going to get stretched back far enough.
46:05
[SPEAKER_03]: But then, like I said, once you learn that technique,
46:08
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like snowboarding, you know, once you learn the technique you're just standing on the board, whereas beginners often, you know, they're crouched over and they use a lot of muscle when they're beginning snowboarding.
46:17
[SPEAKER_03]: But with riverboarding, once you learn that technique, that's the time that I'm just standing on that board and I'm checking out the nature around me and just looking at the scenery as the board stretches back.
46:26
[SPEAKER_03]: So the hook and ride technique doesn't require a lot of muscle.
46:30
[SPEAKER_03]: But then again, you know, you do have to have some athletic
46:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Are there other sports that kind of cross over?
46:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Like if you're a great skateboarder, you've mentioned that.
46:43
[SPEAKER_03]: Skin borders and surf borders.
46:45
[SPEAKER_03]: Usually when they come out, you know, they're pretty good at it.
46:48
[SPEAKER_03]: We don't ride with a fin in the tail of the board either.
46:51
[SPEAKER_03]: So, skin borders are used to that.
46:54
[SPEAKER_03]: Surfers aren't.
46:54
[SPEAKER_03]: So when the board goes upstream, often time to get sideways and stuff on you if you don't know what you're doing.
46:59
[SPEAKER_03]: And a lot of surfers and,
47:01
[SPEAKER_03]: Board sports people don't like that and that'll cause them to crash, so but skin borders are used to not riding with a fin, so And that's one of the things we do for beginners too for beginners sometimes we'll put a fin on the board and then the board goes straight going up stream But once you learn how to ride that kind of takes the fun out of it
47:21
[SPEAKER_01]: So there you have training wheels for it.
47:23
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what you're saying basically.
47:25
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
47:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, that's awesome.
47:27
[SPEAKER_01]: What about people who might say maybe I'll never stand, but I'd like to play around on that board and just, you know, belly up the river.
47:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you have people that are like, yeah.
47:38
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, even that's a lot of fun.
47:40
[SPEAKER_03]: We've had people that have come out with us for years and they're still just barely learning to stand, but still they love to get out there and just go upstream on their knees and even going upstream on your knees, you know, you can reach your hand out and then you start doing spins and it's just such an adrenaline rush, you know, that speed going upstream, that close to the river.
47:57
[SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, we've had people that like I said that have come out for years and they're still learning to stand and ride.
48:04
[SPEAKER_03]: So,
48:05
[SPEAKER_01]: nice.
48:07
[SPEAKER_01]: What about the ability to swim well?
48:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Is this one of those sports where you don't have to be a great swimmer or you really should be a good swimmer?
48:16
[SPEAKER_03]: You have to know how to swim.
48:17
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's put it that way.
48:18
[SPEAKER_03]: You have to know how to swim at least.
48:20
[SPEAKER_03]: And I recommend that you be a good swimmer.
48:22
[SPEAKER_03]: But it depends on the situation too.
48:25
[SPEAKER_03]: When we work with under privileged kids, we'll have a lot of safety personnel in the river with us to help these kids.
48:32
[SPEAKER_03]: And they also wear a life jacket too.
48:35
[SPEAKER_03]: So you don't have to be a great swimmer in certain circumstances.
48:40
[SPEAKER_03]: But you definitely know how to swim.
48:43
[SPEAKER_01]: be comfortable in the water.
48:45
[SPEAKER_01]: I interviewed a lady just recently her episode's going to be coming out soon.
48:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Beautiful episode.
48:51
[SPEAKER_01]: One of my favorite things was she's just a total world class scuba diver.
48:56
[SPEAKER_01]: She learned to swim after she learned to scuba dive.
48:59
[SPEAKER_03]: Hmm.
49:01
[SPEAKER_03]: That's amazing.
49:01
[SPEAKER_01]: It amazed me, but when she was actually learning to scuba dive her instructor says wait a minute, you don't know how to swim You know, and she goes, no, I don't mix is all right.
49:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's teach you how to swim while you're doing this and so she was scuba diving before she knew how to swim And I can see sometimes you want to be safe about it But I can see some water sports that can be the motivation to learn how to swim.
49:27
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I can see that too where people see this and
49:30
[SPEAKER_03]: We recommend that you be a swim or so.
49:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, they're going to be standing on the bank saying, okay, I'm going to go learn how to swim because I want to try that.
49:39
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
49:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm sure surfing is done that for a lot of people.
49:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you imagine being on the beach, not knowing how to swim, and watching people surf, having so much fun, and it's like, oh, okay, I'm going to learn how to swim.
49:52
[SPEAKER_03]: Another thing people often ask me about is commercial tie-ins, you know, because this sport is so new, they ask me, well, you know, this stops people in their tracks, you know, and you see a lot of kayaking and the stand-up paddle boarding and all those kinds of things on the commercials all the time.
50:08
[SPEAKER_03]: So, you know, we think this would be a great thing for companies to pick up to showcase in their commercials because it does.
50:14
[SPEAKER_03]: People see this video and it stops some of their tracks because they need to figure out how it's happening.
50:20
[SPEAKER_03]: Mountain Dew actually showcased the old form of this really.
50:24
[SPEAKER_03]: You'll grow up in plywood and add back in the 70s or 80s.
50:28
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, like I said, how you could pop up out of the water a little bit on those old school plywood boards.
50:32
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, like I said, how you could pop up out of the water a little bit on those old school plywood boards.
50:35
[SPEAKER_03]: and they had that commercial or an ad back in the day for Mountain Dew.
50:40
[SPEAKER_03]: And so I've been trying to get Mountain Dew because, you know, that's the old school version of this sport and they had the Mountain Dew can.
50:46
[SPEAKER_03]: Now here's the new school version.
50:48
[SPEAKER_03]: And Mountain Dew actually has a product called Throwback.
50:50
[SPEAKER_03]: So there's kind of a tie in there between the Throwback and the old school ad that they had.
50:55
[SPEAKER_03]: And now this new school version of it and the Throwback product that they have.
51:00
[SPEAKER_03]: So I see a tie in there for Mountain Dew.
51:03
[SPEAKER_01]: they could show a clip of the old just a short clip of the old and then a clip of what you guys are doing a longer clip and talk about how Mountain Dew's been there through the years and look what you know what a difference they've made and you know they've had that theme of going out on the rivers and kind of having the the real people fun is what I'm going to call it
51:23
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, also featured that like we talked about the standing wave surfing on a Mountain Dew commercial back in the day, too.
51:29
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, they had the guys out on surfboards that a place called lunch counter in Jackson Hole and they did some video in one of their commercials of the guys on the surfboards writing the standing wave.
51:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
51:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, Mountain Dew people.
51:40
[SPEAKER_01]: I know you're out there.
51:41
[SPEAKER_01]: I know you're here in this.
51:43
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the podcast for you.
51:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Matter of fact, we should be advertising for mountain doing the podcast, but anyway, the point is Contact Robert Gyer and say yes, we want to do that because that would be so cool.
51:58
[SPEAKER_01]: So cool.
51:59
[SPEAKER_03]: Again, that's why we need to movement.
52:01
[SPEAKER_03]: There's so many projects like that that I have that it's just me trying to do stuff, you know, and if we get people to sign up on the website and join the movement as we call it.
52:10
[SPEAKER_03]: Then hopefully we'll have more than just me, you know, because another thing we'd like to do is I can see there's lots of people who do these travel vlogs and there's so many countries that I want to visit that have rivers and I want to do this on Japan.
52:24
[SPEAKER_03]: Japan and New Zealand are two of the countries that I would love to visit.
52:28
[SPEAKER_03]: So I often reach out to their tours and councils also.
52:31
[SPEAKER_03]: And I say, help us bring this sport and we'll promote your country.
52:35
[SPEAKER_03]: And then we'll bring a new industry, hopefully, to your country.
52:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
52:38
[SPEAKER_03]: So through this.
52:39
[SPEAKER_03]: So I've sent letters to all over the place to Japan, New Zealand, Slovenia, Italy.
