Honestly,

this shit has got to stop. Even murphy's law couldn't help the weather (see previous post.)up here.








A picture is worth a thousand(or more)expletives.

I will be personally...

responsible for pulling the Midwest out of this cold snap. How, you ask? Simply by being sidelined with engine trouble. Accessto a temporarily-out-of-comission boat is the best way to guarantee perfect skiing conditions

This is from dictionary.com

Murphy's Law
–noun the facetious proposition that if something can go wrong, it will.

Also called Murphy's First Law.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Origin: Americanism; after a fictitious Murphy, allegedly the name of a bungling mechanic in U.S. Navy educational cartoons of the 1950s]
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.


Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.




Got Frost Plugs?


Seriously, got any? The venerable (i.e. POS) Moomba popped one yesterday, , thwarting my moment of defiance to to the recent midwest chill.

Enjoy the impending 80s with sunshine folks.

misery loves company....

but skiers hate cold weather in the spring. Lady April has flogged the wet-set with straps of ice, cold and snow. Here's a sampling of angst from a thread I started on Skifly.com


nohypothermia
Registered User
Posts: 115
(4/5/07 11:28 am)
Reply midwest "spring" sucks
anybody else in the midwest feel like they are geting the shaft from mother nature? I got out to the lake twice before april 1st, and now the weather is in the twenties.


DaveRobbins
Registered User
Posts: 109
(4/5/07 11:31 am)
Reply SO
This year we had the latest lake freeze ever, but we still have a foot of ice and we got a foot of snow last night.

At least the Black Bears are going to the Frozen Four.
Michigan skiing
Unregistered User
(4/5/07 12:16 pm)
Reply Midwest spring
We've been skiing for two weeks. Now it looks like we won't touch the water for another two weeks. 1-2 inches of snow on the ground. THIS SUCKS!


steveaskier
Registered User
Posts: 255
(4/5/07 1:24 pm)
Reply we're in same boat
In Ohio, we went from 80 degrees tuesday to mid twenties and snow wednesday.
Steve B.

GREG T
Registered User
Posts: 143
(4/5/07 2:13 pm)
Reply Re: midwest "spring" sucks
Stop Complianing, we got 13" of snow today !! We won't be sking here in Maine for a month and a half.

nohypothermia
Registered User
Posts: 116
(4/5/07 2:22 pm)
Reply the bright side
at least you can eat lobster while waiting for the big thaw. there isn't even any corn in iowa right now.

Boilerskier
Registered User
Posts: 165
(4/5/07 2:27 pm)
Reply Mother Nature you are cruel

Rykert -

I am dying. Last monday I was all pumped to pop the boat in. Now, I am going back and finding my winter clothes again. What a terrible tease.

Ham Wallace
Registered User
Posts: 677
(4/6/07 5:37 am)
Reply WaterSkiers for Global Warming
The Groundhawg was on our side, we have had an early spring with record high temps. Our water is usually 62 degrees on April 1. It was 78. A dream come true. Feeling just about in shape enough to take 2 sets, the frige door was opened. We went from 83 degree days to br-r-r-r-r. I guess I better re-winterize the boat. 24 degrees tonight. Looks like record April low temps.

-------(Ham hails from the great state of Tennesse. As you can see, this is not a regional issue)---------
By the way, I hear that he's an (whisper) Alabama (return to normal voice) fan.

steveaskier
Registered User
Posts: 256
(4/6/07 8:29 am)
Reply enough is enough
5 more inches of snow on the car friday morning. Hopefully, water will warm up by June.

Steve B.
DaveRobbins
Registered User
Posts: 110
(4/6/07 11:07 am)
Reply Global warming, my eye !
Global warming, my eye !

Those of you that have new boats with cats in the exhausts take them out - We're freezing.

It was so cold this morning in Maine that when I took my two dogs out, their pee froze before it hit the ground !


TournamentWaterSki
Registered User
Posts: 30
(4/6/07 11:18 am)
Reply Not too bad in California
We feel for you guys in the midwest and east where it is still snowing. It's rough when you want to start skiing and can't.

Here in Sacramento, it was 81 yesterday and we've been skiing for a month. Don't even need the wetsuit anymore.


That was the EZ board equivalent of humming "nah-nah nah-nah nah-naaaahhhhh."


Ah, springtime

I even checked with my weather spotter in south Louisiana (my mom) and she told me that that it the temp dropped to 30 degrees 30 miles north of New Orleans.

This is insane.
Hey Tournamentwaterski: how about you and your skiing buddies get a few giant fans in Saremento, point them to the east, and blow some warm air my way? desperrate times call for desperate measures.
I'll even plug your website
tournament waterski

If the weather does not change soon, we might lose a member of the ski blog community, asthey are trapped in an ice flow.


No telling what could happen if a spring thaw does not free their craft in the next few days

Now the bad News

Lakerykert APB!!!!!

Attention, all skiers who window shop for ski equipment on the web!!!

