Tag: Water Skiing

I Have A Problem Here…

Posted in bfooter.comLeave a comment

…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.

Visit bfooter.com… More pictures, more videos, more water skiing stuff.

Mad-City in the News (Kinda?)

Posted in bfooter.comLeave a comment

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”.
Visit bfooter.com… More pictures, more videos, more water skiing stuff.

Mad-City 2007 Nationals Highlight Clip

Posted in bfooter.comLeave a comment

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.

Visit bfooter.com… More pictures, more videos, more water skiing stuff.

Surfing Without the Rope

Posted in bfooter.comLeave a comment

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.

Visit bfooter.com… More pictures, more videos, more water skiing stuff.

Been Hitting the Ramp…

Posted in bfooter.comLeave a comment

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.

Visit bfooter.com… More pictures, more videos, more water skiing stuff.

Friday Night Surfing

Posted in bfooter.comLeave a comment

Friday at work was torturous. Hot, sunny, very little wind, very blue skies and my boat hooked up to my truck out in the parking lot. Makes for a very long day at work knowing what I’ll be doing at the end of the day.

The evening started off with Sandy, Imhof and myself hitting the bay before the crowd showed up for some good water and some good footing… I started of the night with some laps around the bay. Started off with a run nearly all the way around the bay and then a second run 3/4 of the way around the bay again before finally losing my grip on the handle. Here’s a shot from my one…

Laps around the bay at 40 MPH are nice… very nice in glass water!

Sandy was up next and pretty much did what I was doing… laps around the bay. She started off with a good run and then went out on the whip and was pretty much thrown into a tumble turn before she recovered to foot away.

Sandy’s run around the bay started off nice…

and then she was thrown into a tumble turn…

but footed away!

Imhof was up next. He did some shoe skiing. Here’s a picture of one of his starts, but mainly it is a cool shot of the blue sky.

Awesome picture of the skyline… Imhof is doing a deep water shoe ski start.

Imhof shoe skiing

And then we went to pick up most of the rest of the crew at the dock. Paul, Joey and Kirk were waiting for us. A couple runs later we picked up Ronée as well and now we had a full boat. And then we did a whole lot of surfing.

Kirk watched Paul go and then gave surfing his first try. Being a pretty experienced wake boarder, he popped right up and soon was throwing the rope back to the boat to really surf.

Kirk tossing the rope to the boat so he can really surf.

Kirk surfing!

Joey also hit the water on the surf board that night as well. And with the number of people in the boat, we had a nice wave to surf on.

Joey on the surf board.

We did find out the riding on the back of the boat does have it’s hazards… when you legs are dangling over the back of the boat resting on the ski platform, they are right where they can get hit with the surf board if it goes flying. Sandy learned this the hard way. We also learned the board can draw blood.

Sandy nursing her wound from watching wake surfing.

The minor flesh wound didn’t stop Sandy from re-learning how to surf. She said she had tried it a couple years ago, but hadn’t touched a board since. She was quickly up on top of the water.

Sandy getting up on the board

Sandy getting her surfing feet

She did fall a couple times and that is entertaining too!
Even she was having fun hitting the water in this picture… look at that smile!

Then Ronée took her turn on the board. She’d been out surfing last week and with all the people in the boat, she was able to quickly throw the rope to the boat and do some real surfing!

Ronée did some ropeless surfing!

But would occasionally need the rope back!

And we were sometimes just a second late with the rope!

It wasn’t all surfing though… well really it was, but those that were watching the surfing were having a lot of fun too. We had some ice cold beer on board…

Paul, Ronée and Sandy enjoying a beer on the back of the boat

Ronée and Sandy posing for the camera… this could be an ad for Miller Chill

Imhof took the water next. For a little guy, he managed to make a big splash when he hit the water. I had to be on my toes with the camera to keep it mostly dry.

Here he’s surfing and not really using the rope

Imhof on the board with Ronée and Sandy cheering him on!

And here he is making a big splash!

Then Paul took another turn on the board. He does the start a lot different from everybody else. Everyone else lays their feet on the board, rope comes tight as boat starts to move, board pops up on edge and then the boat takes off. Paul on the other hand just kind of stands on the board with the board under water, tells the boat to go and magically pops up out of the water. Here’s a picture of this in action…

Paul doing is unique start!

And here’s proof that Paul his human and does fall occasionally.

Paul’s asking for the rope back!

And gets it just in time!

Paul demonstrating that he doesn’t need a rope to get up on the surf board behind the boat.

Then I took to the board again. Surprisingly, when I’m not in the boat, the wake to surf on just isn’t as big, but I finally did manage to get comfortable enough to toss the rope to the boat.

Finally, surfing without a rope!

We did hire a helicopter to follow us around and they managed to get a few cool pictures of me!

Another picture from the helicopter!
In reality, Paul just held the camera in a precarious position and took some really good pictures…

Then we have what it the coolest group photo from the night… Everybody but me (because I’m in the water) managed to get in this picture taken using the mirror.

From left to right… Kirk, Paul, Imhof, Joey, Ronée and Sandy

Ronée and Joey

All three of us knew I was about to take a picture, but only two of us decided to actually smile and look at the camera…
not sure what Ronée was doing?

Kirk doing his “I’m a serious boat driver” look

Then the night came to a close as the sun finished setting. We managed to get a cool picture of the Madison skyline…

The State Capitol overlooking Lake Monona

And then as we headed back to the dock to end the evening on the water, I snapped this picture of the sunset.

Lake Monona Sunset

That wasn’t the end of the night though… I dropped off the boat at the house as others did there thing… about 945 I met up with Sandy, Ronée, Paul and Joey at the Stadium Bar for some food and beverages. Paul and Joey had finished their v-ball game while the rest of us were just plain hungry. Sandy and Ronée had ordered some sort of chicken pesto pizza while I ordered a side of cheese curds to share. The curds arrived we all ate them. Then the pizza came and the ladies did a nice job on it, nearly finishing the 16 inch pizza… they did have some help from Paul who stopped by to chat. I did try it, ate one tiny slice, and it was OK, but I think I like marinara sauce on my pizza. A couple drinks later and we all were headed home to make our 7am practice on Saturday morning.
Visit bfooter.com… More pictures, more videos, more water skiing stuff.

More Helis… My Head Won Out Over My Body

Posted in bfooter.comLeave a comment

Yes, don’t take the heading out of context… I know some of you have your heads in the gutter, lets just not go there.

Tonight, arriving at practice with warm weather, northwest winds and my ribs feeling about as good as they’ve felt lately, I decided to do some more helis even though I have some tender ribs. I did wear a life vest over my wetsuit for extra rib protection. So instead of resting my ribs a few more days, I hit the ramp.

As you can see, I manage to get all the way around, and unlike my earlier attempts, instead of reaching with my left foot to finish the rotation, my left foot completes the spin just fine, but my right leg gets lazy and doesn’t follow. Basically I need to keep my feet together, it’ll definately increase my odds of skiing away. I didn’t need the extra padding tonight, but I did tweak my ankle a little bit, but it’ll be fine tomorrow.

I have come a long way since my first heli attempt on July 9th, seventeen attempts ago.

Visit bfooter.com… More pictures, more videos, more water skiing stuff.

My Ribs are Staging a Revolt

Posted in bfooter.comLeave a comment

As I’ve mentioned before, I did some helis on the Thursday morning of State with the last one causing my ribs more than just a little pain. I didn’t stop doing helis then. I’ve been persistent on trying them again. I tried them again last Tuesday on the 24th. Only did one though as it ended in a painful fall that my ribs did not care for. For your enjoyment, here’s the video…

That also didn’t stop me… it just slowed me down. I did some more skiing since then, but finally took a couple more trips over the ramp tonight. First one was close again, just need to work on my landing. This video also shows the beautiful technique I use to wrap the rope.

This was my second and final attempt on the 30th. Didn’t finish my rotation, landed sideways and my ribs decided to stage a revolt. This one just doesn’t look good. It is bad from the beginning.

As I just mentioned, I did do some skiing this past weekend. The water was rough by the ramp, so I didn’t do any jumping. Here’s a few pictures from the skiing on Saturday…

Some footing in the bay… so calm. Bay has opened up enough where we can do laps again.


Ronée did some swivel toe turns…

Scotty wowed us with his mad Sky Ski Skillz

Ronée also did some Wake Surfing

I did some surfing too… still need the rope way too much

Here are the 2 successful surfers… Ronée and Myself in case you didn’t know

Here’s Scott trying out the swivel ski… love the fact that he’s wearing a helmet!
The Mad-City Swivelers have nothing to worry about!

Visit bfooter.com… More pictures, more videos, more water skiing stuff.

USA Water Ski Website

Posted in bfooter.comLeave a comment

Not sure if you’ve noticed or not, but the USA Water Ski website has undergone a drastic redesign. And they did a good job. There are now RSS feeds for the announcements that they post. Each sport has a section and their own individual RSS feed as well.

