Water Skiing News from Around the Web

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Found these water skiing related stories on web…

Although I’ve wanted to do some water skiing with our recent warm weather here in Wisconsin, I didn’t actually go through all the work of getting my boat and stuff ready to actually go. Well, others experiencing the warm weather have taken advantage of it. Out in Twin Falls, Idaho, they took to the water, even raising some money for charity. Meanwhile, out east in Scotia, New York (near Albany I think) a ski school did some skiing on New Year’s Day as well. Then there is this guy out near Wichita, Kansas who likes to take his annual New Year’s Day barefoot run in a Speedo (for the ladies, there’s a picture behind that link.) Unfortunately, there is a picture in the news story (ladies, you may not like that one as much).

While searching for more crazy news stories of people skiing, I found this post on a blog about a guy that took his dog wake boarding. Seeing as how it is cold enough for the guy to need a dry suit, I don’t think I’d want to put my dog in the cold water, but he did.

Meanwhile, Rykert over in Iowa is making use of the water skiing off season by trying to build a dry land trick apparatus.

My searches also turned up this blog. I didn’t see anything specific about water skiing on it, other than the user name for the blogger… Waterskiing on Two Discount Alligators. Might have to ask about that one.

And finally, this European water skiing site has information up about a thing called Think Tank. Now I’m familiar with Think Tank, it is put on by the Wisconsin Water Ski Federation, of which I’m a member. It is basically a water skiing conference. I’ve even presented at it a few times and will be again this year. I just found it interesting that it is being promoted over in Europe. Browsing the website, I came across this description of Barefooting:

“Barefoot water skiing is skiing beneath a towboat wherein the skier do not uses any skis on his feet, thus this waterskiing discipline is also known as barefooting.”

I’m pretty sure that when I’m barefooting, I’m not beneath the towboat, I prefer to be behind it. I can’t hold my breath long enough to make skiing beneath the boat worthwhile, plus there is the whole issue of the prop. It spins fast and is capable of slicing and dicing and I’d rather not be near it while it is spinning. I’m guessing this is probably just a translation issue, but I found it funny. The rest of the description is pretty decent.

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Movie Review Catchup

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So I’ve been a little lax on my keeping my movie reviews current. Time to catchup & here goes…

Apocolypto – Saw this movie a while back. I found it very interesting, knowing that although it seems realistic, I knew going in that Mel Gibson had done some blending of times, portraying different points of history simultaneously. Overlooking that, the movie was enjoyable. Parts are very interesting, other parts are a little gruesome. Final verdict, I liked it, but it isn’t a movie for everyone.

Happy Feet – Caught this movie on the IMAX and I’ll say it was one of the most enjoyable movies I’ve seen lately. I’d summarize it as March of the Penguins from their perspective, but with more a story and unique characters. Originally, they advertised it as being in IMAX 3-D, but they decided against doing that. I think that would have really added something extra to a few of the sequences in the movie. As a whole, I highly recommend this for an enjoyable entertaining family movie.

Eragon – Read the book before seeing this one. Book was good, kind of a little bit of a cross between Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. LOTR type story, Potter type story telling, but not done as well as either. Book was good. Now for the movie. Completely unrecognizable from the book, other than a boy finds a dragon egg, the meat of the story is completely different. I can’t recommend that you don’t go see this movie enough. I’ll just say that if I was the author, I’d be buying ads denouncing the movie and urging people to read the book.

Rocky Balboa – I had serious doubts about this movie when I originally heard about it. How could they make another Rocky movie? Then I saw the ads and thought they had a good pretty good story idea. Washed up boxer sees a special on ESPN and thinks he can still box. He gets a shot at the champ, who is like most modern athletes and living at the center of their own personal fantasy world (please note, I said most, not all). If you haven’t seen Stallone in a while, he looks just a little freakish now. Giant hands that would probably feel like a brick hitting you in the ring. Surprisingly, he can still string together words to form sentences that can be understood. He even has what it takes to perform for him what would be called a significant monologue. Forgetting that you have to listen to Stallone speak for an hour, the movie is actually very good and provides a very fitting conclusion to the Rocky series. At least until he makes another one.

Sorry there aren’t any links to previews, one sheets and random links to info about the actors and directors. Pressed for time tonight. Well, now I’m all caught up on my movie reviews. Time to fall behind again.

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Fox Sports BCS Playoff Conspiracy

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If you went to bed when Boise threw the pick returned for TD with a minute left in the game, you missed one hell of an ending. Doubtless, there are 1000’s of places to read a better recap than I can write. So if you’re looking for that, you came to the wrong place. If you’re lucky, you may be able to see it on ESPN Classic later this week if they’re willing to pony up the cash to re-air it. It is definately an instant classic. One of the few games I think is worthy of that label.