These are two posts taken from the skifly gossip board on skifly.com
(your fearless blog moderator is nohypothermia)

nohypothermia Registered UserPosts: 113(3/26/07 6:07 pm)Reply
STOLEN JUMPERS!!!!!
Earlier this afternoon (3/26) women's 1 and University of Iowa skier Leah Timmerman had her jumpers stolen at coralville lake in North Liberty, Iowa. The jumpers are connelly's either 82" or 84" the older graphics. If you see any jumpers like thse on ebay or other sites please email her at
leah - timmerman @ uiowa. edu (remove spaces)


Leah Registered UserPosts: 1(3/26/07 10:45 pm)Reply
thanks
Yes, thank you so much Rykert! They are 84" Connelly HC 2000, so if anyone sees a pair that fits this description please contact me!! also my jump suit (womens intensity, black and purple, size 12) and masterline sling, size medium, were stolen, so you might see everything in a package deal. Thank you!



Also, If you are in the Iowa City/Cedar Rapids area and happen to see a Jeep Grand Cherokee with a white "Team Daiwa" decal on the rear windshield, Please jot down the Tag # and contact Leah at the above email address. The owner of that vehicle was the lsat person seen at the Mehaffey Bridge boat ramp where the skis and equipment were stolen

Creaky Rowboat and Water on the Brain, could you please post a copy of this on your blogs inorder to get the word out.

First, the good news...

For the first time I began skiing in the Midwest, I got in the water before April 1st. [did I beat you, Water on the Brain?]

I rode my new jumpers. The word from the boat crew was that I was caught off-guard by the accelleration of the skis on my first cut. Apparently, It was an "oh shit" expression. The boat crew's observation matched my own feelings at the time.



Sorry, no pics. we went out at the last minute and I didn't have a camera with me. My apologies to my millions of readers (Ok, that's a stretch). You'll just have to imagine some guy riding a new pair of Goodmans behind a POS '97 Moomba on a choppy public lake that was full of floating, dead, rotten fish

Happiness is...

a bead of sweat. The 40 -degree barrier has been shattered today. Maybe that groundhog isn't so damn crazy after all.


He's not crazy, he's just pissed that there's still snow on the ground.

I'm gonna go batshit crazy if spring doesn't get here soon.

Several years ago...

I read one of the funniest books I had ever read in my life: Never Sniff a Gift Fish
by Partick F. McManus .



The book is collection of short stories recounting the goofy missteps that can foul up a relaxing day spent in the woods with a rod or a gun. McManus begins one of the stories with a line that made me laugh out loud. Only now, after two years of marriage, do I realize its profundity. It goes something like this: Hunting and fishing are expensive hobbies because they require furs, fancy jewelry and other high end equipment (liberal paraphrasing).

Now I know what he was talking about. Since last fall, I have been contemplating buying a new pair of jumpers, as my old ones are about 7 years old. Every time the conversation has come up, my remarks have been met with eye rolling and "suggestions" of postponement.

For the last several months, Libby has wanted to change the setting for her engagement diamond. She has talked about it for months, but never really seemed serious about it until about three weeks ago, when she closed the deal at a jewelry store in Des Moines. I think it will look something like this :


Maybe a different color, or size or something like that, I'm not all that sure.

You know what they say, one good turn deserves another. That ring is an unambiguous green light to buy a new pair of jumpers.


About a week ago, I spotted a deal on a lightly used pair of Goodman Llewellyn Pros, so I (alert the pun police) jumped at the chance.

and here they are, ready for a new home.



Has anyone seen the UPS man yet?

Gratuitous...

trick skiing footage. This is Nicholas Leforestier's 12,400 pt world record.

M. Leforestier, vous etes le meilleur de figures. Pardonnez, mais il est trop difficile de mettre les accents avec cet ordinateur.
(a minor in French has to be good for something)




Now, if only the elusive Kreuger 243' vid could be unearthed. It must be on a hard drive somewhere. We have this thing called video jump, for Chirst's sake. I seriously doubt someone at the site of the record, saw the jump footage and thought "Ehhhh, I'll just erase this 243-foot jump from my hard drive to free up disk space for Boys' 1 slalom." Or, worse yet, the jump was immortalized on VHS, only to be overdubbed by a dumbass for a can't-miss American Idol retrospective.

Any SAC alumnus...

will see this and flash a nostalgic smile.

This just in...

YouTube has a waterfront lot on Lakerykert.
Right now, the rest of the world is welcoming me to 2003


Boats are for suckers



"Major equipment purchases and marital bliss"* has been postponed until next time.

*lower case except for the first word: That's APA format-- for all you eggheads out there. I guess the better part of a decade of college taught me,uh, something.

Screw winter, I'll do some tricking!!

The uber-angst of winter has brought forth a sliver of inspiration: Instead of longing for time on the water, I can practice tricks with out the normal hazards of floating ice and less-than-desirable core temperatures. I think I have put together a cheap, effective dryland tricks simulator.

Here are the pieces:
a rubber floormat, a standard trick handle, and a 16" wobble board . The wobble board works really well. Because it's unstable in every direction, I have to use perfect form to execute the simplest tricks. A rubber floormat allows the board to spin but keeps the board form being constantly pulled forward by the resistance tubing.



