Last year I was playing warcraft, BETA testing a new competitive 40 man boating instance, and some beefy lvl 60 orcish warrior tank was like "LOL ROFLMAO. I OMGWTF p00n3D uR a55! L 2 b00F! "
Remaining in character, I thought "WTF is a b00f? LOL"
Trying to forget that experience, and hoping it would turn out to be insignificant, I headed to Walmart to buy some juice boxes and a swimming suit (my therapist keeps telling me I need to get out of the house-- I think I'll go to the pool or something) and in the checkout line I see what appear to be some of the local thrashmetal skatepunk high school dropout kids buying energy drinks and cheetos. One of them says "Yeah. After that last run, I figure I've got my boof totally dialed." The others: "Yeah. Man, that huck was sick." "Like flawless gnar." "Yeah. Its all in the boof."
Hmmm there is that word again, "boof". What gives?
For months, I mulled over the word, trying to derive its meaing... a new way to smoke weed? .. maybe its a skate/snow/wake/surfboarding trick? Hmmm... or possibly a wrestling move? a boof. Nothing really felt right... Maybe its the opposite of a goof... something... anything... executed to perfection. That seemed to fit, sort of...
Things escalate and I begin dreaming about boof. In one dream, I'm swimming with sharks and someone is screaming from the boat deck "You've got to boof man! You got to!!! You'll die if you don't." in another, i'm on a dream date (literally) with some fantasmic dream girl, and the first thing she says to me is "I'll totally do this with you, but first I have to ask, So how is your boof? You got it dialed?" And those are the good dreams.... the boof nightmares, oh, I'm supressing those.
For months I struggle, on the brink of insanity, some would say, and my therapist, although he can't help me with the boofing issue, recommends taking up a fast-paced sport-- something to not only get me out of the house, but something where I can make new friends and also connect with nature-- I've always wanted to try kayaking! Could it be the answer?
That brings me to my current state of life... I'm starting to look into this kayaking stuff, and next thing I know all these kayakers are talking about "The boof" like they invented the word! I feel anxious, yet relieved, because I know I'm that much closer to the answer... Its everywhere, people posting things like, " You gotta boof whenever possible man." "This kayak boofs like a charm." "Too rocky for a solid boof" "Boof or face the consequences."
The clincher, however is the following ad I saw at the local kayak store/hangout:
"Super cool kayakers club. Admission requirements: 15 dollars and a solid boof stroke; to be demonstrated before membership status will be granted. "
you know anything about skateboarding? it's like an ollie, but in a boat. term coined by jim snyder & his crew back in the days of glass boats. it comes from the sound your hull makes when you land flat on purpose.
I have heard one potential explanation of the origin of the word "boof." In college at Appalachian State I learned to paddle from a guy named Brent Cochrane on the Watauga River near Boone, NC. Brent worked for Perception back in the 90's and then started his own squirt boat company, Watauga Laminates shortly after. He was truly one of the first lifestyle kayakers in the east. There's a drop above State Line Falls on the Watauga, a rocky ledge, that requires you to take a stroke while keeping your bow up. The fellas back in the day noticed that when they went off this rocky drop that the hull of the kayak scraping across the rock sounded like "boof." I'm sure that this funny noise was made even funnier after eddy baking (smoke on the water) above the drop. I guess the name stuck. There's probably other theories, but if you ask the folks near Boone, NC they will tell you about Brent C and the first "boof" on the Watauga happening sometime in the early 90's.
haha, thats absolutely outrageous. i wonder what that warcraft guy was trying to say.
boofing makes your boat go out and forward/up while staying relatively flat. you boof rocks and hopefully your kayak goes completely out of the water, over the rock and into the water on the other side of it without going sideways in either direction. the taller of a rock you can boof in a straight line, the better your boof is. the boof gets really important when you start run certain waterfalls, because it will help you land in shallow pools without banging the nose of your kayak into the bottom of the river, or with your forward momentum, you can clear sticky hydraulics that may exist. boofing too large of a drop is not recomended, since the pressure of flat kayak against flat water can shatter vertebrae.
to boof, get as much forward momentum as you can muster, then take a deeper, harder stroke, lean back, and kick your legs out in front of you at the last possible moment. you can work on it without charging rocks, see how high you can kick your bow, charging rocks is a lot more rewarding, but be prepared for the consequences, like getting your kayak wraped around the rock. if this happens, there are lots of different things you should try before swimming. if at all possible, lean your body into the rock before the water sticks your kayak there. if you flip against the rock, you can push on the rock from underwater and sometimes get yourself off. sometimes, if your sticking to the rock and havent flipped, rocking yourself up and down, forwards and backwards can get you into a more appropriate current. .. kayaking gets complicated.
so wheres the utah gnar these folks are huckin? cmon, i answered your question.
bowen, to debunk that lousy NC theory, check out snyder's "the squirt book" written in the 80's .. everyone knows that jimmy is the founder of pretty much all modern kayaking technique except for hole flip-tricks .. shit, he prolly did those too, but didn't give them stupid names like "space godzilla" & "tricky wu"
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