52:46
[SPEAKER_03]: So we can do this in Italy, and we can promote the country and bring a new industry to this country, too.
52:52
[SPEAKER_01]: something that I've recently learned, which is super cool, is that Europe in general is very, very enthusiastic about some of the more off the beaten track type sports, new up-and-coming sports, and it's really big in Europe right now.
53:08
[SPEAKER_03]: Europe is one of my dream destinations, and one of the reasons I love Europe is because man was in Europe before there were ecological environmental groups in Europe, so in a lot
53:22
[SPEAKER_03]: in a lot of these cities.
53:23
[SPEAKER_03]: So there's tons and tons of what we call fast glass in a lot of these European cities.
53:29
[SPEAKER_03]: There's lots of rivers that have been somewhat strained out.
53:32
[SPEAKER_03]: And so the river moves fast and it has a smooth surface.
53:36
[SPEAKER_03]: Again, one of my dream destinations in Europe is a place called the Icebox River.
53:40
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's in Munich, Germany.
53:42
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's a place where they do the standing waves surfing, too.
53:44
[SPEAKER_03]: They have a lot of guys that there's a special feature that they build on the Icebox River and the guys do the standing.
53:49
[SPEAKER_03]: Wavesurfing, but just upstream from that in a place called the English Garden, there are some guys that do a form of the old school river boarding, but they use actual bungee cord.
53:59
[SPEAKER_03]: So they get a shot upstream, but it's not as big or as far as ours, and then their board is also tied.
54:05
[SPEAKER_03]: The rope is tied to their board, so they only go a little ways upstream, whereas we go far upstream.
54:10
[SPEAKER_03]: But the water that I've seen him do that on is perfect, fast glass, so nice.
54:15
[SPEAKER_03]: That's one of my dream destination is to go all over Europe, really.
54:18
[SPEAKER_03]: But especially on the Icebox River, there in Germany is one of the places I'd love to visit and do this.
54:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Some very, very cool.
54:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, Robert, thank you for sharing this with us.
54:29
[SPEAKER_01]: I love it when there's a new sport like this.
54:32
[SPEAKER_01]: And this one sounds like so much fun.
54:34
[SPEAKER_01]: And another thing I want to point out about it is the boards aren't huge.
54:39
[SPEAKER_01]: They're fairly portable.
54:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Easier for travel than a lot of sports.
54:43
[SPEAKER_03]: Very true.
54:44
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I'm thinking about, it might be easier to carry this around while you overland than to carry a bicycle.
54:52
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what, it's kind of on that level.
54:54
[SPEAKER_03]: And we have a bag that the bungee fits in, too.
54:56
[SPEAKER_03]: So you can carry the board underneath your arm just like a surf board, and then in the other hand, you carry the bungee that has the bungee in the rope in it, and yeah, I've hiked into lots of places with this.
55:07
[SPEAKER_03]: Did you go?
55:08
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's not that hard.
55:09
[SPEAKER_01]: very fun.
55:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, we burned up our time, but I love it.
55:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for sharing a new sport with us.
55:16
[SPEAKER_01]: And people, the name is Robert Gyer.
55:19
[SPEAKER_01]: The company is even even surf.com.
55:23
[SPEAKER_01]: The nonprofit is upstream youth.org.
55:28
[SPEAKER_01]: And what else, Robert?
55:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Where can people find you?
55:31
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, it's Kurt.
55:32
[SPEAKER_03]: If you ever come to Idaho,
55:33
[SPEAKER_03]: look me up okay yeah lots lots of good places around here so they can find us on also social media channels Facebook YouTube Instagram we're all there so but yeah like I said if you're ever in I know and if we're ever in Utah you said you're in uh near the Gunnison river well we're in Colorado party of the Gunnison yeah okay yeah we're in there we'll look you up too so okay well I just happened to be going to Idaho this summer we'll have to talk
56:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Alright Robert, well thank you again and for everyone out there, a new sport for you to consider whatever your sport is, make sure you do get out there and have some fun.
56:10
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you so much, Kurt.