Month: July 2006

How to Face Plant Hard

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Face planting in barefooting is inevitable. It is just going to happen. Here is what I did this morning to pretty much cause myself to face plant…

So I get up footing, I’m in the curl and just nail a one foot. Held it half way across the bay, kept my weight balanced over my foot so it just a nice smooth one foot. No obnoxious spray, it was truly a money one foot.

After putting my foot back down, so I’m now back on two feet, I kinda do a “Yea” and bob my head as I do it. Well, my head bob was, well lets just say it was a little too enthusiastic. The momentum of my head bob put my face into the water hard… Completely unprepared for this face plant. Rough water, you kinda anticipate it. Hit some rollers, you know it is probably going to happen. Bob your head as you go Yea to yourself, just don’t expect it.

I did grab the rope and foot 9 more times today, so it didn’t stop me, just slowed me down briefly…

After popping some Tylenol, my headache subsided about 6 hours later.

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Two-a-days, Part 2

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Here I am crossing the bubbles of death. See the nice little rooster tail in front of me.

Hit the lake again right after work with Sandy, Mike, Seven and Lori in tow. Started off with another back-to-back barefoot set in the bay amongst the weeds doing 4 passes. Ended the night with final back-to-back set with 6 passes. That makes for a total of sixteen passes for the day. Meaning 16 deeps as well. Also did a repeat of what I did this morning. Stand up in right curl, lift right foot, cross bubbles of death to left curl, lift left foot.

What do I mean by back-to-back sets? Basically, I foot till the boat needs to stop (because of the shore) and does a power turn and I never need to let go of the rope. Boat idles back out, rope comes tight, and away we go. I timed it in my head tonight and this can take as little as 15 seconds when everything works out alright, but is much easier if they let the rope come tight and let me catch my breath before going. When they do that, it takes about 20 seconds. Still, that is a short break between runs.

Right now, my arms are exhausted. Still want to ski again. Waiting for call backs for tomorrow AM. If that doesn’t come through, I should be able to track down some people for the afternoon. I’ll rest on the next rainy day.

Finally, props to Sandy for joining me in my two-a-day endeavor. She woke up early for the morning set and then came back for the evening set. Here’s a shot of Sandy skiing tonight. Once again, notice the carpet of weeds to her right.

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Two-a-days, Part 1

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Woke up at 530, hit the water at 630 with Sandy and Joey. Good way to start the day. Managed to accomplish a goal I mentioned a couple days ago… Stood up in the right curl, did a one foot on my left foot, crossed the wake to the left curl and then did a one foot on my right foot. More news later, and maybe some pictures too. (Not sure what’s on my camera at this point.)

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The State of Televised Sports

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I saw a couple of articles on the internet that piqued my interest. The first article is by Bill Simons over at ESPN.com. He talks of his love of World Cup Soccer. Not soccer, just World Cup Soccer. He makes some interesting points. I found myself watching the end of the semifinal game between Italy and Germany on Tuesday, just waiting for something to happen. Saw a couple good parts with a lot of action, but there is a lot of waiting in soccer.

The second article, also over at ESPN.com, is by Jason Whitlock. He talks about some new possibilities for sports that should be televised now since that in addition to poker, we have dominos and competitive eating. Truth be told, I watched the hot dog eating contest on the 4th. It is actually the third year in a row that I’ve watched this contest. I wake up to ESPN on TV and this contest comes on at 11am. Once it starts, it is just hard to turn off. I did like his ideas for some new sports, especially the Scoring Number in Bars and the Beer Bonging competition.

Seriously, go check out both articles and then keep reading… I found them both informative and funny… Here are the links again:

Both articles point out the fact that we’re televising soccer (which is a very popular sport, just not in the USA yet) and poker, dominos and hot dog eating contests which with at least three of those, you sit and wait for something to happen (an actual play, someone to win big or lose even bigger, regurgitation), truth be told, I’m not really sure why people watch dominos, unless it is to see someone that looks like Ice-Cube slam down a domino and yell “Domino!” (I think that is from a movie or something, not sure, let me know if you know).

It makes me wonder why a sport that I love, waterskiing, doesn’t get more air time. 3 event skiing (jumping, slalom and tricking) hardly gets any air time, wakeboarding get just a tiny bit more, barefooting gets pretty close to zero air time.

Show skiing’s national tournament, an event that takes 2 days to complete with 14 hours of competition gets 42 minutes of air time, and in reality gets maybe 30 after taking out the promo time given to the sponsors. Show skiing, for those who don’t’ know, consists of jumping, ballet, barefooting, and human pyramids. Probably close to a thousand people compete (14 teams) taking many thousands of runs. They collapse this into 30 minutes of highlights. Just doesn’t do it justice. To do it right, they should show an hour long summary of the bottom teams and edit the top 4 teams’ shows so they’d each fit into an hour of TV. Make it a five night event and show it. And then, keeping it in line with how the scoring actually occurs, don’t announce the scores after each show. Obviously, the bottom 10 teams will be known, but the top four should be shown in the order they compete and just let the drama build. Tack on an extra half hour to do the awards justice and to announce the winners.

Just imagine if they took the Tour de France and editted it down to a 60 minute show. Here’s Lance starting, here he is going up a hill, here he’s passing someone, this is him finishing this stage, and look, he won the whole thing. That’s what they do to show skiing.

Meanwhile, I’ll need to go check the schedule to find out when they are televising dominos next.

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Breaking News: Microsoft Patents Ones and Zeroes

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News Summary:

As a result of the Microsoft patent, many other companies have begun radically revising their product lines: Database manufacturer Oracle has embarked on a crash program to develop “an abacus for the next millennium.” Novell, whose communications and networking systems are also subject to Microsoft licensing fees, is working with top animal trainers on a chimpanzee-based message-transmission system. Hewlett-Packard is developing a revolutionary new steam-powered printer.

Get the full text of the news story here.

Ok, so maybe it isn’t breaking news anymore (it’s from 1998) or really not even news (it’s from The Onion) but it was damn funny at the time. Hope you enjoy it.

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Footin’ Sets

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So Monday I was out skiing (I know, big surprise). For my sets, we ducked into the bay because I wanted to do some footin (another surprise) and didn’t want to deal with Wally World out on the main lake.

Now I’ve written about the bay before and as you may now know, it is full of weeds. Now, mid summer, it kinda looks like a large field. Luckily, their is a nice path across the diagonal of the bay that is ski-able. The weeds do have two good qualities. One, they keep everyone else out of the bay. No one else wants to ski in there. Two, no waves. Damn near glass calm.

The weeds are so nasty now that in order to really good a good footin’ run in, we need a quick way to stop at the end of the run. Enter the power turn. Boat is going 40+ MPH and basically washes out to come to a stop. They are fun to drive and fun to ride in the boat while they are occurring. I’ve decided it is also fun to foot while they are doing it.

First off, you get an ever so slightly longer run. An extra 75 to 100 yards. Don’t need to leave space for the boat to decelerate.

Next, as the boat spins out, I just dropped to my butt and slid. This, too, is fun.

Third, I never even had to let go of the rope. I’m sliding, handle in hand.

Lastly, the boat is now turned to go back the way we just came, I have the handle ready, rope comes tight, we take off. Elapsed time from my slide ending to being ready to go, 30 to 40 seconds I’m guessing (I’ll need to actually time this).

Do this six times quickly and you become very tired. 6 deeps, 6 runs, 6 slides. Lots of fun and makes for a quick set. Then did it again about an hour later. Only 4 the second time (also did a slalom set in between the foot sets).

While doing this, I even nailed some one foots on my “goofy” foot. Next goal, do a one foot on both feet in the same run. Easy one would say, but to do this the way I want to, I’ll need to cross the wake and my boat has, what I affectionately call, the bubbles of death. They’re nasty.

Another goal to start working on, tumbles. I’ll need to throw on the boom to work on those.

I’ll try to get some pics of the power turn and slides. The photographer will really need to hold onto the camera though.

