Just wanted to help spread the word that you can watch any episode of South Park online legally now. You can even share clips of the show. Just visit www.southparkstudios.com. And now, one of my favorite clips…
Where to start… it’s been about a month since my last post. No, I haven’t gone away, just been busy dealing with “winter” stuff here in Wisconsin.
I guess the first big update from the last month would be I hit up Think Tank. For those that are wondering what that is, it’s a water skiing convention put on by the Wisconsin Water Ski Federation. You can go there and learn about a lot of different aspects of water skiing. 3-event, collegiate, wake boarding, barefooting and show skiing. Lots of show skiing stuff there. It’s a good way to get people excited about the ski season starting here in Wisconsin (not that it has yet, but it’s getting close). It’s also a good excuse to get a bunch of water skiers together and have a big party. Only real complaint from the weekend is the hotel bar at the Chula Vista is not big enough to hold all the skiers. Over at BFC, they’ve posted a pretty good update about there trip to Think Tank.
My personal experience there was a lot of fun. I had my friend Linda, a show skier herself, up from Florida for the weekend. We got up there late afternoon on Friday and hit the water park in the hotel. I think it’s the first time I’ve gone to a water park in about 15 years. That was a lot of fun. Then we hit the outdoor hot tub for drinks before changing and heading down to the doubles competition and fashion show (better known as 2 good reasons to drink at Think Tank.) Saturday was rough, dranks lots of water, taught my tank in the afternoon and partied some more that night.
If watch the trailer closely, you’ll see the newest skis from HO (yes that’s a real ski company name), twin tip jump skis. Yes, they’ve been doing it for years on the slopes and now they’ve done it for jump skis. Seen on the water ski blog-o-sphere first over on the Row Boat, you can pick up your own pair for four bills over at waterskis.com.
While I’ve been lacking in my blog posts, the Row Boat has not. Then been posting up a flurry lately. Word on the street is the Row Boat has expanded a little bit. It’s no longer one man on the oars and it sounds likes he’s got a couple people over there helping to row himself around the lake.
Meanwhile, it looks like winter may actually be over here in Wisconsin. Spring officially starts tomorrow and my yard is pretty empty of snow (except where I piled it up clearing off the driveway). The lakes are still not open yet, and probably won’t be for a couple weeks yet. Too much ice needs to melt.
To compare the weather from this year (tons of snow) to years past (not tons of snow), back in 06 I actually went skiing without a dry suit and didn’t freeze on Good Friday. This Friday, which happens to be Good Friday I’ll definitely not be on the water. One reason, the water is still frozen solid. The second reason, which actually trumps the first, is it will likely be snowing here on Friday. Southern Wisco is under a winter storm warning from Thursday night thru Friday. 4 to 6 inches expected. Now you’re thinking “but it’s spring”? Well, spring here in Wisco still means we get some snow now and then.
Finally, been busy with Mad-City stuff. You’re thinking, but it’s winter, how can you be busy. Well, Mad-City goes year round. Being on the board keeps me pretty busy, but I’ve been helping out on the show committee helping to plan next years show, also keeps me pretty busy. Plus, we’ve had some winter practices. Those don’t take up much time, but they are there. We’ve got a small army of new people on the team this year and need to get them up to speed for climbing so once the water thaws, we can get the pyramids going.
We’ll, I try not to go a month before posting again. I’ll be getting my boat ready to hopefully hit the hopefully no longer frozen water the first weekend in April. Won’t be breaking my record season start of March 24 from last year, mainly because the lakes are frozen. Although as you can see from the previous post, I did get a little water time in January. (Still get shivers in my spine thinking about that.)
Couple last things… over on the right, you may have noticed it looks a little different. First off, there’s a section titled What I’m Reading. That’s mainly random funny or interesting things I’ve found on the net. Click on one of the links now and then, it might make you laugh. Just below that there’s my attempt to help cross promote the other skiing sites on the web as I Scour the Web for Water Skiing. The good sites that I’ve found, I’ve set up in a feed so as they post stories, you’ll see them in the feed there on the right. Way down at bottom of the right side column, there’s a place to sign up for email updates from here. Put your email address in, and after you confirm your subscription, these posts will come right to your Inbox. Inbox cluttered, just use the RSS feed… don’t know what an RSS feed is? Go here to get a crash course on what they are, then make your way over to Google Reader. Sign up or use your existing Google/Gmail account and it’ll keep track of all your RSS feeds.
Lastly, if you’ve made it this far, you’re a dedicated reader. Show your dedication by sending my a barefooting story my other site… Tales from the Foot. I want to get some reader generated content up there. Send me barefoot successes, failures or funny stories.
Finally managed to pick up the barefooting movie Soul this past weekend. Gotta say, I liked it, I liked it a lot.
First off, the camera work is very slick. They have lots of good views of the tricks and the cameras look like they are right in the face of the footers. Next, the footing is phenomenal. They’ve got Scarpa, Small, MacDonald and Stokes. Finally, they’ve got some good music backing all of the action on the screen. I recognized pretty much every song they used and they made good choices.
