Water Skiing CRASH

Alek rips it up on the water

Water Skiing on Grand Lake in 2011

I WISH I could water ski like this!

Yes, Jon's elbow is scraping the water
He calls this "listening to the fish" ;-)

As obvious from the pictures above, my friend Jon Wade is a hot water skier (actually, I don't think there is any sport that he does not excel in) and he was also nice enough to teach me barefoot skiing and barefootskiing. This was a total kick ... except my butt was black/blue for two weeks afterwards! ;-) So then we went back to waterskiing ... and I decided to try to "be like Jon" and as you can see in this picture, I think I was able to "lay it down" about as horizonal as he can.

Water Skiing CRASH!

Pictures were shot with a Canon 1D Mark II at 8 frames/second. And just in case that isn't enough for you, here's an actual 800X600 pixel crop from the original of the water skiing crash above. There was some "damage" from this crash - most noteable was I got smacked pretty hard on my upper right chest - I thought that might have been the ski; but in looking at the pictures, I just slammed (and bounced) into the water at that spot. Even though I was wearing a life vest, I'm pretty sure I ended up with a bruised rib on the right side as I had most of those symptoms. Also a bit of bruising/swelling on the left foot as the ski was ripped off. And finally, my right contact lens rolled to the back of my eye - when I got home, I had my wife look around for it (you use a flashlight), but we didn't see it ... so I didn't think anything of it until two days later when I felt it again and this time she successfully fished it out! ;-)

Animated GIF of the water skiing crash

P.S. A few pictures from Brass Key's fun Lake Party & BBQ in 2009