Mark Gomez Pro Freerider UpdateBy: Mark GomezThis month has been a busy, back to back weekend turnaround of events. I traveled to the WaveDaze event in Virginia Beach, and the 1st round of the US Freestyle Championship in Lake Havasu, Arizona.Wavedaze: April 9th-11th Virginia Beach, VA - Freeride EventPreparations for this event have been a little more stressful than usual. My new 2016 Rickter EDGE was built brand new at the recent Pismo spring break freeride just a few weeks prior to this event, but I had some setbacks with faulty parts that kept me off of my new ski that weekend. With it all fixed a week later, what better way to break it in then riding at WaveDaze on the other side of the country before it goes to Europe?! Event Promoter and good friends Dan Swartz and Landon Ward were absolute legends, really making the effort to take care of myself and Abraham Ho who also shipped his ski and traveled with me. Our skis were received, unpacked and delivered to the event site safely. My girlfriend Kaley McNay flew in from Portland as well to support me since the only time we have to see each other lately is on weekends at events. To say the least, I’m really lucky to have her support to travel like that with me.Riding at the event, after a few rides, I got my Rickter dialed in, and had a great time riding with all of my friends and other riders from all over. We had decent surf all around for most of the weekend besides Saturday evening when it completely shut off. What didn’t shut off, was the cold wind all weekend and even occasional snow flurries on the beach! Being from SoCal you don’t see snow on a beach, it freaked me the hell out.Regardless of the conditions all of my friends and I toughed it out for the love of this sport and still carried on with the expedition contest put on by the Krash crew making the best of it all. I took myself out of the contest after pushing a backflip off a stormy wave that didn't hold its face. I had to eject from the ski in order to save it from major damages just before Europe and the recovery cost me my heat. It was a really great weekend and I enjoyed meeting new riders and catching up with familiar faces. It puts the big picture into higher resolution, the more events I attend and good people there I get to spend time with. I love this sport and WaveDaze is a great staple freeride event on the east coast for the cause.I had to leave to the airport with my ski crate half packed, Abraham, Dan, and Landon finished the packing process for me. The crates are now off on an air freight flight to the UK for the next stop of the IFWA tour starting in Nazare, Portugal May 20-22nd.US Freestyle Championship Round 1: April 16th Lake Havasu, AZ - Pro Freestyle contestMonday evening I landed in LAX and had a moment to catch up with my mom over dinner. Then, I packed up my truck with the borrowed factory Rickter XFR freestyle ski, gear, and quickly washed cloths. 3am the following morning I was 300 miles bound for Lake Havasu, AZ. Getting there early gave me a chance to meet up with my best friend in the industry and last year’s 900cc Freestyle World Champion Tanner Thomas. Thanks to the support of my family at KMG Racing, Tanner and I had a compound at Crazy Horse campground to call home base to come back to throughout the day. Through the week we ran errands, finished emails, worked on equipment, trained, and crashed out. This made a huge difference, as Tanner and I were able to hone in our skills within four days to become contest ready.The weather at the event was great apart from the 40mph wind. A large part of flatwater freestyle is setting up two wakes to collide in order to make a "big wake" which is about a foot tall at most. This is difficult to construct when the water all together is chaos. Underpowered in the 1200cc class with a 1000cc engine in the borrowed demo Rickter XFR. I took it to my qualifying heat landing 4th place while riding in a heavy spot of the wind. For sickest trick run I was able to put together a no hand backflip, right into another backflip off the landing of the first. Coming into my main run I caught a mild break of the wind and was able to throw down a busy run. I got ejected during one of my opening flip combinations pushing to get more out of that combo. I recovered, and put down a lot of tricks with many variations. Some were more difficult than others, such as the Scarecrow barrel roll, which is a corkscrew rotation in the air with only one foot attached and another no hand backflip.At the end of the event I was beyond pleasantly surprised to end up receiving 3rd place in sickest trick and 3rd place in the 1200cc pro class. This was my second professional freestyle contest. I am absolutely thrilled to have made the best of the TC Freeride built Rickter XFR powered by a DASA 1000cc Engine and Skat-Trak 155mm Mag pump. After the event I dropped the XFR off with my friend Brock Austin, who will be transporting the ski to Florida for the first two national tour stops around the corner.You can find more details about the event at pwcfreestyleusa.com2016 Schedule Coming up next is a back to back 8 week spree of events. Kicking it off is the the first two Pro Watercross national race tour rounds in Florida. Then its straight off to Portugal to compete in the first 3 rounds of the IFWA Freeride world tour.Here is my current projected 2016 breakdown of events:I couldn’t be going after this year like I am if it wasn’t for my incredibly supportive 2016 sponsors: Rickter – RRP Mystik Lubricants Hydro-Turf DASA Engines WORX Racing Components Liquid Militia Clothing Jetpilot TC Freeride Skat-Trak Jet Renu Hot Products Bomber Floating Eyewear KMG Racing Cold Fusion Factory Zero Performance Fiberglass Repair Salty Investments ADR Crankshafts Jetinetics My Mom and brother Philip Gomez-- Mark Gomez2015 IFWA Jetski Motosurf World ChampionInstagram: @MarkGomez137Facebook: @MarkaGomezMark@Markgomez.netwww.MarkGomez.net  Like, Tag & Share!