Monday, September 11, 2006

Big plans soaked...

by rain. Easily, the wettest damn tournament I've ever skied in was this past weekend. I (and everyone else at the lake) Shivered as the incessant rain gradually soaked through their rain covers.

The weather was gorgeous on Friday afternoon when I left my apartment
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It was still nice on Friday night. What a great weekend to camp out at a tournament!
tent row

I had plans to sit out on the ramp to get both jump and slalom pictures, but it rained too damn much the rest of the weekend.

The Waterhawk Fall tournament reminded me of a collegiate tournament, from lots of "Triple Splat" plop-overs (to borrow a phrase from Clint), to overhearing a couple in "passionate embrace" (to borrow a cheesy synonym)in the tent across from mine. By the way, the girl(I don't know who) did not sound like she enjoyed the experience. Think whiny 6 year-old with a high fever, and that's about what she sounded like.
But enough about unfortunate hookups. A large contingent from the Iowa, Iowa State, And Wisconsinwater ski teams made the trip. While Iowa State sorely lacks the numbers for a competitive women's team, Both Iowa (Although I can't vouch for Wisconsin, the vast majority of males in the Iowa ski club are strictly wakeboarders, or 30 year old eligibility-long-gone-from-undergraduate-days three-eventers)and Wisconsin seem to lack the numbers to field a competitive men's team.

Speaking of the Iowa women's team, a girl took her first ride on a pair of trick skis at the tournament (I think Heidi was her name) and could not get her feet out of the bindings. Flailing helplessly, she could not swim to shore. The chaos that followed lowered the bar for open-water rescue.
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Sorry about the picture orientation. I can't get Flickr to rotate it.

Libby managed to shoot a few jump pics before it rained.
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I can't tell who that is, but it was a nice jump

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Me, I think. None of my performances were worth the bandwith to mention them.

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Clint, probably

Speaking of Libby, I've tried to talk her into camping out with me at a tournament all summer. She finally agreed to camp out on Saturday night. Libby was treated to a night of good fireworks with bad music (I swear I heard Toby Keith), cold temperatures, a rain-soaked blanket, a wet tent floor, a perculating drip on her head from the tent roof, and continued heavy rain the next morning. I don't understand why she left to go home at 8 am on Sunday morning.
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Libby's ski tournament chair, it sat empty all day Sunday, except for the gallon of rainwater that collected inside it.

that's all I have for now. I need a camera with more zoom and more water-resistance.

4 comments:

Libby said...

I used to think that the reason I hated camping was the bugs and the heat. However, that list has since been expanded to include everything about nature including cold and rain. I'm still not dry. (And 36+ hours later it is still raining - or at least threatening.)

Anonymous said...

Did you listen to the weatherman before leaving?
Surely, he would have predicted the weekend soaker.
I hope this experience hasn't dampened Libby's enthusiasm for camping.

Rykert said...

Yeah, but you can never trust those weathermen. I'm comvinced they just spin the wheel o' weather(maybe they have a different one for each season) and the slice that the clicker lands upon is the forecast for the day. Spin 7 times and you've an extended forecast. Land on bankrupt, and you've got the apocalypse.

Libby said...

I would just like to say, that I indeed told Rykert that it was supposed to rain. He assured me that the tent performed well in the rain, and we would be fine. Seriously. He said that I was just looking for an excuse.