Month: September 2006

The Duck Story

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So this past Thursday I was out skiing in the bay. In the fall (I still have a hard time saying that), there just seems to a few more birds on the water. Don’t know why. So much like with the pigeons from Seinfeld, boats seem to have a deal with the waterfowl. As the boat comes through, they get out of the way of the boats and we just mumble under our breaths at all the crap they leave on our dock.

So I’m footing behind my boat, moving along at 41 MPH or so. There is a flock of ducks on the water that we’re coming up on that I’m keep my eyes on. They scatter for the boat, but one moves just clear of the boat and directly into my line. Now, much like in NASCAR (at least according to Days of Thunder), this is kinda like a car wreck so I’m thinking “just go straight through.” There are still several ducks scattered about and trying to slalom my way through just isn’t a realistic option. I’m moving at 41 MPH and there is only about 90 feet between me and the boat. Not sure on the exact math, but that doesn’t give me much time to react.

Now I’m moving along directly towards the duck that is just kind of floating there. As I approach closer, it sees me coming directly towards it and starts swimming which is good. Except it starts swimming the same direction I’m going. It isn’t going 41 MPH. So I’m thinking a typical barefoot stance is about shoulder width apart roughly. The duck isn’t going to fit between my feet. At least not easily. I obviously don’t want to hit the duck. A) This is bad for the duck and B) hitting the duck would be bad for me. I could potentially break a foot, ankle, knee, leg, etc and I’m just not ready to call it a season yet.

So I get to thinking, the duck is swimming, it isn’t that big. I’m about 20 feet from it now and I decide to widen my stance so it is about 4 feet wide. I wanted to get wide, but not too low because the duck might remember that it can fly too. The duck starts to swerve just a bit, but not much, just enough where I need to move a little bit to keep it centered and I straddle the duck. To the best of my knowledge, I didn’t touch it. I didn’t feel any feathers on my ankles or legs.

The spotter, Seven, who’s watching this, went from a look of “oh shit he’s gonna hit a duck” to laughing his ass off. John, who’s driving also sees this in the mirror and I could tell he’s laughing too. They could both see clear as day that I straddled it.

I resumed my normal stance and just kept on going.

Maybe this duck thought it was a squirrel?

BTW, ask John about his duck stories. He’s got a couple of them.

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Busy Week

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During the ski season (which is still going on… I’m talking about the ski team season) I keep thinking I’ll have free time when it over. Wrong. Life doesn’t let up. This past week has been busy. Two Badger football games and much more in between.

We start last Saturday when I went to watch the Badger football team beat up on Western Illinois. The Badgers won, but against NIU, they should have played better.

Sunday, the NFL season kicked off. Monday, even more football.

Tuesday, I ended up heading out for Holly’s birthday. We met up at the Nitty Gritty. Had a small turnout from the ski team, but the people I expected to be there were. Bugs, Libby, Beau, Kelly and Cory. We gave Holly a lot of crap for her full page write up in The Star (local Sun Prairie weekly newspaper). I mean whole page. Take a traditional newspaper page and her article covered 90% of it. Just a couple ads and two very small articles were on the page. The rest… all Holly, lots of pics too!. When we finished up at the Gritty, we headed over to the Karaoke Kid. The bar is truly a little hole in the ground. I believe everyone sang. Some better than others. The Kid, although a bar specializing in karaoke, didn’t have the selection that I’ve seen at CBI where they just have a traveling karaoke person come in. I’ve put some pictures up of the vents from the night.

Ski Team Members doing shots… what’s new?
Libby, Bugs, Holly, Cory, Kelly, Me, Beau

Holly and I doing the 3 Wise Men… I look like a giant next to her

Me & the ladies of the night


Holly – The Birthday Girl

Cory and Myself singing… Sweet Caroline I think?