You can tell that for some of the shots, they really put some thought into both the trick and how they were going to capture it on video. Then there was one trick that made me back the video up to watch it again. It made me go WOW! They do a barefoot whip up. And they nail it. There are show ski teams that have trouble doing a whip up with jumpers. Be sure to watch the first extra on the DVD because that shows them planning the trick.
Even with all of the sick tricks they show, they have shots of tumble turns being done that really let you see what you need to do. Simply slide the handle at your waist from the center, to one side, to the other and back.
Want your own copy? Make your way over to Lake Elmo Sports, they’ve got it in stock.
Here’s the trailer…
No, not Andre 3000 from what ever group he’s in, but Andre De Villiers. He puts up some sick footing in this video from BFC. The guy likes to jump off the back of the boat and does a new kind of tumble up.
http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=482365508927817008
They’ve got lots more videos over at Barefoot Central. Be sure to go check them out.
Props to Liz Flaherty from the Chain Skimmers and the UW Ski Team. At state last year (2007) she did a nice little barefoot act. She starts with a back flier and then ends up doing two more back deeps as she does her 3 BIG back circles… not the tiny little circles another team does… she goes all the way around the show course.
Props to the guys that messed up the first hot pick of the rope… it made the act even better!
BFC put up a video of it…
http://www.eaglewetsuits.com/videos/ShowSkiChallenge/2007_LizFlaherty_State.wmv
Download Liz Flaherty’s 3 Big Back Circls
Back on Saturday, January 26th I took my first ski run of the year… sans skis. Yes, I finally made the big commitment of giving up my Saturday and headed south to get some skiing in. I went all the way to the metropolis of Newville, WI a mere 30 minutes south of Madison.
And for those of you that think that makes me crazy, I was not alone. There were about 35 of us that braved the icy water of the Rock River. Yes it was January and yes it is Wisconsin, but we still skied or footed.
Arriving at the Anchor Inn (that is situated on the shores of the Rock River) we were greeted with snow flakes in air, ice floating down the river and a cool winter wind. This is not the typical sight when you pull up to the boat launch…
Once everyone was registered and they explained how things were going to work, they put the boats in the water. Unfortunately, the boat wakes broke a lot of ice free up river from us and a ton of ice started flowing through. This held things up for about 30 minutes. Once the ice flow tapered off, they let people hit the water.
They had the skiers go first while there was still ice in the water. Once the skiers finished up, and most of the ice had finally gone away, they started pulling the footers. Many of the footers used step off skis. In fact, I think just about everyone used step off skis. The snow banks were good for storing the skis in.
I broke the mold though. I did a deep water start. And WOW, the water was cold. It wasn’t bad to get into, but during the deep, getting my face was wet and then standing up in the 40 MPH wind… it is a new level of wind chill to experience. But even in the ice cold water I was having a blast. Here are fews pics from my footing run.
Proof that I was in the water
Doing the deep
Take 2
Snow and ice in the background makes for a nice backdrop
Yes, that’s me in the ball of spray… or should I say ball of ice?
I’m thinking “OMG AM I COLD!”
After my run, cold and wet, standing on the dock and I have a grin on my face from ear to ear!
For some reason, they completely blocked me on to the dock…
I couldn’t get through to get to the hot tub and the next skier left.
To defrost or reheat us after runs, they had a hot tub on the shore.
I’m in there with Heather and Anna & KTB are there with us.
All four us took a run that day.
Even thought it was very cold, there was snow and ice to deal with, it was a blast. My feet became painfully cold and my hands hurt a little bit too, but it was a lot of fun and I’ll be doing this again next year. There is nothing like sitting in the back of the boat on some ice, teeth chattering as your hair freezes.
Props to the RAJ for putting on a great event!
Over on BareFoot Central they have a little thing called the Show Ski Challenge. Basically, a little spot on the site to give props to where a lot of footers come from… show skiing. They’ve got videos of crazy stunts and also some highlight clips from the teams.
“Footstock Dave” (as people call him) put together a highlight clip of the Mad-City Ski Team’s 2007 Wisconsin State Ski Show. Here’s the link to the video. Not sure I’d go with metal for the typical highlight video, but the video is pretty well done.
Be sure to check out some of the other videos as well.
Back in the fall of 2006 I was out skiing in Monoan Bay. In the fall 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 keeping 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, 7, 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?
– Stroy from Eric (aka Wedge)
This month’s WaterSki Magazine has a couple good articles about barefooting. I’ve noticed a little more in there about barefooting and that’s a nice change. They still focus a lot on the 3-event skiing, but they are doing better with footing coverage.
The first article is about the Barefoot Central boys… seems they found a nice little lake, rounded up a pilot and did some footing with no boat wakes to worry about. Just a little plane, a rope and glassy calm water. They’ve got some good pictures and stories from the footers that took part in it. I’ll be waiting for the video to make an appearance over on BarefootCentral.com
The second article is about the Dam to Dam barefoot race hosted by the Austin Barefoot Ski Club of Austin, TX. They celebrated the 20th aniversary at this past year’s race and the race continues to grow each year.
Both stories had some good pictures and was nice to see WaterSki Magazine give some press to those of us who don’t need the skis.
The guy in this video, Fred Wingate, certainly does. On all the jumps the guys launches himself high and then he hits the water hard. There’s a four man one-ski gainer in there too. Check this video out…
Mad-City Wedge 