On the other hand, I’m putting this out their for the world to see. I believe Fox, whose commentators have been fueling the fire about a NCAA Football playoff (especially during the end of the Boise game tonight) has a master plan and decided to go out on a limb and pay oodles of money for the BCS rights so they can throw their weight (which is the millions of dollars they paid) and get it turned into a proper playoff. Maybe just an 8 team, maybe 16 if we are really lucky, I don’t really know. I just see the controversy out there and Fox just continues to pour fuel on the fire.

I don’t care what they do with all the other bowls, just take the top 8 or 16 teams and make ’em play until they determine a champion the old fashion way, on the field! And not by writers and coaches and experts and computers deciding team A gets to play team B for the championship and team C is left out because B is better than team C because of some goofy stat or subconscious inclination because of the voter’s region or teams your just more familiar with. Let them play. The teams left out of the playoff can continue to play in their exhibition games in random bowls number 1 through 50.

Oh and Chris Myers just popped the question for the Boise State running back before he had a chance to ask his girlfriend himself.

Disclaimer, I’m putting this out there with no inside knowledge or any relationship to Fox or any other sports broadcasting entity other than I watch their broadcasts way too much.

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Hydrofoil Surfing?

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So I’m watching Step Into Liquid on HDNet tonight and come across something very interesting.

Besides coming to the conclusion that I really do need a subwoofer, I saw some surfers, Laird Hamilton was one of them, who found a Sky Ski or Hydrofoil. They think its fun and all that as they get pulled behind a PWC, but then they get to wonder about why they need to be seated and strapped in. One of them takes a saw and cuts of the chair, they strap on some bindings and they make it into a surf foil. Pretty slick.

Sorry Cake, but they did really chop up a sky ski.

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Pretty Sweet Footing Video

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Just found this site called Cowz R Us .net on the web, hosted by some Wisconsin footers. They put together a pretty slick video of a lot of awesome footing action and even some great falls. It is set to what I think is one of the best footing songs ever, Kickstart My Heart by Motley Crue, a song that is first and foremost about adrenaline, literally. There are time I hear this song in my head while footing. They even show a barefoot pyramid where everyone foots away, including the climber.

Link to the video is HERE.

I may need to track these people down this summer.

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1st Annual Water Skiing Report

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I hope to make this an annual recap of skiing, but this’ll be the first one…

This last year was my longest ski season to date. It started on March 23 and ended exactly 7 months later on November 23 (Thanksgiving). That amounts to 245 days of on the water activity. I’m hoping this off season will be my shortest off season ever as well. It was even longer than the baseball season, something I will strive to do every year.

I took my boat to the lake 45 times, putting 61.5 hours on the engine. I was at the lake nearly every day throughout the summer (June-August) for ski team as well. So actual number of days on the water isn’t known (need to count this better for next year).

Now for the break down of runs…
1 Ballet Run
2 Slalom Runs
2 Fluff Runs
3 Random Show Ski Runs (not sure)
8 3-High Pyramids
10 Jump Sets for a Total of 35 Jumps (my back didn’t cooperate, so this is basically just the count for the month of June)
16 Conventional Doubles Runs
95 Barefoot Sets

The 95 barefooting sets break down like this…

Overall I took 299 barefoot runs. I really wish I had done one more.

29 were of unknown length
28 were short runs (usually show ski passes, flyers off the docks & tumble turn attempts)
200 were medium runs
45 were long runs
14 were marathon runs
3 were figure eights

A short run is a typical show ski pass, a medium run is approximately a diagonal pass in the bay, a long run is usually at least two bay shore lines or more. A “marathon” run is qualified as a bay loop or more (or the equivalent) and a figure eight is a figure eight. The difference between long & marathon was tough to keep track of.

Of the medium runs, a lot were done in rapid fire succession. Dash across the bay, boat whips a shitty & takes off again. Never let go of the rope. Total time between runs is (if done right) about 10 or 20 seconds.

There were also 9 2-a-days. Usually these involved waking up and going skiing, then work, then going back to the lake for more skiing. I need to up this count as well next year. I didn’t do any 3-a-days, which is disappointing.

As you can see, this running sound for the ski team really puts a damper on me doing much besides barefooting. Only took 40 show skiing related runs all summer and 301 “other” runs. I think my wakeoboard made it to the lake 4 or 5 times but I never used it.

One final statistic that speaks to the quality of the people that come out skiing with me… I put $806.23 worth of gas into the boat and my fellow skiers kicked in for $497 of it. Considering there is usually 3 of us in the boat at a time and people are helping out for two thirds of the gas is great. Thanks to everyone for helping out with the gas bill.