Speaking of tubing, the bungee cords were a failure. I found something better, SPRI resistance tubes . The different colors have different resistance. I use the hardest resistance(purple) for practicing basic surface turns, the next lowest (blue) for practicing the LB/LF sequence, and a low resistance (red) for practicing a RTB. My plan is to perfect my form with low resistance, and to move up to purple by the time I'm ready to trick for real.




This is my footing for practicing toe tricks and stepovers.


This is how I stand on the board for hand practice


The combination of the wobble board and the tubing gives a realistic simulation except for one problem: when slack rope is created while skiing, there is a hard jerk on the rope. This cannot happen with resistance tubing. Unfortunately, that's the best I can do. I don't have access to a rope and pulley that is set at a height similar to that of a pylon. The ideal hookup would be a cable crossover machine with height adjustment. My gym doesn't have one of those.

If anybody out there has their own dryland rig, I'd love to hear from you, to find out what works and what doesn't.

NEXT: major equipment purchases and marital bliss

The Lakerykert Hiatus...

is, to quote (out of context) ol' dead-eye Dick Cheney, "in its last throes."




Coming soon:


an inexpensive dry-land tricks simulator

it's still in experimental stages, but shows promise for SURFACE hands and toes.

*message to the denizens of the rowboat: it's a hiatus, I have not been lazy. Hiati (is that the plural?) are productive

Whoops...

After recently announcing a third member of waterski blogland,I stonewalled him with a bad link.

Check out Water on the Brain right here

My bad

And then there were...

three.

Look out blogosphere, there are three players in the world of waterski blogs now.

I would like to pull Ewedgie up to the roomy confines of ski blog land.

Yeah, I couldn't resist the pun. Check out the water on his brain right here


Hey Rowboat, show this man some love with a link!

Looks like those eggheads in research were asleep at the wheel.

just a thought...

According to only one (of many) blogrings ,
over 1000 active knitting blogs exist in cyberspace.

Only 2 waterski blogs fight for bandwidth.



RECAP:

That's 1000+



to 2

Kinda sad

Not just for warmth...

peeing in your jumpsuit is actually good for you.

While orienting as an orthopedic nurse, I learned this tidbit form an expert on pelvic fractures. Basically, having an empty bladder, at the moment of a pelvic fracture, reduced the chance of internal injury because of the bladder's reduced size in its nondistended state. That means less bladder to hit with a chunk of misplaced pelvis. Less bladder space means less displacement of colon, and other assorted anatomical injury risks when the pelvic cavity isn't crowded by the remnants of your last 7 red bulls. Speaking of colons,the famous PJD is not a bad idea either. Don't be full of crap unless you are bragging about your best distance to the ditzy, yet busty waitress at your nearest lakeside Hooter's.

Note: I wish I had the Rowboat's research team working for me. If that were the case, I would have have pictures of someone peeing, empty red bull cans, a jumper, a hooters girl, and a bottle of milk of magnesia to go with my little announcement

So do yourself a favor and pee in your jumpsuit. Just wait until you get into the water.

What a..

buzzkiller, taking ramps out of a lake in 45 degrees and a 25 mph wind.
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?

I am my own worst critic...

part 4 of 4.

Here, I conclude with another substandard attempt at what is an inconsistent trick for me, the W5B.

Take a looky-see.


Apparently, I start all my tricks in the right position


Good, compressing with the legs while keeping the back straight.


This series should be titled "the perils of preturning." I am ready to explode off the, uh, middle, of the wake. Once again, I've been impatient in my edge to the wake.


I have a nice spin going here, but look at where I am in relation to the wake. I am only a few inches away, laterally, from where I was preparing for takeoff in picture three. This is an example of solid technique in the wrong spot.


The preturn has caused me to spin into excessive slack rope. Because I did not use maximum wake height and rope load, I've pulled my hips inward with the handle pass, but I lacked the up and out direction that comes with using all of the wake. As a result, I don't get all the way around in the air. Even though I know I am sliding the trick, I try to spin the last 180 degrees anyway. Thanks to landing in slack, my ski is sinking as I spin. So it acts like a big scoop in the...



That fall stung.

I am my own worst critic...

part 3 of 4.

W5F

Many of the same flaws in my wrapped WO technique show up in this trick. Observe.


As usual, I am in good position at the start.


Here's where the problems begin. I have reduced, not increased my edge and I am beginning to bend over slightly at the waist. This is the opposite of what I should be doing. I should be increasing my edge as I come into the top of the wake, and keeping an upright upper body.


As was the case with the WO, my axis is good, but I am in the wrong spot. Once again, I am mistaking the feeling of reduced rope tension from the flat ski for the feeling of the edged ski releasing off the top of the wake.


I do not finish the rotation in the air, I simply slide down the wake. The lack of direction at the beginning of the spin causes the slack rope, which in turn cause me to finish the (no credit) trick with poor body position.


I get back into tricking position only after a second or two of repositioning myself, and waiting for the rope to come tight. I'm still wasting time between tricks with poor execution.

The series concludes tomorrow with a W5B.

Lakerykert news flash!!!!!!!!

I am no longer an unemployed ski bum. I am now an employed ski bum.

Here's an action (figure) shot.