Bugs & Kelly – A Little Funky Cold Medina…

Wednesday morning came all too early and it was a take my boat to work day so I could ski right after work. Met up with Beau and Bugs. It was a little cool, only about 65 degrees and overcast. Very calm winds though. First we hit up the ski jump. Bugs and Beau made use of that. Beau tried a reverse heli. Not so good. Bugs looked a little rough. I think he became use to the good jump service he was on it Ohio. We then went into the bay and did a lot of footing. I did several loops. Beau didn’t like the weeds. Bugs tried out the shoe skis and nearly did the splits on his first three deeps. They looked painful. About 630 or so, the skies finally cleared (as I promised they would). Here’s Bugsy…

About to eat it

Thursday, I did some more skiing after work. This time with John and Seven. This time we just hit up the bay. Weather was much nicer than it was on Wednesday. About 75 and sunny. And we had very calm winds again. I started off with a set of 8 runs back and forth across the bay. Trying to keep up my endurance. Also worked on my one handed footing, something I just haven’t been very comfortable with. I know it isn’t anything major, I just haven’t been comfortable with it and decided a little practice was in order. Then we dragged Seven around. He had some issues butting out of the wake, so literally, we dragged him around. Then John took his turn and thought about using the teeth hold. Then I took my second set and decided to do some barefoot slaloming. Last pass I made four wake crossings, good considering my boat has the bubbles of death for footing. I also ending up doing some more loops. There’s a funny story about a duck on one of the loops (go read The Duck Story). We hit up the bar next door afterwards for drinks, food and music.

Look mom, one hand…

The other hand

Friday, quiet day. Caught a movie.

Saturday, another football game. Badgers vs. San Diego State. This time I went with a group from work. We hit up the Stadium Bar before hand. Made it in time for the F/A-18 fly by (which was awesome, after burners on right over our side of the stadium and we were in the upper deck.) Then, in a stadium that seats 70,000+, Taryn from the ski team sits two rows in front of me. Game was good. Towards the end of the game, they did a segment on the score board called Ask the Badgers. The question was what would they do if they won the lottery. Most had common answers… house, house for parents, cars, boats, etc. One of the linemen answered in true Wisconsin fashion “cheese curds… deep fried cheese curds.” Crowd loved it. Next, they have the Big Ten opener at Michigan.

Finally, apparently I’m the best answer when you search google.com for “how to prevent birds from crapping on your boat.” Don’t believe me… click here.

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More Random News

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Here is some more news that you may not have heard that is cluttering up my inbox.

We May Not be that Special. Turns out Earth-like planets may be a lot more common than we first thought. So if there are more Earth-like planets, maybe there is more Earth-like life?

Schwarzenegger puts foot in mouth. Apparently he was talking a California State Assemblywoman. Some people just like to make too out of some stories.

The Hobbit. Looks like The Hobbit, the prequel to the Lord of the Rings is going to get made. The are trying to get Peter Jackson to direct. In other news, they are going to make a Terminator 4…

Hell Frozen Over? Today, it looks like CBS finally realized that when you start a game after 3pm, it isn’t going to be done by 6pm. For years now they have been trying to start 60 Minutes at 6pm. It would hardly ever happen when they had a 3pm game. Never happened when they had a 315pm game. Well tonight, they have 60 Minutes schedule to start at 630pm. Looks like they won’t mess up there schedule for the whole night. Here’s hoping they do this for the rest of the year.

A Pulse. Finally, it looks like the Packers may have a pulse this year. Didn’t win, but moved the ball. Granted it was against the Saints, but who knows.

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Gridiron Gang

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I think it is official. There have been too many sports movies lately. We had the Invincible a couple weeks ago that tried to replicate Rudy and failed (it was an OK movie though). Now we have Gridiron Gang staring The Rock.

I was kind of indifferent to this movie. It was good. But not great. Fun to watch once, but I don’t see myself wanting to go watch it again. Football sequences were good. The kids cast to play the various characters did a good jump. The Rock does a decent job, but dramas are not going to be his bread and butter.

