Finally had a chance to bust out the boat last weekend on Saturday morning and have a good time on the water. I forced everyone to have a early wake up, even though it is a late start for skiing, still early as we all adjust to a summer morning skiing schedule. I called for people to be at the lake at 830am. As I pulled in just a couple minutes late, I saw Sandy and John waiting. We launched the boat as Teri called to say that Rob and her were “almost” there. About 15 minutes after we got the boat in the water, they arrived, through no fault of Rob’s, or so he claims. Next time, I plan to just tell Teri 30 minutes earlier than the rest of us. They did bring some trail mix for everyone to snack on though.

Back to the skiing… We didn’t freeze, calm water and lots-o-sunshine. John, Teri and I did some footing, Sandy did a little slaloming, Rob got dragged around on the boom (much to our entertainment), and then we busted out my new surfboard. I won’t go into details about the day, I’ll just let the pictures do the talking… We took lots of them, and here the best of the pictures…

John threw some tumbles…

and one foots…

and did we mention he likes to test out his barefoot shorts…

I just did some footing… here I am in front
of the hospital I’m spending a lot of time in now…
(Work reasons, not health reasons)

Teri demonstrated a tumble turn on the boom

John wanted to have some on the boom too

Sandy busted out her slalom ski to rehab her knee…
her she throws up a wall behind the spray from the boat

A better picture…

Here I’m making sure the surfboard works

Teri on the board from up high…

and down low…

That wave looks huge!

John actually looses the rope now and then…

No rope…

But sometimes needs it back

Rob learned how to surf…

Here’s he on top of the water…

Here he’s about to go upside down…

It wasn’t that warm out though…
Sweatshirts made the day very nice
Sandy’s catching some rays here

And here’s the backdrop for our skiing, the state capital

Back to my earlier comment about dragging Rob around on the boom… he tried he hand (or feet) at barefooting. Now he’s not a small person and tested out the boom. He threw up some big splashes with some of his tumble up attempts, even dosing the camera once. We decided to catch them on video. I need to do a little editing and set the videos to music for maximum entertainment value. Be sure to check back.

Links: Picasa Web Album

This past Saturday, the Best Dam Barefoot Race took place in Beaver Dam, WI. This year, I suited up with Bugsy, Beau, Dano and Marky to go the distance. Russ was driving for us in his Malibu.

The weather this year, although not warmer than last year, was better than last year. The winds were much calmer, making the race like a Nascar Race. One slip up and you’re not going to win. For the race results, go check out Tales from the Foot. Basically, they messed up a pit stop and lost the race.

We didn’t have delusions of winning, we just wanted to finish. Shortly after the winners finished the race in a mere 23 minutes, we approached the turn around boat. The story in the bar afterwards goes that we stopped for a “drink” before making the return trip. We’ll neither confirm nor deny that, all we’ll say is that we were happy to see the turn around boat and they were happy to see us.

We finished the race, riding the feet of Marky, Dano and Beau while Bugsy and I did our contributions by giving them some recovery time and entertainment. Admittedly for all of us, it was a rough day. I’ve been on the water once, Dano a couple time, Bugsy did a 3-Event tourny (but hadn’t footed) while Beau and Marky suited up for the first time. None of were really ready for 22 miles, but we went anyways. Towards the end of race, the cold started to take affect, but then we finally spotted the bar and the finish line and rolled across the finish line 63 minutes and 43 seconds after we started.

But when the race finished, the party began.

We put the boat away, dried off and made our way into Dawn and Woody’s Moonlight Bar for food and drink. Before anything got too wild, we parked our cars at the Bell residence and car pooled back to the bar. We planned to have a good time.

As we arrived back at the bar, the karaoke was starting up. Beau, Dano and Marky had to head back to Madison for various reason, but we had reinforcements show up. Sandy and Beth were there to cheer us on, John arrived a little later, Teri was there as well with her own team and Douch arrived for the party as well. Many of us took turns on the stage… Sandy and Teri sang many songs, Pa Bell took the stage, Bugsy graced us with a boy band song, I did some Fishin’ in the Dark and got to sing along with Black Betty.

