When I was in high school, my best friend’s family had a ski boat and we did quite a bit of skiing in the summers. Over the years I became a passable slalom skier, and I always enjoyed skimming across the water on a plank just wider than my feet.
The Purdy's fancy-pants ski boat.
Since that time I haven’t had access or opportunity to try any aqua-power sports, until this last week. Suddenly all kinds of opportunities are presenting themselves, mostly wake-boarding (which is fun, by the way) but all of a sudden there is a new sport on the scene: Wake Surfing. I have tried real surfing a few times, with only moderate success… the waves are not long enough for a novice to really ‘get it’ so mostly it involves paddling like mad and falling off the board and getting sand all up everywhere. Now there is an option. If you keep the boat trim up, and go slow, and get all your friends on one side of the boat, it makes a wave big enough to surf. Zip over to YouTube to check out some wake surfing videos.
For now, the only reason I’m telling you this is because we spent a weekend out at our friends the Purdys campsite on Koocanusa Reservoir and they introduced me to this wondrous pass-time. In the morning I had a few minutes to draw their fancy ski-boat moored in the cove.
michael