The Show Skiing section is pretty decent too. Underneath the About Show Skiing there are two links to some very good articles about show skiing. The first link Show Skiing Background provides a very detailed history of show skiing starting with its origins and the beginnings of the tournaments. The second link A Guide to Show Skiing tells about how teams compete and are judged/scored in tournaments. If you’re going to your first show ski tournament or if you’ve been competing in them for years and never really knew how the scoring systems worked, this article provides an excellent background on what you’ll see and how the system works. Both of these articles are worth a reading… be sure to check them out.

They also have a nice little article about Mad-City’s recent state tournament victory.

Congrats USA Water Ski on an excellent site redesign. It’s been needed for a long time. If anyone knows when the new site came up, let me know… I’m curious.

Visit bfooter.com… More pictures, more videos, more water skiing stuff.

State Tournament Weekend Recap

Posted in bfooter.comLeave a comment

Probably the funnest weekend year has come and gone…

It started early Thursday morning with a quick ski set on the water with T-Bell and Imhof. I hit the ramp working on my heli’s and it probably would have been better if I hadn’t. Three heli attempts, 3 falls, each one worse than the one before. Main problem was rotating only 3/4 of the way around. That dramatically increases the difficulty of skiing away when you land on your side. Last landing really hurt too! Still feeling today. Here’s are the videos… enjoy my agony!

First fall of the morning… this one just looks painful!

Second fall of the morning… this one stung!

Third and final fall of the morning… this one hurt.

After putting the boat away and eating lunch, I crammed my car full of stuff as I packed for the long weekend and then headed up to Rapids… Took me longer to pack than I expected and I arrived just a little bit latter than I wanted to. As I opened the car door, I heard the beginning of Joey’s swivel song so I hauled ass to the beach to catch her routine. Then I sat through a lot of other swivel ski routines. As they were finishing up, I stopped by to see what the jump team was planning on doing and that is when I was asked what their music was going to be. I was dumbfounded… I’ve never been involved in team jump before. We had a quick discussion and we settled on the song On the Edge by Dee. Problem was, it was an MP3 on my computer, only 3 minutes long and there were on the water in minutes.

I ran up to my car, popped the trunk, flipped on the laptop and started working my magic. 5 minutes later I had a 6 minute version of the song and it was being written to a CD. As I shut down the laptop, I heard the beginning of Ann’s swivel song and once again hauled ass to go watch her ski before I handed the CD to the sound guy.

Then I did the photos for team jump and based on what I’ve heard back so far, I took some good ones. After a little time in the beer tent, we headed to our respective hotels or cottages to get settled. I checked in, unloaded my stuff and then made my way to Lake Sherwood Lodge for a nightcap.

After enjoying a very good pizza and a Stella Artois beer with some friends, others began to arrive… and more and more drinking was done. Here are some pictures from the evening…


We are all much happier after our pizza… [Wedge, Bugsy, Joey and Paul]


This is after a couple more drinks for everyone… [Kirk, Kristen, Wedge and Nick]

You can find more pictures from Thursday night in this album.

I headed back to the hotel late, wnating to wake up early to catch some ski shows, but was just too tired and too sore so I slept in. I did make it down to the Beaver Dam show and was very impressed with it. I also took a ton of pictures of it which you can find here. Yes, they one D2, found their holy grail and are now a proud member of D1.

After the Must-Skis show I headed back to the hotel to wash up quickly and then we headed to the Heilman Cottage for the team meeting and something I’ve been waiting for all summer… the delicious turkey sandwiches. I managed to limit myself to 5 of them this year. After eating, we practiced intros, danced, did the fills and then headed back to the hotel… show time was quickly coming.

Morning came early… left the hotel a little before 7 and headed to the ski site… quick meeting, then I wondered… more dance and skit practices and then I wondered… ate some breakfast and then I wondered… just couldn’t sit still. Finally, show time was arriving so I grabbed my trusty laptop and headed to the sound area. After a quick setup and mike test, I cranked up the volume to 11 and started the pre-show dances. First up the guys and then the ladies.


Adam and Matt’s Preshow Dance


The Ladies’ Preshow Dance… much nicer to look at

Then it was show time… Things didn’t go as well as we wanted, but we still skied a good show and the show portion wasn’t matched by anyone that I saw. Backfoot line had some falls, OP made it up, but had some falls coming back to the beach, montage had falls (but both Bells stood up for the first time at the same time), one act show was money and girls ballet rocked as well. Jump 1 had some falls, star swivel was great. Big act also had some falls and then the jumpers nailed Jump 2. Ending pyramid made it up, slowly, and then had some falls on the way down. One man jump wasn’t all we hoped and big ballet blew up. Crowd was on their feet after the SNL and Evolution of Dance 2 fills. Here are some pics from the show, courtesy of Jim’s Photos.