Some final observations… Footing with a weed stuck between your toes feels a little funny… Doing a deep, feeling a pile of weeds form under your feet and then having that pile go splat into your face as your still doing the deep equals not fun. Still made it though… Doing one foots and feeling your pinky toe catch in the water and not falling because you caught a toe makes for interesting one foots.

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Last does of Pearl Jam for a while…

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At least on the blog. I listen to them near constantly… I was looking out at YouTube to see if there were any clips from the Milwaukee shows. I didn’t see any, but did find these two clips… The first is rather funny. The second is just a great song. Enjoy.

An Interpretation of Lukin

Wishlist performed on Letterman
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PJ & Petty: The Review & A Recap of the Days Events

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Warm Up. So here goes. The concert last night at Marcus Amphitheatre in Milwaukee for Summerfest was probably one of the best double features of two top notch bands/performers one can see. Pearl Jam is one of my favorite, if not favorite band, of all time. And Petty is just a classic performer, he has so many hits and has been around for so long, it is just one performer that one should see. The concert pictures below were taken with the very fine camera contained in my cell phone. Don’t bitch about the quality. Now on to last nights show…

There’s the ticket. Row Y, which surprisingly isn’t the 25th row. Closer to the 20th actually. Section one was stage left. I would have liked more towards the center, but these are still pretty damn good seats. Here’s the seating chart so you can be the judge.

The show was billed as two headliners, but that obviously wasn’t the case. After watching both performances, one could easily see that it was Petty’s setup. They made use of the video screens and much better use of the lights.

Pearl Jam opened. Set list was very good but I thought missed at least one significant staple and that was Betterman (looked and it was played the night before). Based on what I heard, there was very little overlap with the previous night’s set list. I had also heard the sound quality for Thursdays show was horrible (this was probably due to the power outage and not being able to do a proper sound check). I thought the sound was in the good to very good range for Pearl Jam’s portion of the show. Some of their faster/louder songs could have used a touch more volume to the vocals, but on a whole, it was well done (I’ve heard much worse). I would have really like to have heard 25 Minutes to Go (Johnny Cash cover that they’ve done in the past) and Crazy Mary (also played the previous night), but they did a very good mix of old, new, popular and some of the lesser know material. I liked the new arrangement of Insignificance that they did and can’t wait to here it again to really compare it to their normal arrangement. That song is favorite of mine. My only complaint about the Pearl Jam portion of the show… their set was too short. They played about 90 minutes. If the show had started at 730 as advertised, it would have been a two hour set instead of 90 minutes. That is the only thing that pissed me off.

Pearl Jam has just taken the stage.

Another shot of Pearl Jam on stage.

Here’s a shot of the crowd. 23 thousand strong!

One more shot of Pearl Jam. A bit more happening with the lights. Also the guy we
believe is Kyle Orton (more details later) is visible in this shot. He is the large
guy, several rows in front of us in the brown shirt with the square logo on
the back (a Tom Petty tour shirt).

Tom Petty. Petty’s portion (that’s Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers for those who don’t know) was a very good show. Sound was about as good as one can get at a concert. It was dead on. Not something I would go see, but I was glad that I did. The guy has been churning out hits forever and he played them all. I didn’t recognize a cover they did and their new song, but everything else he played was a classic. He’s been doing this forever and he knows how to do it. I did get tired of him saying “Thank you” to the crowd after every song and I have to wonder how he can sing so well when his voice is just so awful. The set list contained everything I thought it would ,and from the sound of it, was nearly identical to the previous nights show. Eddie Vedder joined them on stage for a couple songs, including the closer, American Girl. Vedder did a great job on both songs he helped with.

Petty on the stage. More lights. Video screens, etc.

Vedder singing with Petty and the Heartbreakers. On the video screen.

All in all, one hell of show. As I mentioned before, my only complaint was Pearl Jam didn’t play long enough. It would have been nice if they had made use of the video screen, but my seats were close enough that I didn’t care too much that they didn’t.

