Will I ski tomorrow?

Monday August 9, 2010

Got up at 6 am this morning; got some work done and wrote out my thought and experiences for the past two days. Went downstairs for breakfast, then to the site to just hang; got there about 9 am and stayed till about 10:30 pm. It’s amazing how fast time can fly when you do NOTHING at a barefoot tournament! I miss my ski buddies from Florida…

Today was interesting for a few reasons, the water was smooth (glass) most or the day so the organizers decided to run the Jump event all day to take advantage of the calm water. Jumping is the most dangerous event and the skiers really need smooth water so that they don’t fall before the jump and get killed (a friend of mine died jumping…); I retired from jumping last year at the age of 58, so no worries.

There are two lakes, Slalom and Tricks for Groups D, C and many B events took place on Lake 2. The problem is that the large video screen located on lake 1 where the stands are showed primary the jump event, which was taking place right in front of us. Many parents and family members were upset because they could not see the action on Lake 2, so I visited the ‘video guy’ and explained, he was Germany, I really didn’t get anywhere. As other’s complained to me, I directed them to the ‘video guy’ and that didn’t make a difference; but at the end of the day, much of events on Lake 2 were showed on the large video display on Lake 1.

The most exciting part of the day was the Women Open A jump event, Ashleigh Stebbeings set a new World Record of 20.7M (67.9 ft). I took some great photos of her jump pass, I mean great!

Then after Ashleigh skied, we were done for the day and it was off to the German Bar-B-Q, but of course no Bar-B-Q sauce. We all had a great time and they auction of items as a fun raiser; I kept waiting until he was “Going once, Going twice,” then I would raise my hand and bid. It drove the bidders crazy and the crowd loved it; of course it pushed up the bid price quite a bit. I didn’t buy that much, but did have a lot of fun.

Because of the change of schedule to accommodate the Jump event, all other event orders were shuffled, the bad part is that it’s almost midnight so I have NO CLUE when I ski tomorrow; most likely it will be in the afternoon.

I’m still quite relaxed and confident that I’ll make my starts and ski well, no matter the weather and my that my arms will be fine, we’ll see how it goes. Hopefully pray I don’t get too confident and cocky and that I stay focused.

I uploaded a bunch of photos at http://picasaweb.google.com/103472112604379439617/WorldBarefootChampionships2010Germany#. I don’t know if there is a special login for you to see the photos. Let me know if you can see and your thoughts.