Air Wars
Big air was always a big deal in hydrofoiling. In the earliest days without a seatbelt Bob Woolley jumped the highest. Mike added a seatbelt to the Air Chair, and vaulted past Bob for top honors. Then Mike and Jon Wilborn went at it for years. But no one really knew how high […]
It was the best of rides, it was the worst of rides, it was the age of benevolence, it was the age of self-interest, it was the season of flight, it was the season of shipwreck; we were all going somewhere, and it was time for me to find my true north.
The event was the […]
$100,000 EXPERIMENT
At Flight Worlds 2000 I was still the one to beat in Tricks, but Free Ride and Big Air were up for grabs.
For me, the year 2000 was the peak of my involvement with hydrofoiling. My Flight World Newsletter and mail order business was generating enough money to make it worthwhile, and I was […]
EVENTS HORIZON
In 1998 I teamed up with Chuck Sacks of California Skier to put on the Flight Worlds of Hydrofoiling. Chuck controlled the Lake Elsinore inlet channel, which was close to home and had calm water. It was another education in planning and organizing a big event, complete with vendors, sponsors, exhibition acts, and insurance […]
TRIPPIN’ WITH SCHÖRNO
Mike is fond of saying that there never would have been a Sky Ski without Peter Schörno. When the legal battle heated up between Bob and Mike, Peter stepped in and gave Mike all the support he needed to flight the case, and when the legal drama was over he helped get Sky […]
IT’S THE CHEESE
Mike, Ron Stack, and I dominated the early days of inventing new moves on the foil. We came up with nearly all of the first 100 tricks that would be considered the standard moves in the sport.
The overall level of riding skyrocketed again around the turn of the century, and different styles of […]
UNORTHODOXY
My mind was working to come up with another first in skiing that wouldn’t be quite as risky as new moves on the air board. I wanted to do a tandem flip on my Sky Ski. Not two people flipping separately at the same time – two people flipping on the same device. The Sky […]
STAND UP GUYS
The first time I ever saw a stand up foil ridden like a wakeboard was in 1991 at Mike Mack’s place on the Parker Strip. Mack took a foil assembly from an Air Chair and mounted it to a Rusty surfboard. His first model did not have footstraps or bindings, and it was […]
Every Ride List “Rules”
How does one place rules on such an arbitrary endeavor?
I have been thinking about this list since 2004, and have come up with a few guidelines to impose upon myself when deciding if something “counts” or not.
I’ve also spent a lot of time talking to my uncle Mike Murphy about the list. […]
History of the “Every Ride” List
It all started as a birthday stunt in 2004 inspired by my grandmother, Mary Murphy. She rode her hydrofoil to Catalina Island and back, a distance of 52 miles across open ocean, to celebrate her birthdays from age 79-88.
When it came time for my 40th birthday I decided to try […]
