Slingshot Sports Kiteboarding, Wakeboarding, and Stand Up Paddle

post author: Jeff McKee

No, this is not how you say “thank you” in German, but it’s pretty damn close, and way more fun for a bunch of American retards who are wakeboarding in Germany for their first time. Why? Because there are cable parks everywhere…We started out in Cologne for the Wake the Line rail event, and traveled just about every meter of the autobahn (down and then up) before concluding our trip 7 days later in Berlin. Our tour guides included German cable sensations Steffen Vollert and Manu Rupp, as well as Seb and Max from Wake Tours. These guys were great! They supplied us with vehicles, camping gear, porno mags and enough Beck’s Beer to make a weeks worth of sleeping in vans and tents feel like 5 star accommodations. We met some great people along the way and rode some incredible cable parks including Turncable, Wake Park Thulba, Beach Club, Nuehaus and Wasserski, Hamburg. The purpose of the trip was to shoot as much as possible for our upcoming video release, which by the way, we also came up with a brilliant name for…Team riders included Oli Derome, Nate Perry, Dylan Miller and myself as well as Steffen and Manu.

Top to Bottom: Manu and Steffen

Oli hoping for sweet dreams…

Turncable – I have to say that while all of the cables we visited were unique and a blast, Turncable was our favorite. They had an incredible amount of unique obstacles including the “optimus prime” transfer which looks more like the ass end of the titanic sticking out of the water. It’s about 3 meters tall and 35 meters long and handbuilt by our boy Manu! Other than the obstacles, Turncable has top notch on site accomadations AND 2 cables that rotate in opposite directions for regular and goofy air tricks. We spent 2 full days at Turncable getting warmed up for the week while Patrick Wieland manned the camera. I had also brought the new 2012 boards with me to show to the team and they were stoked, especially Oli because I could only get him a 142 cm in time for the trip. He had more tip and tail on his board than he did between his feet, which he actually ended up really liking in the end. We also took a trip into the hometown of Manu and Liquid Force rider Nico Von Lerchenfeld where we rode a single person roller coaster down the mountain. I almost forgot to put my seat belt on which I would have soon found out, but thankfully a little German girl saved my life by telling me to “put on my seatbelt” in German. I figured it out with a little help from my german friends, and we were soon on the way down! Oli and Patrick went doubles which I’m sure was a bit uncomfortable, but the video was well worth it. haha.

Turncable: Make Water Burn!

Thulba - Wake Park Thulba is Steffen’s home cable with one of the best flat bars we have ever ridden. They also have some great kickers and a large taxi box which is great for riding doubles on. We also got to shred a bit with Tobi Rittig, the manager of this place who rides Slingshot and totally rips the place to shreds with it. In Thulba Steffen treated us to a dinner “on the house” at his Dads restaurant “Zum Fehmelbauer”. A huge thanks to Udo Vollert and Marianne  for taking such great care of us! The Weissen beer is amazing and so was everything else. Meat, mushrooms, meat, salad, meat, and a little bit more meat. The next morning we woke up and Nate was complaining about tics being “literally everywhere.” The rest of us gave ourselves a quick once over and found no such thing…We think that country is literally infused into Nate’s blood which is why he was the only one finding tics. When we left Thulba we stopped at a castle up on the hill overlooking the town so that we could take in the view and imagine ourselves as the kings of a village standing at it’s highest point and shouting out orders to the tourists below: “My tea is not hot you filthy peasants! And why the hell is my horse tied up near those donkeys!? Call the locksmith!”

Steffen’s house in Thulba: not bad… ; )

Beach Club – The Beach Club cable park was amazing, especially when the crew found out we had a free tab for food and drinks! The sun was out and no one was riding because they were too busy ordering their 5th salami sandwich and Schwipp Schwapp (coke mixed with orange soda). The cable was only a portion of a much larger lake with ice cold, crystal clear water. It was almost like a rock quarry and would be a sick place to ride boat as well. The guys tore up the kickers at Beach club busting out 900′s both ways. toe back 7′s and more. I pretended my back was hurt so I could instead take advantage of the warmth from my hoodie and a cold Heffewiessen on the slingshot tab. We fake camped at beach club  that night and instead met up with our friend and fellow cable rider Marvin Kalter, who offered to let us crash at his pad, so we happily accepted the invite.

Neuhaus – The owners Marlis and Kalli at Neuhaus were the nicest people on earth! We rode their cable in the afternoon and then they took us straight to the Absinth distillery in town. We tried several different types of absinths and spent the rest of the evening at this party put on by the wakeboard club there in town. We must have all been hallucinating from the absinth because the girls seemed to be completely invisible at this party. The dudes were pissed about the effect the absinth seemed to be having on their vision, but after sobering up there were still no ladies present.  Just a bunch of dudes surrounding a fooseball table drinking Jaegermeister. Pretty cool if you ask me, but I’m married which means I’m pretty uncool at this point anyways. That night we slept in the van and woke up to what we thought was a bear invading our campsite, but it ended up being filmer Patrick Wieland making a noise that the offspring of a big and a horse would make. Funny cause he looks like the offspring of a pig and a horse too…coincidence? haha! One of the other highlights at the Neuhaus park was that they had just gotten the Steffen Vollert signature obstacle from Unit. All the guys had a blast riding it and we got some killer shots of a double session that went down as well! Nate had some creative combo’s we didn’t imagine either, so in all we were stoked with the outcome. Before departing from Neuhaus The guys caked me in the face as if to say “Happy 26th birthday Jeff” while I was doing an interview on camera. I haven’t been caked like that EVER, but they made it up to me with a Slingshot spikey ball cake to make it all worthwhile. Thanks guys!

Well done Mr. German cakemaker!

Wasserski, Hamburg - We got to Hamburg Saturday afternoon and took an evening session at the Wasserski park where Steffen threw down a series of half loads and also ollied up onto a shoulder high flat bar. Oli was also throwing down and boosting 9′s off the kickers. I even got a new high score in tiny wings that day, so let’s just call it a good one. After working hard all week we were all ready to finally “make party” as the Germans call it, so we headed out on the town that night. We walked the streets of Hamburg for a while and saw the infamous red light district, and then headed to this crazy rave style party in an abandoned office building. The only think that worked in the whole place was the elevator and the strobe light. The rest was was just old broken down concrete walls and empty spaces that had been abandoned for years. it had a really cool and eerie vibe. Dylan tried to pick up chicks all night with this gem of a line “Hi, I’m from Caaaaaaaaaanada!” The results were about what you would expect from such a jaw dropper of a pick up line…Wasserski was cool enough to let us camp out on their deck that night (actually it was more like morning) so we caught some Zzz’s in preparation for our final day in Berlin.

Hamburg night visions

We concluded the trip in classic form with a 2 hour car ride that was really more like 5, but we finally made it to Berlin where we stayed overnight and flew out the following morning. Everyone was super pumped that we stayed in a legit Hostel that night that had internet connections. Nate was face-timing with his girlfriend in the lobby under the impression that everyone around him didn’t understand english, but once he started asking to see some tits and ass he realized that the the people surrounding him definitely knew what he was saying…Amatuer move. haha. We all had a hell of a trip and want to thank Slingshot for putting the whole thing together. We met some great people along the way and want to thank them all for their hospitality! A huge thanks goes to Seb and Max from wake tours as well as Manu and Steffen for Babysitting us North Americans. One more time…”Doooooonkeeeeey.”