Show Time!


Back foot line!


Opening Pyramid!


Adam and Matt


The Bell Fliers!


T-Bell pointing to the crowd!


Paul on the Wakeboard


One Act Show!!!
Shoe Skier, 4 High Pyramid, Doubles and a Pin Wheel!


Doing their thing!


Best Ballet in the State!


Adam the Parrot and Matt the Pirate


Super Sized Pin Wheel!


Adam and his hot friend Taryn


Triple Fours for the Ending Pyramid!


Catching the rope with the ski on the second 720 attempt…
Notice one foot point one way and the other the other… not good!


Guys Ballet


The Hot Pick!


The Crowd!

After the show was over, I stuck around and watched the Aqua Skiers (click here for their web album) and Badgerland (click for their web album) shows. Then after a little beer tent time, it was off to get some dinner and wash up for the annual bus tour around Rapids.

I enjoyed some quality Little Ceaser’s and then watch a little TV. About 915 I get a frantic call form T-Bell… when is the bus coming? how do I get there? will I have time to change? I managed to talk her through driving into Rapids to the hotel. She arrives as the bus does and opts to follow it to the first bar so, like any good water skiers, she can change out of the back of her car and then come to the bar. As usually, the bars were a blast. We started at Johnny’s and then headed to Gooses. Here are a couple picks from the night…



T-Bell and I


Sandy and I


Sandy and T-Bell


Kristen and I


Holly and I


Joey and I with my trusty Margarita on the Rocks…


Laura and I… surprisingly it took 3 attempts for this picture… I couldn’t keep my eyes open.

Saturday night ended way too late and Sunday morning came way too early… After going to bed at 3am, I woke up at 630am to try to reclaim my humanity and then head to the ski site to catch the RAJ show (pictures of that coming soon). Arrived with some time to kill so I ate breakfast but was very disappointed that they had run out of milk to go with the pancakes.. I guess the disappointment was evident in my face as my pancakes were discounted because of the lack of milk.

Watched the RAJ show. As usually, they have good skiing, but like our show, too many falls here and there throughout the show… didn’t really bring either pyramid through the show course completely (opener a 5-high but ended up being a big 4-high, closers lost a pyramid). Jump acts had a scattering of falls as well. The whole show just seemed flat to me. No real energy to it.

The RAJ Opening Barefoot Pyramids

My initial comparison between our show and theirs… skied about the same, but we had the better show for entertaining the audience throughout the entire show. I took a few pictures of their show and you can find them here.

Then it was the long wait till awards… watched a few shows on off, but was really just to anxious to find out what happened.

Finally, the awards arrived. First off, congrats to the Beaverland Must-Skis on their repeat as D2 Champions. Welcome to D1. The show you skied would probably put you near the top 5 in my opinion.

As you’ve heard by now, Mad-City took 1st and also won best ballet, best jump act, best boat drivers, best female skier (Kristen Heilman) and best audio. It was a hard couple weeks before state, but it paid off. Now on to Nationals!

Matt, Adam and I… Best Audio Presentation!

After the awards we reconvened at the Lake Sherwood Lodge again. More pizza, more beers and many good times.. Poof pants, One Act ‘fo Show, watching the video, chaffing, cheese curd discussions and what they look like when they leave the body… fun in the little blue rooms, or green rooms as they were this weekend. I laughed for a long time that night before finally heading home at 1215am. Called Sandy at 2 to let her know I made it home safe and talked to a very drunk person who was laughing her ass off too. Unpacked, slept and slept some more…

Links to Web Albums mentioned…
Thursday at State
Beaverland Must-Ski Show
Mad-City Ski Team Show [Jim’s Photos Pictures]
Badgerland Ski Show
Wisconsin Rapids Aqua Skiers Show
The Bus Trip
Janesville Rock Aqua Jays Show
Awards

Watch for updates to this post… I have more pictures to post from ski shows and I likely forgot something that I wanted to include. I’ll put a comment down here indicating when I update it.

[Updated 1046pm on 7/25 – Added albums for Aqua Skiers and RAJ, Added RAJ Barefoot Pyramid Picture]

Visit bfooter.com… More pictures, more videos, more water skiing stuff.