Dusted Off the Jump Skis

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This past weekend I dusted off the jump skis, strapped on my helmet and hit the ramp for the first time of the year. Not a good set, but not too bad either. 3 for 8, landing my last two. I realized something as we were going back past the jump on my way to do jump number 7. When your learning to jump, they tell you three things.

Knees.
Trees.
Freeze.

A little bend in the knees. Look at the trees (horizon). Freeze – hold your position.

It really is that simple. But what I realized is I wasn’t doing step 2. I wasn’t looking at the trees. Once I made that correction, my last two jumps were much better. Still not great by any means though. After having just looking through the pictures, my skis are coming apart and I really need to resist the water on my landing. I still relax too much in the air. I also noticed I’m pulling up on the handle and that is probably generating a lot of the slack in my rope. I need to lock my elbows into my sides. So I need to work on my execution of step 3 as well. Knowing this, hopefully my next set will be better.

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Mad-City Dual

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This weekend the second annual Mad-City Dual takes place in Monona Bay at Brittingham Park (visible on the north portion of this map – also notice the weeds). Now what makes this interesting is currently, Monona Bay is chuck full of weeds. It looks like a field, not a body of water (to the right is a picture of the bay), and they plan on having a barefoot figure eight tournament in there?

Simple put, there is some work to be done. The weed cutters are all poised to go to work in there, but still, there is a lot of work to do. Nearly the entire bay is overgrown with weeds. Just a couple weeks ago, back on Memorial Day, I managed to sneak a run in there, but even then, we had to pick the boat path carefully.

In Monona Bay they’ve placed these things called Solarbees that are suppose to reduce the amount of weeds and algae. Based on what I’ve seen, they aren’t helping to control the weeds. Most of the ‘bees are surrounded by weeds. The county has also received a $100,000 grant to protect the lakes and streams. I’m hoping they spend the money wisely.

I do hope this tournament is successful. And that the water cleanup is successful. It would be nice to be able to go skiing in Monona Bay in July and not have to imagine that you’re a swamp monster. The water is nice and clear in April and the beginning of May, why can’t it be clear in June, July, August and September?

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X3: The Last Stand

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I also caught X-Men: The Last Stand when it came out as well. Once again, this was a good movie. Not on-par with the first two, but still a good movie. It seemed like they kind of threw it together quick and then I heard that after the director of the first two, Bryan Singer, dropped out to do the new Superman movie they got another director to come in and shoot it quick so it could beat Superman to the big screen. It all makes sense now.

Like I said though, it was still a good movie to watch. Wolverine continues to kick ass, but their isn’t much of Rogue or Jean Grey, two other mutants that I liked.

One thing that parallels the real world is the topic of the movie. Enhanced human beings. Currently we have a baseball player or two that are just a little too pumped up and they are being ridiculed for what they’ve done to themselves with drugs. Makes you wonder what would happen if someone just had a different gene that would let them smash baseballs out of the park or throw 80-yard bullet passes?

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Cracking the Code

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You probably thought I haven’t been seeing movies lately. You’d be wrong. I did head out and catch The Da Vinci Code when it opened. Just too busy with other stuff to post my review.

I had just finished reading the book and was anxious to see the movie. I had read Dan Brown’s first two books, Angels & Demons and The Da Vinci Code, and was enjoyed both. They are real page turners, especially Angels & Demons.

The movie, although it has good spots, I thought just didn’t get the pacing right. Reading the book, it was almost hard to put down. The movie just didn’t capture that. They also simplified and changed the ending quite a bit and I just can’t come up with a reason why. It wasn’t too complicated or anything.

Now the very opening sequence in the Louver started off good, but also had gone through the simplification process for no good reason either. Just not sure why they had to change a well done book.

Hanks was OK, but didn’t make me go wow with his performance. Same with the leading lady. Not bad, but just OK. The guy playing the monk nailed his performance.

All in all, not a bad movie, but not really a great movie either, just one that I saw once and probably won’t head out of my way to see again.

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1 Step Closer to a B-Foot Pyramid

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Tonight at ski team practice, besides the typical chick-hauling that occurs when we do pyramids, we actually had, for us at least, what we’d call glass calm water. Now it wasn’t actually glass, but close enough for us. At the end of practice, some us decided to do some braced barefoot step-offs in anticipation of someday basing a barefoot pyramid.

The first time I ended up being the odd man out in the set and just practiced a barefoot step off in the bubbles behind the twin rig. Made the step off, but the bubbles were not fun. But getting the practice step in calmed my fears of trying this out.

Second set, I’m up. I have my foot planted and I’m waiting for the guy next to me step off since he had planned on stepping first. Well, the speed my have been just a touch slow, and boom, face plant. We gather ourselves and take another shot at it. This time the speed was probably a little hot. We get the driver to back off a bit. My partner never really gets comfortable enough with his plant and yells to me, “You comfortable?”

At that point I decide to step.

Then I step.

Without missing a beat, I answer back “Yea.”

By this time we had progressed past the calm area and were now getting in the slightly rougher stuff. I’m now trying to brace him and help him hold his spot as I keep my spot on the curl. Finally, exhausted, I call it before I hurt myself.

Best part, I made my step while braced. Something I hadn’t done before.

On an unrelated note, our twin rig is delivering some super smooth pulls of the dock… Now if it only had a speedo…

One last note… Driving to practice, rain. Leaving practice, rain. I’m getting tired of dodging raindrops all the time.

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Summer is Here!!!