Finally, both my first and last days on the water had air temps of 45 degrees and water temps of 37 & 41 respectively. Just to let everyone know, when your face is covered in cold water and you’re going 40+ MPH, that 45 degree air is bone chillingly cold on your face. The wind chill really does a number on you. According to NOAA, when it is 45 degree and there is a wind of 42 MPH, the air temp feels like 34 degrees. Then you need to mix in the already cold water on your face and it feels even colder, but I couldn’t find any place to mix in the moisture factor.

Finally, I think June 30 was the best day on the water. August 2nd & 3rd were a lot of fun too!

BTW, we (Mad-City) won a state and national show ski championship which is pretty cool too!

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Gone Daddy Gone

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So I recently joined the realm of HD TV with a recent purchase and managed to find myself an over the air broadcast channel that actually plays music videos* and doesn’t really have commercials. Granted the channel, called The Tube, isn’t in HD, but it plays good music. Billy Idol, Green Day, Springsteen, Modest Mouse and Gnarls Barkley (they like their variety).

Anyway, the Barkley video for Gone Daddy Gone, a Violent Femmes remake (aka cover), came on and I loved it. Good rendition of the song and a hilarious video. Enjoy.

First Up… The Original by the Violent Femmes


The Violent Femmes – Gone Daddy Gone

Next on the Dock**… The Cover by Gnarls Barkley


Gnarls Barkley – Gone Daddy Gone

*Music videos became popular in the 80’s. MTV rode their popularity and became a major TV network brainwashing millions of teenagers into some poor choices regarding their music (and still does). Fortified in it’s position of power, MTV stopped playing videos but somehow still calls itself a music channel even though the vast majority of it’s programming is now based on reality TV (or at least as close to reality as MTV will ever get). They also started M2 to play music videos since MTV(1) wasn’t playing them anymore. M2 stopped playing them as well. Maybe they have an M3 that plays videos? I don’t know.

**With ski season finished (I put the boat away last weekend) I’m still trying the throw a water skiing reference in now and then. Admittedly, this one is weak. Look for a full recap of this summer’s adventures coming soon. Want to know how many sets I took, how many trips to the lake, etc? I want to know and we’ll find out together in a couple days.

BTW, I got a little link happy in the post.

Photo from Violent Femme website.

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Deja Vu

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I caught this movie on Monday night. I had heard from friends that it wasn’t that great, so I went in with low expectations.

Was it a great movie? No. But it was entertaining. Kind of a cross between all the Denzel Washington cop movies with a little bit of a time travel twist thrown in. They didn’t play up the whole “deja vu” aspect of the movie much, but did do a decent job with the time travel bit. Denzel is Denzel and he does a good job playing a cop. He’s done it a lot and the role works for him. I won’t go into too many details for fear of giving away the ending. It was nice to see the Iceman (aka Val Kilmer) in a movie again.

Overall, it was an alright movie. I’ll probably end up watching it again when makes it way on to TV and I run into it channel surfing some day.

BTW, they did leave the door open for a sequel… Deja Vu II.

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New Blog Listed on the Right

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I’ve added a new entry to the blog roll. Mr. Rykert living somewhere in corn country (sounds like Iowa if you ask me) chronicles his life on the water as do I. While he recently pulled out his two jumps, it appears that I was still skiing. Give the man props though, he has two jumps. I have access to the team’s jump which gets yanked in mid-September. Granted my back hasn’t agreed with me using the jump very much, but he has two jumps to remove, which is two more than me. Both appear to be better than our team’s jump. And it looks like he has a consistently calm (and apparently clean) body of water to ski on… something that to me is only a pipe dream. Never going to happen in Madison. If I want really calm water, I’m skiing in a swamp. Or in November on Thanksgiving.

On an slightly related note… the great solar bee experiment in Monona Bay has ended. They didn’t appear to be doing anything and, according to my sources, won’t be coming back. This means less obstacles to avoid while skiing in the (near) swamp land. Look at some of my other posts from the summer, and you’ll see the weeds.

On a related note to the my last comment… the fact that the bay is nearly swamp land is both good and bad. Bad because it is nasty to ski in. Completely and totally disgusting. If you ever see it, you will understand… instantly. Ever want to pretend to be the swamp thing, just do a deep in the wrong spot and you’ll have your opportunity to “dress up.” Good because since the water is so disgustingly nasty, no one else goes in there and the narrow path that is typically open in the summer is nearly always glass calm. As you can see, this is a dilemma that I go through while arguing for cleaner water. Yes, it would be best to have water that I don’t need to pretend is clean and hope doesn’t cause me to get sick or infected from something, but I also want it calm water. I’m torn. My health or calm water? Tough choice.

I do wonder why my legs itch all day at work after taking a morning set in there? Things to make you go “hmmmm…”

Now it is time to go enjoy the Stella induced sleep…

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