And Now Back to Our Regular Broadcast Schedule…

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OK, so my schedule is anything but regular… The computer is back together with a new hard drive, new operating system and a better backup plan… still re-organizing some stuff from before the crash, but basically, things are up and running again. Still trying to decide how to organize and backup the 100’s of gigabytes of ski team video that I have… Still bummed about some of the stuff I lost (skiing log from the last few years and good crash videos to mention just a couple things that other people might care about.)

I’ll be posting an update soon with pictures from the couple shows we did with the Must-Skis and video of some heli’s I tried up there last week.

For those that need a sport or comedy fix, check out the links on the right in the “What I’m Reading” section… They’re mainly random things from around the web that I found entertaining. One guy in the UK is trying to patent a hydrofoil wakeboard… they’ve been towed behind boats for a long time in the form of an Air-Chair or Sky Ski and now he’s trying to patent it just because now they are standing on it. They’ve even taken the Air Chair & Sky Ski and chopped off the chair to surf on the things (Laird Hamilton been doing this for years)… he isn’t doing anything new.

There’s also a post titled Rankings and Other Stuff about the UW game in Vegas this past weekend. Seems they held the world’s largest tailgate party and the Wisconsinites drank a lot of beer. The Vegas Notes post is pretty good too.

The water is still high in Madison, although they did open up Lakes Mendota and Kegonsa to just a 500 foot no wake limit, I feel it is still hard to go out in the middle of the lake, and with good conscious, start making a big fat wake to go surfing with while people are still dealing with high water in the yards. So I’ll still be road-tripping for a while. [Z- I’m looking for a place to jump on Wednesday night. -W] In case you didn’t notice, it rained today for pretty much the whole day. Not helping my cause.

It is late and it time for some shut-eye. Watch for a new post with pictures and video soon.

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[Technical Difficulties]

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To say I’ve had some technical difficulties at home this weekend would be an understatement. My main PC had hard drive die on me… it faded away as I tried to get stuff off of it. Of the many hard drives in my house, it was the one I’d least like to see go. It had a lot of stuff on it. During my recovery effort, it looks like I had some other dead hard drives in my other computer. Needless to say, I’m not happy.

For those looking for pictures from Sunday skiing and the Beaver Dam show, please be patient, I’m working on it.

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2nd Line

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Tonight, after a busy day mowing the lawn, cleaning, doing laundry and watching the Badger’s win their first game of the year, I caught up with my old friend Brent. He’s in the navy now, so I don’t get to see him very often, so it was good to catch up with.

We stopped at BW3’s first for some food and our first frosty beverages of the night. Then we headed to the UW Memorial Terrace for another beverage. They usually have a band playing there as well, which is always nice, but tonight, they really had a band. A very good band. They weren’t playing your typical music though. The band was Orleans Avenue, a project of a musical virtuoso named Trombone Shorty.

Trombone Shorty dong the 2nd Line

If you read up on the guy, he’s been “leading bands” since he was six years old. He’s that good. And after watching him in person, he is. My reaction was wow. His band that he plays with is really good too!

Initially, I’d think to describe the music as Dixie Land Jazz… but there more to it than that. Way more. A little funk, a little bit of a rock edge and a whole lotta fun. He manages to get a crowd of Wisconsinites up on their feet dancing and singing along to the song “When the Saints.” Yes, we all know the song, everyone does, but to get a huge crowd up and dancing and singing… now that is a very big feat in my eyes. The crowd loved it.

And then after that, he busts out the next song… “Back in Black”. Everyone knows the riff that opens that song. Everyone. Well, you haven’t heard that riff until you’ve heard it done on a trombone. Wow! The song will never be the same.

Trombone Short doing Back in Black… yes, that is the song by AC/DC

If you ever get the chance to catch this act, do it. You might be thinking that the music doesn’t sound like something you like. I would think the same thing and I’d know I was wrong. The music is great.

My buddy Brent and I at the end of the night. We’ve known each other since we were like 6 years old.
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I Have A Problem Here…

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…the lakes are high and the no wake on the lake went lake wide today. That means no skiing in Madison for me. Can’t blame them though, here are a few shots of our ski site from Monday and the area where the crowd would sit is flooded.



This shot shows our blacktop stage that is normally a couple
feet above the water level and it is now at the water level.


Here is where the crowd will typically sit. Now it is under water.


Here is the bike path…. once again it is normally a couple feet
above the lake level and now it just barely above the lake level.
You can see debris from when the water was higher.


Finally, here is a line of debris across the middle
of the park showing where the water level was.

With no skiing in Madison, that means I’ll need to road trip to The Beav or Lake Wisconsin to find water to ski on. Not a huge problem but it does cut into the ability to do after work skiing. Finish work at 5, best case, home by 530, on the road to one of those two places by 540, launching the boat at 615. And that is really the very best case. More than likely, it would be 630/645 for launching the boat and that means just 60 minutes of skiing. Getting everyone to arrive at exactly 530 at my house to meet to go north is just very unlikely. I’m just crossing my fingers the water goes down somewhat quickly. 2 weeks would be nice.

Anyways, that just means I have a whole lot more free time in the evenings that I need to find something to do with.

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Mad-City in the News (Kinda?)

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I took it upon myself to scour the web looking for news about the Mad-City Ski Team (actually, I’ve automated this process, but want to make you think I work hard to find these random tidbits) and stumbled upon this site called Daily Motion which kinda seems like another type of YouTube type site. Anyways, on this site someone produces a show called “The Boaters TV” and they had a story about show skiing and the Mad-City Ski Team. The show skiing related stuff starts about two thirds of the way through the episode. The video is below… check it out.

The Boaters TV Episode 30

Finally, if you watch the credits for the news broadcast closely, you’ll see that our very own Bugsy (aka bugsroll) supplied some of the video featured in the episode. Then you’ll see that the episode was brought to you by the word “cleat”.
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Mad-City 2007 Nationals Highlight Clip

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So… with the rain, high water, bad weather, no wakes on the lakes, boredom, and constant nagging from the Bug-Man, I finally decided to put together a highlight clip for the Mad-City Ski Team’s National Champion Ship Ski Show. It’s a little longer than the state clip I did for two reasons… 1) the state clip was intended for the TV news (which it did make) so I needed to keep it relatively short and 2) our national show was way better… more highlights to show!

So without further ado, here is the 2007 Nationals Highlight Clip for the Mad-City Ski Team!

BTW, it would appear that Ronée is more effective at getting me do stuff than the Bug-Man. She talked me into doing this the day after state… took Bugsy a week and a half.

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Surfing Without the Rope

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So a while back, Paul, already a little bored with using a rope to start out on the surf board behind the boat decided to just step off the platform and onto the board. For him, it worked out good. In case you missed it the first time, here’s the video…

One of the many people in the boat that night was Ronée. Not counting Paul, she is probably the best surfer of the rest of us. She has it down pat. And she’s apparently also becoming a little bored with the traditional start using a rope and wanted to try out the platform start. She was a little more hesitant than Paul, and had Sandy distracting her, but she did manage to complete the start… she just didn’t catch the wave that well. Here’s the video…

I still give her props for trying it out. The thought has crossed my mind, but I’m still having a hard time catching the wave while using the rope. Probably not going to happen without it.

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Been Hitting the Ramp…

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I’ve been hitting the ramp pretty hard the last couple weeks. Pretty much going every time I get a chance. I’ve been trying heli after heli after heli…

Earlier this week, I had my best heli attempt so far. Typically, I start spinning as I go off the ramp and the whole time I’m in the air I’m thinking to myself “make it all the way around, make it all the way around…” Well on Tuesday, on my first attempt of the night I hit the ramp, start my rotation and manage to get all the way around and see the boat. And then it hits me, I should grab the handle with my free hand. That’s the first time that thought has had a chance to even occur during one of my heli attempts. I usually don’t even get that far. I reach for the handle with my right hand and find it. Then my ass hits the water because I’m not over my skis enough and fall. I was still pumped though. It was the first time I had gotten all the way around and thought to put my hand back on the handle and did put my hand on the handle. Here’s the video…

Here’s one of my more typically heli attempts as of late… only rotate about 330 degrees and take some sort of rib shot…

One of the comments I heard that should help me out is I’m gripping the braid too much. Need to have a light touch so my rotation starts quicker. Also need to just turn my head to the left to help initiate the spin as well. Both should help me get around quicker.

Meanwhile, Bugsy has also been beating himself up as he works on flips… front flips to be exact. Here’s the footage of his four front flip attempts from this week…

When Paul watched these, the one comment he had for Bugsy was that he needs to stay tucked to finish the rotation. He’s coming un-tucked and that stops the rotation which provides spectacular falls for the spectators… something we appreciate, but something he’ll want to correct if he has dreams off skiing away from one of these.

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Recent Press Coverage of the Mad-City Ski Team

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The ski team has been getting some nice local press lately. The Wisconsin State Journal had a nice article about the ski team’s recent successes and what it means to be on the ski team on the Saturday morning of Nationals. (Link to article)

At that same time they were writing that article, the newspaper also had someone working on a video of the ski team. I managed to track the video down and watched it and I think they did a really good with it. (Link to video)

On Monday after Nationals, The Capital Times (Madison’s other newspaper) had a nice story on us winning another National Championship. (Link to article)

Then on Tuesday morning, the Wisconsin State Journal had their article about us repeating as National Champions. (Link to article)

Meanwhile, I also looked for coverage in the local newspapers of the other teams that competed in the tournament. I found articles about Wonder Lake (link to article), Janesville Rock Aqua Jays (link to article) and the Rockford Ski Broncs (link to article).

Of the other articles I found, I think the best quote is in the Janesville article from Dave Rezin:

“Mad City had a real good show. The thing they have going for them is they ski on rough water every day (at their show site in Law Park on Lake Monona in Madison). They have almost no barefooting in their show, so they were able to adapt to the conditions better than what we were.”

That’s the first time that our ski site has ever provided us with any type of advantage. It is routinely rough and we don’t have anything that resembles a beach. When the water is calm, the boat waves we generate bounce off the Monona Terrace and come right back at us. We use to have a sunny sight, but then some very tall apartment buildings were built and now we get a whole lot of shade in the evening. The only redeeming quality of our site is the bicycle path.

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