Okay, so some of you know that it’s my brother that’s the inspiration for a lot of Hubris cartoons. He’s more outdoorsy than I am, but he can’t draw for beans. So when I get a chance to hang out with him, there’s usually a good chance that something entertaining is going to happen, and I’ll be the only one with the kind of art skills to exploit it mercilessly.
Northern Wisconsin, on a lovely lake surrounded by all manner of cabins and summer homes and all, he and his brother-in-law decided to find out if you could stand on a SUP and be towed behind a motorboat. They were kind enough to give me a turn at it.
The last time I’d tried to stand on anything being towed behind a boat was nearly forty years before. And before I started kayaking much, I was insanely creeped out by large bodies of water (or, more accurately, by what my imagination filled those bodies of water with). That time all those years ago, I learned to faceplant expertly, but I did not learn to ski.
So the chances that I’d do something worth photographing this time seemed pretty high. I figured I could knock out a tooth or something clever.
As it was, my brother said, “Remember to lean back”, which I also recalled being told when I was twelve, so I leaned back.
He didn’t say to wait for the slack to leave the rope, so I hadda climb back on the damned board. Fine.
I stood up. I leaned back at the appropriate time, and I skied along behind a boat on a SUP. I’m told we didn’t go over about 14 miles an hour. When you’re ON the board, though, and have no idea how long you might be there, 14 miles an hour feels pretty good.
I should have put more effort into crossing the wake, and making a show of leaving the board, but that’s what my brother and Doug were for.
For now, you have to look at photos of me not flying off a SUP and into that nest of Cottonmouths they spooked me with tales of back on that lake in 1977.
Then you can look at photos of my brother doing a wildly entertaining dismount.
Nice, right? Look at that form… that style… that weirdly pained expression on my face.
Now, watch this action… My wife (the photographer on this trip) had worked out with Jeff that he would ