Chapter 1: Boating History

I’d been trying to convince my parents to take me waterskiing all summer but with little success. In fact, if it hadn’t been for a brief lucky break while out in California I wouldn’t have been up on a ski yet this year! Even then I’d only gotten to go out once but at the time there were more interesting things to enjoy, to say the least. It seemed each time we planned to go out for the weekend either the weather sucked, my dad had to work, or my Aunt Linda the realtor had some big open house to deal with. Finally it looked as if the stars had aligned. Although the weather forecast for Saturday was sort of iffy, Sunday promised to be a great day, maybe a little windy but I could live with it. Besides, even if we were stuck on shore I was sure I would find plenty to keep myself busy.

As a general rule, when it comes to sports I generally can be classified as a complete klutz. Anything involving striking a moving object with another object - be it tennis, softball, or even badminton, has always seemed to be simply beyond my abilities. In fact, I can vividly remember coming home and crying on my mother’s shoulders one day when my jerk of a PE teacher declared in front of the entire class I was the worst tennis player he’d ever seen! Yet for all my failures in virtually anything athletic, there is one thing I CAN do better than most people - water-ski. Maybe it’s because my parents had me out on the water almost as soon as I could walk, but whatever the reason I LOVE to water-ski, with emphasis on WATER. For some reason my water-borne skills don’t translate to snow, but that’s another story ... SO in these days where most people just use tubes and water-boards, I love to get up on my slalom ski and show off as I throw out a giant rooster tale in front of a bunch of hot guys on another boat or even on shore. It also doesn’t hurt it’s a sport where I can legally get away with wearing next to nothing (or even nothing in the right situations).