It took a while to get them to play Black Betty. First they said they’d already played and couldn’t play it again. Then I called them on the fact that they had already repeated several songs that night. Then they were like we don’t have a karaoke version and I told them I knew the words. After Douch made a comment about wanting ot hear it, they finally relented. It took way too much work to get that song played.

While I snacked on some cheese curds, Ann quizzed me on how I thought they were. I gave them 3 stars. They had a good batter on them and were white cheddar so they were pretty decent. We agreed that the curds at Old Fashions would be 5-star cheese curds and the variety served at The Coliseum Bar and The Dane in Fitchburg 4-stars. Ann then tried a cheese curd and agreed they’d be a 3-star cheese curd.

Talked with Footstock Dave and Chris Van Zeeland a little bit (he’d seen my other barefooting sight and liked it.) Shot some pool and caught up with some friends from the Must-Skis. All the while, I had a steady supply of margaritas on the rocks. I felt very good by the end of the night and none of us went home thirsty that night.

Here are some pictures from the night…

Wedge, Douch and a One of Many Margaritas

Bugsy on the Dance Floor

T-Bell and Wedge

Bugsy strikes a pose

Bell Duet

Around 11pm or so, we made it back the Bell house for the after bar. We arrived to find the garage fridge nearly empty, but Greg showed up with reinforcements. Meanwhile, Ma Bell kept feeding us with a steady supply of pizza. What some people found amazing was I was eating the pepperoni pizza even though it also had mushrooms on it. I don’t normally eat mushrooms. Correction… I don’t eat mushrooms. Or at least I hadn’t up until then.

We made it past midnight and finally called it a night. I claimed a recliner in the Living Room once again and grabbed a blanket and quickly fell asleep.

Sunday morning arrived way too early and Ruby greeted me at 6am with a wake up call. Unlike last year, she didn’t have a pair of underwear with her this time. I was tired, thirsty and very sore, but surprisingly, not really hung over. Around 8am Ma Bell started making some breakfast for the Mother’s Day Breakfast she had planned. Slowly, the rest of the household started moving. I rolled out at 9am so I could make it back for my Mother’s Day festivities.

More pictures on Picasa.

And now back to our regularly scheduled blog-casting. Water Skiing and Barefooting season is finally back!

Spring is doing everything in it’s power to push the last remnants of winter away. The weather is slowly warming, and with that, the water is slowly warming.

Unfortunately, the weather and my schedule haven’t been very cooperative this spring. The handful of nice days that we’ve previously had, I’ve been busy. The days I’ve had time, well let’s just say the weather has been a bit wintery. Hell, we’ve even had snow coming down on some of those days. Other days, 50 MPH gusts of wind. All great for water skiing… err maybe not.

But the weather and my schedule finally lined up on Monday. 60 or so degrees, sunshine, calm winds. After texting T-Bell and calling Lisa, I had the magic number for skiing.

After work, ran home to quickly get my boat, put some fresh gas in the tank, and headed to the lake. Teri and Lisa arrived and away we went. The lake’s a little high right now and we all felt the need to duck are heads as we went under the railroad bridge into the bay. I don’t think my head would have hit, but it was definitely low enough to make me think twice.

Once in the bay, I finished suiting up. And unlike last year, where I needed some assistance zipping up my suit…

This year, I zipped it all by myself. I’m a big boy now… or maybe not quite as big of a boy now since I fit in my suit a bit better.

Anyways, onto the skiing!

I took the honors and took the first run of the year behind my boat. I usually do. Ownership has it’s privileges. Somehow on my first run, I managed to be footing and have slack in my rope. That’s a neat trick. The first runs of the year took their toll on me. 2 sets of 2 runs each. No major runs, but it had it’s after affects. My feet were sore the next day, ear aches from the cold water, and arms that felt like jelly. Completely worth it though… I was back on the water.

Slack in the rope?

Smiling!

Next up Lisa dusted off her slalom ski. After letting the waves calm down from the barefoot circles, Douch took her runs back and forth across the bay cutting up the glassy water.

Teri dusted off her dry suit (not that it was really needed that night) and took her footing runs for the night and the first of the year for her as well.

As we headed back to the boat launch, the three of us were treated to a great sunset!

