First bored rock climbers invented slacklining a few years ago and all the kids go on board.  Now you can't walk past two trees on a college campus without some barefoot bro showing off his balance skills.  Next bored surfers invented stand-up paddle boarding, and now it's a driving force in the industry.  

So what's the newest craze sweeping the nation?  Tarp surfing.  

Yep, tarp surfing.  Never heard of it?  Me neither, but it's going viral on the web and now has its own website: tarpsurfing.com.   So how does it work?  Well you need a big tarp, a skateboard, some nice clean pavement, and a couple pals.  Your pals hold a corner of the tarp so it looks like the barrel of a big wave and you drop in for a sick run.  Its origins are obscure, but three guys (some former pro surfers) in Santa Cruz, CA, posted a video on July 19th and its gotten 1.55 million hits since then.

According to an article from the Santa Cruz Sentinel the three guys put their video together for kicks and are now pioneers of a new, burgeoning sport.  Folks from as far away as Japan, Australia, and Africa are now riding the tarp.  Wow, people must be bored, I mean really bored, in places as far away as Japan, Australia, and Africa.  The guys were invited to Camden Yards to surf at the Baltimore Orioles stadium, ESPN has featured them, and a big T.V. station in L.A. gave them some coverage.  

Check this one out…on Sunday at the Teva Mountain Games, two champion tandem surfers took to the river and performed the first ever whitewater tandem surfing routine.  For those of you new to tandem surfing, it involves two people on one surf board performing a series of balance maneuvers, like holding someone above your head…while surfing…a giant muddy brown whitewater wave.  

Two-time world champions Kalani Vierra and Jen Koki preformed the series of maneuvers including the "cradle, swan, and 'fake arm to arm' before flushing off the wave in the whitewater park," according to the press release. 

The duo were part of stand up paddle board manufacturer C4 Waterman's freshly minted team and were scheduled to take part in other stand-up paddling contests when organizers cancelled events due to unexpectedly high flows.  Vierra and Koki took advantage of the break to blast from Vail, CO where the Mtn Games are held to Glenwood Spring's to take advantage of 19,000 cfs flows and the town's year-old whitewater park.  Check out the video…and remember, they're on a river flowing at 19,000 cubic feet per second.

The two Hawaiins had never surfed whitewater before, but helped the C4 Waterman team of stand up paddle boarders dominate the new stand up events.  C4 Waterman women took first, second, and third in the river sprint contest while the men's team took 6 of the top 10 spots.  

If you don't watch the video, this quote from C4 Waterman co-founder Todd Bradley, pretty much sums things up, "It was hard enough just getting onto that wave, let alone while simultaneously holding someone above your head and dodging debris including massive tree stumps and logs flowing down the flood-swollen waters [of the Colorado]."  'Yeah, nuff said.