All of the old posts from my old website bfooter.com.
Yes, back when I wrote my Nationals recap, no local media had given us any props. No mentions that we won or that there was even a tournament. Now, three weeks later, both local newspapers had a story about the ski team this weekend. Here are the links…
The Capital Times
The Wisconsin State Journal
In other water skiing news, here is just a good story from Indiana, albeit a short one.
A Skiing Inspiration
For everyone that ends up here looking for Footstock Results… I don’t have them here, but I do have a link to them… Just trying to help.
For everyone else, read on. For those here for the results, if you enjoy skiing, you might find something here to read anyway.
This morning woke up bright and early for some morning skiing. Rolled out of bed at 545 to be at the lake at 645. As I parked my truck at the lake, the temp was still in the 50s. The lake was covered with fog as I walked down to the dock to meet up with Tash. He had the boat ready to go with his two kids bundled up in sleeping bags to keep warm and spot for us.
Once we found some calm water, the skiing was good. Seeing as how I have broken both of my barefoot handles in as many weeks (in addition I broke a team handle) I was using Tash’s barefoot rope and handle. I’ve grown accustomed to my non-stretch rope, when the boat takes off, so do I. Well, Tash’s rope isn’t non-stretch. On my starts I could feel the rope stretch and then once I’d get up on top of the water, I could feel it bungee me forward. It also made the little chop we were going through just a bit more interesting. As I hit the waves, it would stretch just a bit and then it would bungee a bit. Really keeps you on your toes (or literally, on your heals) just a bit more. Wasn’t bad, just vastly different from what I’ve been use to.
Today actually ended up being a two-a-day. In addition to skiing this morning, I did some skiing tonight in our show. Nothing major, a conventional run and a 3-high. However, it was nearly whitecaps. My pyramid was pretty, as we went over the rollers from our boat pattern, I got bent forward just a bit. With the pyramid already up now, I just couldn’t stand up straight so I carried it through bent over. We made it. I’ll post a picture if I get one.
Back to the broken barefoot handles I mentioned… I was out the 18th, tried a tumble turn, caught my should and broke my handle. Then two days later, on the 20th, I did a flyer in the show and that handle broke. Meanwhile, I put my old handle (purchased in 1991) on my current rope and used that for a while. Then on this past Tuesday, the 29th, I went to do a flyer with my rope and old handle. I jumped in, the boat took off, I didn’t really move. My handle in hand, the boat taking off with the rest of the rope. Three handles in 9 days. Both my handles are currently being repaired, one by the manufacturer, one by our team rope man.
Well, that’s it for now… I’m dead tired. Not use to waking up before 7, let alone before 6. Can’t complain though, it was worth it.
Ronee put together a nice little slide show… here it is…
So tonight I’m out footing on Lake Monona. Out on the big lake in front of the Monona Terrace instead of the bay. Cruising along on my barefeet, bouncing through the little mini-rollers (it was good water, but not great). And BAM, the toes on my right feet catch. Normally while footing, this results in a violent crash typically called a face plant. You go from 40+ MPH to 0 much too fast for it not to be violent. I’ve seen stars after a face plant many times. Not tonight though. Yea, my foot caught and was pushed back, then I kinda dragged it like one would drag a foot while do a hop dock. Then I calmly lift my foot out of the water, bring it back around, set it back down and just kept on going. Caught a toe and kept on going. It’d be neat if I had some picturs, but my camera doesn’t work so well at dusk. And it was at least dusk when this happened.
Last few homes shows, I’ve gotten out of the sound booth and back on the water. Here are a few pictures from our home show on the 20th.
I’m dead center with Holly
Still in the center
I’m still in the center
I’m in the 2-high on the left
Yet more proof that The Onion is America’s Finest News Source… “In this corner, you have plenty of time to think.” And there is more that is even better…
In other news, apparently, the next time I make my way to Boston, MA in the summer, I should be able to find some people to ski with. Seems there is a group of dedicated water skiers that formed the Dorchester Bay Club that like to ski in Boston Harbor on Wednesday night. And no, I’m not making this up. You can read the story here. I personally love the photo with the story. Dude looks like he is struggling to stay up on two. Love the enthusiasm to go skiing there.
I’ve found the TV that I want to have at my house. Notice I didn’t say in my house. I don’t think it’d fit. This TV measures 134 by 55. And those measurements are in feet. I could set it up in my backyard, install a new giant picture window to watch it through. Pretty sweet. It is HD too! Comes with a stadium quality sound system and goes for a mere $8 million. Best part is, my yard is wide enough to hold it in the back. Not sure I could afford the electricity to run it though.
Finally, now that the Little League World Series is over and the NFL hasn’t quite started yet, if you are looking for something sports related to watch, check out the US Open. Yes, that is tennis I’m talking about. Looking for some reasons to watch, go here. You just might find yourself interested. In other news, I watched a total of about 5 innings of the LLWS and 1 quarter of preseason football (all of the football tonight). I’m still too busy skiing and partaking in sports to sit back and watch them.
The sports guy, Bill Simmons, over at ESPN.com recently visited Wisconsin. For an entertaining read about an entertaining weekend, go check it out. He covers the Sausauge Race, Miller Park’s Special Sauce, Bizarro Laker Girls, the old Brewers Logo, the origination of tailgating, cheese, weather forecasting cows and much, much more.
Walking into this movie, I wasn’t quite sure I was in the right theatre. I expected to see a theatre of late teens and twenty something’s, but there was a variety of people in there, older, younger, clean cut and otherwise.
This is another movie where my expectations were low going on. Surprisingly, there was a lot more story to the movie than I ever expected to see. Although, going for the low brow, cheesy not quite a horror flick with some action, they managed to hit the nail on the head. Even had a spot that made me jump.
There are way too many cheesy CGI snakes and snakes biting people in lots of strategic places that make you both grown and laugh. There is even a cute little dog to watch.
Without Mr. Jackson staring in the movie, it probably wouldn’t have been as entertaining. I kept waiting for him to bust out into his speech from Pulp Fiction (“If any of you mother fuckin’ [snakes] move, I’ll execute every mother fucking last one of ya!”) Either that, or see him whip out his light saber from his Mace Windu character and start slicing and dicing the snakes.
If you like the cheesy type of movie that this aims to be, you won’t be disappointed. If you aren’t in to the movies, you might as well wait for the DVD.
Welcome to the South Harmon Insitute of Technology. Well, what can I say about this movie. First off, I’ll let everyone know my expectations were not high for this movie. I was just hoping for a simple, funny comedy. And that is what I got. Nothing special, but I was entertained for 90 minutes. I could tell while watching it that they filmed with the intention of releasing an unrated version when it comes out on DVD. It follows in the footsteps of American Pie and Revenge of the Nerds and all of the other knock offs, but in the end, it is entertaining. Well worth a watch when it comes out on video.
And for the Revenge of the Nerds fans, there is a remake due out in 2007.
Mad-City Wedge 
