 JJ Lanes Comp-Braata Beach 2008 Virtual surfing has always been a passion of mine. It began in the early days of Second Life (SL) when I first joined 2007. One day searching for places to visit, I found Monq and Robin Mapp’s region Surf City and completely fell in love. They had it all, the waves, boards, kinis, warm vibes - the region just felt real. One of my favorite quotes of Robin’s is “Keep it real”, he sure did.  Image by Joppem Tulip 2008  Surf City 2008 In no time I was hitting the waves and soon began competing, then on to become a SLSA judge, running for SLSA Director, coming in fourth when they only needed 3. I absolutely loved the sport of virtual surfing. A frequent reader of Tauri Tigerpaw’s SurfWatch, I soon became another editor on staff writing for a little column titled Marí’s Mailbag. These days in SL were absolutely the very best! Tauri put me on the team as Event Director for the SurfWatch Second Anniversary celebration, it was three days of non-stop events - when I reflect back on all the note taking I did for the planning of that event, it took at least 1TB of space on my hard drive.  Then, opensim came onto the scene, I had to venture out and explore it. The thought of teleporting to different grids was something I wanted to experience. Only problem with it was that there wasn’t any surfing in opensim, none. I found a grid called Virtual Highway, owned by Tiffany Magic and Logger Sewell, I shared with them my love of surfing. One day Tiffany IM asking if I would like to put in a surf region that she had just the place. Thank you, Tiffany, we immediately began landscaping and creating the most beautiful beach, yet we were lacking waves and surfboards. I asked Tiffany to come with me to Second Life (SL) that I had found a creator that just might be able to achieve what we had in mind. Kayaker Magic had this great little store that offered everything seaworthy, I knew if anyone could create the waves it would be him as he had an incredible love for the ocean and he is a brilliant coder. We met and Kayaker did not hesitate at all about venturing to an unknown world and trying to achieve something nobody else had. Oh they did try, but it was a different beast than Second Life physics, and most gave up. Kayaker’s coding ability enabled him to see the possibilities. After a few months and multiple lines of code, then hours of testing numerous boards and waves, Kayaker finally achieved a wave and board that is surfable in Opensim. Thank you, Kayaker.  We then had to have an opensim competition to call it official. I contacted SLSA Directors Sally and Bobbi LaSalle, Colleen Brennan, Rick Galli and Cierra Theriac if they would like to judge our competition. They all ventured to Virtual Highway and we presented the first opensim surf competition Waves of Courage   It was wild times. If you notice on this poster my last name is spelled Monentez, that is because during all the planning, creating and training my Monentes avatar ghosted, and we could not revive her. The owners created a new Monentez avatar so that the event could go on! It did, and we have such wonderful memories. As seen in SurfWatch this is when the association was born. Fun times , the beginning. With that… Opensim surfing was born all thanks to these incredible people. You can buy Kayaker Magic’s surfboard and waves at Kitely Market. https://www.kitely.com/market/product/3025298/Fishboard-Surfboards?var=5210344   Thank you Tauri, you were always there, my catalyst.
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June 2021
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