Brian Grubb: Pushing the limits and learning new things
Photo credit: Bryan Soderlind
Creativity shows up in any number of ways, and while the artistry covered on this blog is typically of the musical kind, I met an athlete whose approach to sports and life is as artistic as any musician I’ve met. He lives in his own world, engaging and observing from the artists’ vantage point.
Brian Grubb’s first skydive happened in Titusville, Florida. He was 18. A student at Florida State University, he and his buddies all wanted to try it, so they drove down for the weekend and made it happen.
Eternally laid back and unaffected, Brian is matter-of-fact in describing the memory.
“There was a weather hold, so we had to wait four hours or something for the weather to clear up,” he said.
It was a tandem jump.
“I remember going right out the door, you kind of get this ‘woo’ feeling, and then once you get into free fall, then it's, yeah, you're just kind of moving on a tandem. You're belly down and hanging out. It was awesome. I got to fly the canopy and stuff, and yeah, it was fun.”
He did another tandem when he was 25, and his first solo jump at 27. For most people, these would be stand-out memories, staccato moments that replay again and again in thought and conversation. For Brian, they are a handful of fun experiences that could easily be crowded out by thousands more, as he lives his life with unfettered freedom and satisfies his attraction to movement and adventure every day. Given the gift of trauma-free opportunity, he has accepted the universe’s endowment and built on it steadily and with grace. You won’t meet a nicer guy.
He got into free-fall sports through his friendship with Scott Byerly, the wakeboard and wakeskate legend.
Bungee Jumping
“We started jumping some bridges when I was 22 or 23, maybe,” Brian remembered. “I always like to try new things. We were linked up with the Vertigo Bungee team – they’re the best bungee jumpers in the world. The first bridge we jumped is called the High Bridge. It’s two hours south of Seattle. With bungee jumping, you work as a team and I just really love that. My first jump was we did doubles, side by side, fifteen feet apart. When you jump doubles, you have to jump at the same time, so you rebound at the same time.”
The crew poached bridges in the middle of the night, because this sort of thing is not allowed. The boundary-breaking is exciting. The jump is thrilling. “The week leading up to it, thinking about it, I don't know, you just get excited.”
Wakeskating
Not to bury the lead, but Brian Grubb is the pioneer of wakeskating. These other fun activities matter to him, and it’s doubtful they are shoved onto a lower shelf in terms of importance, but globally he’s best known for wakeskating. The two-time world champ waterskied as a kid, moved into wakeboarding, and then discovered wakeskating. Two years into it, he won the 2003 Wakeskate National and World Championships.
The thing about waterskiing and wakeboarding is that to do it, you need a boat. Brian’s family had one when he was growing up – his parents bought a Four Winns runabout when they moved to Florida when Brian was ten. They graduated to a ski boat later on – but he’s well aware that boats are out of range for most people, limiting access to towed board sports. Wakeskating is another story. You can use a winch, a jet ski, or a drone, which opens the sport up to many more millions of people. He’s advocating for wakeskating on that basis, but not that alone. It’s really fun, and if it’s fun, Brian’s about it.
“My friend Parks Bonifay was the first Red Bull athlete in the U.S. We were riding a lot together. Hanging out with him, I met all the Red Bull guys. That's when I was getting into wakeskating. I was hitting a lot of the big wakeboard rails that we were building, hitting 'em on a wakeskate, which no one was doing. I was getting a lot of exposure in the magazines and videos, and Red Bull saw that,” he said.
That’s how he ended up with the sponsorship.
Now in his twentieth season with Red Bull, it’s rare you’ll see him outside without his Red Bull hat. At the moment that hat is enveloping a mop of longish blond hair. He also represents Hyperlite, Malibu Boats, and Billabong. Unlike the typical brand partnerships found in influencer content these days – and Brian does not consider himself an influencer – the products he reps are a real part of his life. He considers all of his sponsors family. He speaks of them with gratitude and never entitlement.
“Having a boat in my backyard that I can ride on and train on every day and take people out and teach 'em how to ride, that’s huge.”
He doesn’t take it for granted. Two hundred perfectly folded and stacked Billabong shirts: those get worn. The dozens of “RB” hats resting on every available surface in the house: not one is neglected. And all the shout-outs come from the heart.
Brian’s relationship with Red Bull has opened up a world of adventure for him that seems almost unreal. A few years ago, they sent him to Jordan for a wakeskate project.
“We rode in this body water called the Wadi Al-Hidan. It's a river that runs through the desert out of the mountains and then goes into the Dead Sea. The Red Bull team set it up for us, and we stayed with the local bedouin guys, the goat farmers. They were, like, our guides and helped us carry gear in and out of the canyon,” said Brian. “We lived with them in the desert with no service for eight days and ate traditional food and slept outside.”
Those days were relatively unforgettable, especially the last day.
“We were trying to shoot a really narrow run. We put the winch up on top of the canyon, so it was, like, 500 feet high. We walked a rope out a kilometer, so it was a super long run. The rope angle was really, really high.”
The set-up was staging for a video shoot – a gorgeous video shoot – and it was not without problems.
“On the other days when the winch was down at the same level as the river, we didn't run into this problem. But when we had this high rope angle, when the rope touched the side of the rocks where the water isn't flowing all the time, the rocks are super sharp and the rope would get cut. The sun was going down and this rope kept breaking. It was a really small spectral line, so I’d have to swim all the way to the end, find where it had been severed, climb up the side of the mountain, find the other severed end, tie it back together, and then swim back down the canal and set it up again. The rope broke on us twice. But we got our shots right as the sun was going down that last day.”
This is not a complaint. It’s more of an explanation of the total immersion these adventures demand.
Foilboarding
The first time I saw Brian was in a video, probably on Instagram. He was foilboarding in the ocean, ducking under the low-hanging beams of a pier to avoid losing his head. The foil was an extension of his body, and his comfort level with the gear was bar-none. I was captivated.
Foiling is another of his exploits. A hydrofoil is a winglike structure mounted to the bottom of a surfboard with struts. As the board gains speed, the hydrofoil lifts it above the surface of the water. It’s quite a sight and quite an experience.
“Laird Hamilton and those guys that were first to do it. They did these huge waves in Hawaii. They were the only ones doing it. Then, over time, people started designing wings to ride at slower speeds and on smaller waves. Now wake surfing boats are the perfect boats to foil behind. The wings are designed for those waves, too. So that's how I got into it. I've been doing it for five years or so and, yes, it's awesome,” said Brian.
He has a lot of things he’s good at, and some things he’s the best at. I asked him if being the best is important to him.
“No, not really. I mean, foiling, and the other things, they are what I like to do. It's nice pushing the limits and learning new things, but basically, I like having fun with my friends.”
