---

Click picture to start slideshow

---

If you said before that you can’t do extreme sports because you don’t have his luxury of going out of town, well you can now. Bag that reason, because now extreme sports can come to you! Yes you heard me… wakeboarding is now portable it was a crazy idea that has now become a wild reality.

You know that whenever there is a wakeboarding event Sports Unlimited is there. Camsur, Batangas, but who knew that we would cover wakeboarding right smack alongside The Mall of Asia! There is no lake here, the ocean is here, but there's no wakeboarding boat. To wakeboard, you first and foremost need water, so bring in a portable pool then you need ramps to complete the course. Ramps were built in all levels of the pool.

You can bet anything that when a portable wake park is brought to the heart of Manila, wakeboarders will come. From watching the runs and the reactions of the wakeboarders, we wanted to get challenged as well with this course, we love challenges no doubt, but the question is do we have enough extreme and fearlessness in us to give this a shot? Even for a top wakeboarder like JV Tanjanco, he says this course is not one to take lightly; you need to have total control of your board all the way till the end of the pool.

Who on earth would be able to conceptualize this cool and portable pool and transform it into a wake park, and then place it right in the city where everyone could see? Even our professional Aussie mate Reuben from CamSur says that you need to be very precise when getting on and off the ramps, if not; you may end up landing outside the pool. Not a pretty site to see I'm sure. All the wakeboarders including the crowd went wild after seeing Ernie do his jump. He flew over that big kicker like nobody's business. We had to ask Ernie how that wild and wacky jump felt like. I have to agree with everyone that the younger generations of today are more daring to try anything extreme, and they don't just try, they try very hard to go beyond what is expected.

The X in the City event did not only attract wakeboarders, it also brought out BMX bikers from all over town, showcasing their bag of tricks on two wheels.

I was a teenager during the days when biking was a leisurely recreation. Watching these kids maneuver, lift, twist and turn their bikes makes me ponder on this, back in my day; the only task we needed to master was to balance on two wheels. The goal then was to stay on the ground. The goal now, gets off the ground. The goal then, hold on to the handle bars and keep it steady, the goal now, let go of the handle bars and give it a whirl. Time sure has a way of changing things towards the extreme.

These kids make it look easy, I was curious to know how hard it could be to lift a bike off the ground, well; the only way to find out was for me to give it a shot. Marc gave it his best shot too, but muscle alone is not going to cut it off. We soon realized that there is a lot more to this extreme sport. You need skill and technique to be able to make your bike twist, turn, jump and boogie on down.

Watching these BMX Bikers tells me that there is an extreme potential in anything, even something as wholesome as a good-old bicycle can turn edgy when extreme hands get a hold of it.

This first X in the City was the biggest extreme sports event to hit Manila. Everybody from everywhere came out to check it out, extreme enthusiast, .outdoor adventurers, curious onlookers and a whole lot of other urbanites.

When a 32-foot tall rock climbing wall is installed in the heart of a mall area like this, you know it's going to attract a lot of attention. As soon as this wall was set up, there was a line of anxious people wanting to experience the thrill of wall climbing. The organizers had a speed climbing competition that was open to the public, and we were surprised at how many signed up to join. We did not compete in the speed climbing competition that was open to anyone that wanted to join but we could not resist gearing up to give the wall a try. The cool part about this wall is that it's two faced, you go up on one side and then go down on the other.

My son Mathew wanted to climb this wall from the minute he saw it being set up.

Before he climbed, he told me something interesting, he said, 'mommy I want to go all the way up so then I can enjoy the ride down.' Then he asked, 'or can I just go down straight mommy, no more going up?' I told him, if you don't work hard to get to the top, then you won't be able to enjoy the ride down. In sports, you only get, if you put out son.

From the wall climbing, we crossed over to see what the skateboarders were up to. Unlike the United States where skate parks are all over the place, in the Philippines, skate parks are scarce, actually, as far as we know, there are none in metro Manila, so skateboarders have to do with what they have around them to practice their tricks. Today, just for this X in the City event, Tribu’s fresh park ramps and rails were set up for all the skateboarders to skate all you can. Skateboarders came out from the city woodworks to take advantage of this Tribu treat. This event showed how big the skateboarding world has become here. Calling on the people in position, we need public skate parks to give our skateboarders a safe haven to do what they do.

The wakeboarding action went on and on, and as the sun was setting, the best was yet to come. World ranked wakeboarders and wake skaters from all over the world showed everybody just how the pros do it. The show that these world-class wakeboarders and wake skaters put on was well-worth the wait, each ride got more daring, and the tricks got wilder and wilder.

Although night fall came upon this exhibition, the crowd kept cheering and the wake boarders kept riding. Some of the tricks we witnessed from these professional wake boarders were hair-raising. These guys are what you call extreme to the core.

There was no better-fitting way to end this first extreme sports event in the city than with a big colorful bang in the city's skyline. Our hats go off to everyone who put this event together; we had an "extremely” good time.