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It appears that summer is finally here. Yes, finally here. The weather last week seems to have finally pushed spring out and summer in. Last week featured a variety of crazy weather. Storms pretty much daily. Mad-City managed to get in our practices between storms, downpours, etc, but dodging bolts of lightening just isn’t that fun. Wednesday’s practice was cut short because of some severe weather that moved through. Thursday’s was delayed due to storms moving through.

Friday, summer began. Beautiful weather, hot, clear, blue skies. Saturday, just like Friday. Our practice Saturday morning was very likely our warmest practice of the year so far. The air temp was already in the 70s. A very nice change from the 50s and 60s we had been practicing in. Sunday, was just hot and humid. We put out a good show, but nothing special since our practice up to this point had been limited.

Then on Memorial Day, I played uncle. I took my sister and her family out to the lake. We taught Anna, my seven year old niece, how to ski. She got up on the boom on her first try. The first two times she skied I dragged along side of her on the boom so she was a little more comfortable in the lake. The third time, she went by herself and did great. Next time she wants to go on the short line. Both of my nephews also skied, but they had both gone before.

All in all, a good Memorial Day weekend to kick off summer.

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Storm Clouds

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Crazy weather! Yes, August 18th of 2005, we had some extreme weather move through the area. But, being die hard skiers, we decided to wait out the storm. So after the downpours were done, we suited up and did some skiing. Overhead we had blue skys and calm wind. Looking south from our ski site, across the lake, we could see some amazing storm clouds. Little did we know that while we were skiing, Stoughton was being hit by tornados.

The photo above is what I took with my camera phone that night.

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My Concert Complaints

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So I’ve seen a fair number of concerts over the last few years. It helps to do the occasional stage hand work to see some of the shows I’ve seen. One thing I’ve noticed is that some of the audio mixers that travel with some bands just don’t know what they are doing.

The last few major concerts I’ve seen or worked at are:
Tim McGraw and Faith Hill
Kenny Chesney
Green Day
Tim McGraw
Dave Mathews Band
Beastie Boys
Billy Joel and Elton John
Pearl Jam (three times) at Alpine Valley

All of these concerts took place at either the Kohl Center or Dane County Coliseum, both places that are acoustically horrible.

For Green Day, DMB, Beastie Boys and Billy and Elton, I couldn’t believe how good they sounded. Lyrics as clear as day and music that was just as good as the album. Green Day and Beastie Boys especially. All of the Pearl Jam concerts I’ve seen, they’ve been mixed damn near perfectly.

For Tim McGraw and Faith Hill, Kenny and Tim McGraw by himself, I honestly couldn’t believe how bad the mixes were. The music comes through clear as day and sounds great. The vocals, however, just really couldn’t be heard over the music consistently, and when you go to see a band, at least from my perspective, you want to hear the lead vocals clearly. The Tim and Faith show from just two days ago wasn’t as bad as the KC concert, but it was by no means good. There were parts where I couldn’t hear the singing.

The KC concert from last year was the worst case I’ve seen of this ever. I was about 20 feet from the stage and for many of his songs, especially the more up-tempo songs, I couldn’t hear him at all. When he would do a ballad you could hear him, but that was it. And this is very disappointing. Hopefully, when he is back in August this manage to fix this problem. Last time he came through, I wasn’t the only one complaining. A lot of people complained.

What I think happens is this groups do their rehearsals somewhere and the setup the mixing and get everything sounding perfectly. But then they go to other buildings/venues, and every building is acoustically different, and they use the same settings. Simply put, this doesn’t work and it shows. At every venue they need to adjust the mix so it comes through clearly and I don’t think they do this, probably because they don’t have someone traveling with them capable of doing this.

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Upside Down Titanic

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That is what I’ll call the movie Poseidon, because that is basically what it is. The following review contains spoilers… you’ve been warned.

I caught this movie earlier this week on the local IMAX. And the IMAX made it look good. Going in to the movie you really need to suspend your belief on reality.

First off, you have to believe in the way they portray rouge waves. Bases on my ever so brief research into this subject just a moment ago, it seems that the typical “rouge wave” can be roughly 3 times the height of the waves around it. So if there are about 10 meter waves, you might see one that is up to 30 meters (11 stories) high. So being as how the ship was sailing through pretty much glass calm (for an ocean) water, having a massive wave like the one in the movie come out of nowhere, not quite believable.

If this wave was caused by a seismic event, based on what I’ve learned about tsunamis lately, they really don’t take form until they hit the shallower water by land, and in the movie, they are in the middle of the ocean, no land in sight.

If you believe the wave that big can “magically” appear, then that wave is also going to “magically” appear on their radar and give them significantly more time to react than what they get in the movie. Going in I didn’t think they even tried to do anything to react to seeing this massive wave, but they did, just too little, too late.

The movie as a whole, was an excellent popcorn flick, entertaining pretty much the whole time. Enough story to keep you interested in who makes it off the boat, just a bit of a love story, and unlike the Titanic that took 90 minutes to hit the ice berg, this movie flips the boat over just a few minutes in, and 90 minutes later, its done. And it even has pretty decent special effects.

The movie does suffer from what I like to call the Air Force One problem. Right at the end of the movie, there is just some really cheesy looking special effects. In Air Force One, it was the plain crash, in this movie, it is the life raft. I think they ran out of money and still had a few shots left to do, so they hired a kid of the street to finish up the effects. Really bad.

Other than that, it was an entertaining summer movie. I’m guessing seeing it on the IMAX helped, but it was fun. Not mind blowing entertainment that one will talk about the next day, but makes for a fun ride.

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