By now, everyone has that damn water skiing squirrel. I won’t even mention him by name. You search for water skiing on the net, you find the squirrel. He is every where! Well, I found a video that is way better than that squirrel that goes around the baby pool. I found MONKEYS!!! Check this out…
Over at BarefootCentral.com they have an updated recap covering all of the Mad-City Dual from the beginning of June. Besides the article, they have up some videos of trash talking and a video of the skiing… if you watch the video of the skiing about 28 seconds in you’ll see Bugs & I. I’m on the left doing a wobbly step and then they cut to the end of the run and me face planting.
If you get a chance, go check it out.
This past weekend I competed in the Mad-City Dual. It is a small figure 8 barefoot tournament held in Monona Bay in Madison. I believe there was approximately 30 footers in the tournament. For those that don’t know, here is a brief description of a figure 8 tournament. Two footers are behind the boat going at the same time, the boat drives in a figure 8 pattern. What that means is as the boat goes around it crosses it’s own wake each time it crosses the middle of the eight. The two footers continue until 1 falls and then the other wins.
The bay was, as usually, very weedy. Here are some pics showing just how nasty it was.
Of all the people in the tournament, my first run was against Bugsy. Neither one of us had designs of winning the tournament, but we both wanted to put on respectable shows. I’ve been making my slalom starts this year so far (all 3 of them) but opted to go out on two skis and no worries about the start. My step was clean and since Bugsy won the coin toss and picked the outside for the first corner, I had the inside. I held the corner nicely and then make it through the “chop” in the middle of the eight. Second corner arrives and just as we’re coming out of the corner, somehow my inside foot catches and my run comes to end. Going in, I had three goals… make it around the first corner, make it through the middle and then finish an eight. 2 out of 3 on the first run. Pretty good even though I had lost. Our run had been the longest run so far and held for a few more runs which made me feel good even though I had lost.
I did get a kick out of a comment I received after my run. It went something like… “It takes a lot of guts to go out there on two skis and then you put on a good show.”
My second run didn’t go so well. Missed my step. Needless to say I was a little pissed off about that. I hadn’t missed a step in good water in a long time. My day was done.
Bugsy did pretty well in the tournament. T-Bell was happy she made it through the first set of rollers once. Beau kicked some ass, knocking off some big names and skied for quite a while on Saturday.
At the end of the day, it came down to a 52 year old vs a 50 year old for the championship. Mike Netzer, the 52 year old won. Here’s a video of the final run.
After the tourney and grabbing some dinnner I’d eat, I headed downtown to meet up with a bunch of friends for dinner at Edo’s to celebrate Sandy’s birthday. They serve sushi. I don’t do sushi so that’s why I ate ahead of time. After dinner, we headed to the terrace and had some more beers and then to Brokah’s on the square for more drinks. Everyone had a good time and I was glad I wasn’t driving.
One of my Google searches found the following video out on YouTube. Some people did a promo video for the Mad-City Ski Team in 2003 which is the year our theme was The Resurrection and finished 2nd at Nationals. OK, it really isnt’ that old, but it’s amazing how much the ski team has changed in 4 years. Enjoy!
A while back, the Mad-City Ski Team, along with the Beaverland Must-Skis, Badgerland and Wisconsin Rapids Aqua Skiers, put together the largest human pyramid ever behind one ski boat powered by 3 Evinrude Motors. I previously posted a couple pictures, now here is the video…
http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=1790004384873565927&hl=en
World Record Pyramid
If you can get past Barefoot Central‘s incredible old school website layout (i.e. borderline unreadable), you can find some really good footing videos. For one of the better ones, go to this page and click on the link labeled “Best Start on Footstock History” (wording of that is kinda funny, but still watch the video.)
To think the guy came all the way from Australia and then did that. Long trip for nothing.
If you jump on over to Evinrude’s website, on their main page they have a little flash video that at the end, if you watch closely, shows the world record pyramid being pulled off the dock and then a shot of Jerry Wesner (Mad-City Ski Team’s triple rig driver) showing some love to the engines.
I browsed through some more of their website, watching some testimonial and hole shot videos, but didn’t see any other pyramid shots.
Still waiting to stumble on the infomercial on TV, but haven’t seen it yet. I did find this clip, which I’m guessing came from the infomercial on YouTube though.
And if you want to read an interesting discussion about outboard motors, go here. Just some of the poster’s pictures make it worth while. Although they do mention the infomercial, they don’t mention the show skiing portion of it. Too bad.
I posted about Soul, a barefooting movie a while back. Well here is a water skiing movie called The Secret Spot. The trailer looks pretty slick.
Basically, they took a camera crew down to a spot on some isolated river, brought some skiers, footers, wakeboarders, and hydrofoilers and let them tear it up in front of the cameras on the glass calm water. You can find the list of all the athletes in the movie over at IMDB.
Here’s the trailer.
Between Badger games today, I started browsing the Barefoot Central website and came across this video. It shows some pretty slick barefoot endurance racing video clips set to Thunderstruck by AC/DC.
What is barefoot endurance racing? It is a relay race, each footer goes as long as they can until they are exhausted or fall. The boat goes back to pick them up and another footer jumps in and the boat takes off. There is usually some sort of set distance, say 20 miles that the racers have to go. First team done, wins.
A popular race is the Dam to Dam race put on by the Austin Barefoot Ski Club in Austin, Texas. Here’s a clip of that one.
Links:
Barefoot Central
NASCAR on the Water Video
Austin Barefoot Ski Club
Dam to Dam Video
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.
Mad-City Wedge 