After just a couple runs, maybe totaling 2 miles, I’m off to Beaver Dam this weekend for The Best Dam Barefoot Race. 22 miles of something. Last year it was brutal water, but a hell of a party afterwards. This year we’re crossing our fingers hoping for better water. No matter what, it’ll be a lot farther than I went on Monday.

But anyways, the wedding was in the afternoon and was very nice. Then we made our way to the reception with just a slight detour to make a brief stop at a liquor store for some supplies. One of my responsibilities was to start the music at the reception. We then put our stuff in the cabin we were staying in and made our way back to the reception hall and had some cocktails and snacks. The wedding party arrived, dinner was served, a nice video they had put together was played and then the dance started. After playing the part of a wall flower for a while as I continued to drink some beer, I eventually worked up the liquid courage needed to make my way out to the dance floor. I never looked back. I spent most of the rest of the night on the dance floor, only taking breaks to refresh my beer or find another shot. Needless to say, I had a blast. Shortly after midnight, I realized I had enough. Enough what you ask? Fun, drinks, dancing, everything. I was ready to call it a night. I said my goodbyes and stumbled my way to the cabin. It was like someone had flipped a switch. Here are a few pics from the night…

Final damage… 12 pack of Stella and a shot of Souther Comfort and about 5 or 6 shots of Jaeger Bombs. Yea… I was down for the count. And you knew you could have so much fun at a YMCA camp?

Next day, roll out of bed about 9am. Get some breakfast, say our goodbyes and head home. Roll into Madison about 11am ready to do nothing for the rest of the day. That didn’t happen though.

First, picked some of the ski teams 2006 DVDs. Next, headed to the ‘rents for some lunch and then got a call to go skiing… so I did. Hit the water at 230 in the cool brisk sunny afternoon air. Other than a few footing runs, I didn’t do much. It had only been 15 hours since the previous night and I was still a bit run down… Did get to see some good footing and some good falls. Here are some pics from the afternoon on the lake…

Imse did some backfooting… I have really good videos of his backfooting, and I was about to get a really good picture of him backfooting when this happened…

I have some videos of Imse backfooting and 7 doing his best break dancing imprecation. Both are really good. They’ll be coming soon.

Links to the Photo Albums:
Wedding in the Boondocks
Barefooting in the Fall

The first pictures are from the very beginning of October. I hit the water right after work on October 3rd to get some quality skiing time in.

John with a nice one foot

Me, smiling for the camera…

John’s buddy from New York getting a slalom run in…

John throwing up a wall of water

The sun setting in the bay…

A nice view of the capital

The next set of pictures is from the morning of the 20th… so this time it was a little colder. First a little background. Originally I lined up T-Bell to go out in the morning. I originally suggested 930 to 11am wanting to give it at least a little while to warm up. She asked to go earlier so she could go to the football game. I didn’t mind so we changed our plans to 830 to 10. Meanwhile, I’m realizing it is going to be a cold morning. Friday rolls around and she had a change of plans and asked if we could go out earlier. Once again I didn’t care, so we set the time from 8 to 930. It was going to be a frosty morning. Everything is set to go.

Much later that night, about 330am, my phone beeps at me. New message from Teri. I flip it open and read it through my half open eyes. It said something to the effect of “Do you know it is going to be 45 degrees in the morning? Still want to go?” I flipped the phone closed and went back to sleep.

7am rolls around and I crawl out of bed. As predicted, it was 45 degrees out, but also a bright sunny day. I’ll ski. Message back to Teri… game on! Then I gave Beau his wake up call. After breakfast, I head off to the lake. I ended being the only one that skied that morning… only one brave enough to hit the chilly water in the even colder air…

Yea…it’s a little colder out here, but I love doing this!

See the nice bright sunny day behind me?

Yes, it’s a bright sunny day out… gotta love it!

And now my face is completely frozen from the wind chill!

I’ll have another update a little latter this week recapping this past weekends adventures… a little trip to the north woods of Wisco for a wedding (the reception was blast… I think… as Bugsy put it “Drunk Wedge came out”) and then I hit the water today. I’ve got some killer pictures of the skiing today (some that are accidentally awesome!) and some good videos too! Check back latter this week.

Links:
After Work Skiing