Random Thoughts. Now for some miscellaneous notes about the concert and the rest of the day…

Day started off great. Woke up after 3 hours of sleep and went skiing with John, Sandy, Ronee and Jonas. Perfect weather, perfect company, lots of skiing. Only thing wrong with the skiing portion of the day was I had to call it about 1230 so I could head to home to get my back fixed and then head to the concert. I could have spent the whole day on the lake easy. Would have like to as well.

Why the 3 hours of sleep? After practice the night before, the older members of the ski team stuck around, had some beers, went to the Memorial Union, had some more beers, went to BW3s and ate. Good times were had by all. I found out the union carries Stella Artois (which is a beer I love- ask me about my first experience with it, it is a good story).

Bell girls. There most be something about my boat, the Bell girls, and nearly losing some water skiing equipment. I had the issue with my wet suit falling off the boat into the lake. Well Sandy left her barefoot suit and shorts on my swim platform and I was on the ramp to the interstate when she called. “My suit and shorts are still on your swim platform, I hope.” I pulled over once on the interstate, checked, and luckily, they still were on the swim platform, barely.

Beer Man. To the guy that walked buy me carrying many beers several times… When I jokingly said “it’ll cost you one beer to get by,” thank you for the beer. It hit the spot.

Orton? The group of people seated directly around me pretty much came to the consensus that Kyle Orton (the Chicago Bears quarterback, formerly of Purdue and thorn in the side of the Badgers) was sitting five rows in front of us in Petty tour t-shirt. He really got into Pearl Jam, spilling $5 beers all over himself. I saw him tip one beer up to drink it and the cup wasn’t even on his mouth. Needless to say, he missed. He pretty much passed out during the change from PJ to Petty. And I mean passed out. He was dead to the world. When Petty did take the stage, he started to move after about a song or so and started pouring more beers down his shirt again. In the picture to the right, we believe the guy just to the left and several rows in front of the guy in white shirt on the right side of the picture is Kyle. Tough to tell with this photo, but he looked like he was passed out.

Ten Clubers. To the couple sitting to my left, I doubt you’ll ever read this, but I still think I recognized the girl from somewhere. The face, the body, the voice, all seemed way too familiar. After talking, it is doubtful we’ve ever met because they are from ‘burb down by Chicago, hasn’t spent much time in Madison other than a visit or two and didn’t go to UW-Whitewater, but they had also been to the Alpine Valley shows in 97, 01 and 03 just like me. And like me, the joined the fan club in 97 after getting lawn seats to the show.

3rd Best Pizza. Pre-concert, we stopped at a bar near by buddy Al’s house called Rookies something or other. As I walked in, I heard the bartender mention “we have the 3rd best pizza in Milwaukee”. I had it. I’m pretty sure I could walk around downtown Milwaukee and find 3 better pizza’s easy. Nothing to write home about. Basic bar pizza in my opinion. Not great, not bad, just bar pizza. It did have a couple really spicy spots. I know my pizza is better than it, but it isn’t in Milwaukee.

Al. For my buddy Al, I’m still waiting for your comments about this show and how it compared to Thursday’s.

dr_r0ck. For Al’s buddy dr_r0ck that feels that the Marcus is horrible venue for concerts… basically a large venue for concerts that is acoustically good doesn’t exist. Once you get past a couple thousand seats in a legitimate theatre (where plays, musicals, opera and orchestra are performed) the acoustics go to crap. They don’t build arenas with the acoustics in mind, unless they are thinking about how they can make the crowd noise louder for basketball or hockey. The amphitheatre design used at the Marcus (23,000 fans) and at Alpine (36,000 fans) is actually one of the better setups for acoustics for a large crowd. Much better than a basketball arena for football stadium. Basically it comes down to the sound engineer that travels with the tour to figure out how to make the sound actually sound good in each venue. Some of these guys are good and some are not. From my experience, most are not. The sound engineer mixes the concert and sets the volume levels. He can make (Green Day, Pearl Jam, Beastie Boys, Elton John, Billy Joel & DMB) or break (Tim McGraw, Kenny Chesney, Tim McGraw and Faith Hill) a concert. Don’t blame the venue, blame the sound engineer. You can read more of an old rant about bad concert mixes here.

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