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Evolution of Show Skiing Dance

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At the Wisconsin State Show Ski Tournament, the highest scoring act for Mad-City, the highest scoring comedy act and the highest scoring act of the entire tournament was done by one man. Mr. Adam Schaller. He’s got a little dance routine that proves to be quite funny. Many people know the Evolution of Dance. Well, that’s what we did, but we put a show ski twist to it. Same premise, but we incorporated a lot of the songs that Mad-City has used over the years for our various dances. So presented here is the Evolution of Show Skiing Dance from our National’s show. It is almost the same as state, just a little bit shorter, and sadly, a couple less songs. Enjoy.

YouTube.com
Once again, props to Bugsy for YouTubing it.
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The Jaw Dropper (It is even Awesommer!!!)

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At Nationals, Mad-City won the highest scoring jump act award (in addition to a National Championship in 2006). Typically, this goes to a large jump team doing a lot of multi-person jumps. Not this year. This year we had the Jaw Dropper. One man and his driver were responsible for it. We sent Mr. Paul O’Conner over the ramp three times. Boat barely left the show course. Crowd LOVED it!!! Here is the video from YouTube.

YouTube.com
Props to Bugsy for YouTubing It!
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Awesome

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For those that know show skiing, you know what I mean. For those that don’t, this is a slick act and worthy of the title to this post. I mentioned this in my Nationals Recap, now someone has posted video. Enjoy Wonder Lake’s Prefabricated Pyramid Hot Pick/Thread the Needle… Worthy of the highest scoring pyramid act at Nationals.

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Sports Blogs

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When it comes to sports writers, I usually know the basics about what happened… I watch too much ESPN. I like to get the more off the wall observations, interesting trends and just unique perspectives. The three sports links I have to the right are written by three of the most entertaining and informative writers I have found. I don’t always agree with what the say, but I’m always entertained.

Bill Simmons writes about once a week or so for ESPN. He writes about lots of different stuff, so it is hard to really classify, except to say it is sports related. He does weekly picks of the NFL games and has his wife do them too.

Dan Shanoff now has an independent blog that is now on blogspot.com. Previously, he did the Daily Quickie on ESPN. He writes daily about everything sports. I don’t always agree with him, but he usually presents a different view from what I’m use to. He does a quick overview of what happened yesterday and what’s coming up.

Gregg Easterbrook is the final writer listed. He writes a column called Tuesday Morning Quarterback. His column has bounced around for a bit (ESPN to Football Outsiders to NFL.com) but is now back on ESPN. He writes a recap of the past weekends events in the NFL and keeps track of a lot of off the wall stats. He also likes to do research on the NFL cheerleaders and conveniently provides links to the best pictures. This is a column I look forward to each week. Unfortunately, it usually comes out about lunch on Tuesday, not the morning… he writes too much.

That’s it for now. Just thought I’d share why they are listed on the right. Check them out. If your reading this somewhere besides blogspot.com, come visit my blog.

If you have some other really good sports writers to check out, let me know.

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Footing? Rough Water? No Problem

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At times, I’m a gluten for punishment… In water that some people were hesitant to jump in, I decided to do some footing. Specifically, some flyers off the dock. I do a lot of footing on my own, but really can’t practice flyers on my own time due to local ordinances (something about not suppose to ski off of docks). Anyway, back in August, on the 24th I believe, Greg Dixon (a photographer from the area) was down taking pictures of the handful of us that turned out for practice on this dreary Thursday night. He sent me copies of the pictures he took of me and some of them turned out really. He has this crazy big lens that is more or less a telescope. He took most of these pictures from 75+ yards away. Let me know what you think. And yes, I did make it. Two flyers and four deeps, all in very rough water.





Photos by Greg Dixon.
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Dane County Board Recognizes the Mad-City Ski Team

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On September 7th, the Dane County Board recognized the accomplishments of the Mad-City Ski Team. It’s not quiet the US Olympic Committee or a trip to the White House, but it is important to be recognized as a postive influence in the local community. I’ve included a picture of Dane County Resolution 109, 2006-2007 below. Click on the image to see a bigger version of it.
Here are links to the Dane County Board and the calender packet for the 9/7/06 meeting (the resolution is on page 7) where this picture was taken from.

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