Well, taking a ramp out of a lake in any weather is a buzzkiller. I guess the whole ordeal wold suck worse on a 90 gegree day with no wind. At least if it's cold you won't feel like skiing, as much.
It helps to have one of these when you are pulling jump ramps out of the lake.
This is our distance ramp. It came out of the water in 15 minutes
the hitch is a much simpler, much more effective design than that of the show ski ramp. which took 2 hours to get out of the water.
Anyway, after putting the first ramp on shore, we had to unlatch the small floating docks from the large dock and stack them for the winter. This was a good forty-five minutes of sitting in the water trying to unbind cotter pins from steel latches that bind from the uneven flotation. Loads of fun. Luckily, I didn't lose a finger.
Now, back to the show jump. It was at the far end of the lake. We had to push it 2000 feet to the dock into the wind, with a 25-horse jonboat. That accounts for part of the two hours
By the way, I was the designated swimmer for the afternoon. That was made tolerable by the drysuit and neoprene booties. It took me about two hours to lose feeling in my feet. It would have taken about two seconds with bare feet, even with a drysuit.
Solid as though it may look, the hitch in the show ski ramp is angled poorly to set onto a trailer hitch. We were forced to improvise, putting the front of the tractor down the boat ramp, and bolting the hitch through a hole in the loader. This created a precarious situation. On several attempts, as Disco tried to back the ramp out of the water, the tractor's rear wheels came off the ground.
Two hours later, we are left with a sight that brings a jumper to tears.
Sniff, sniff, even the slalom course is out too.
How many days until spring 07?
1 comment:
Those are some pretty sweet aqua socks you got going on there man!!
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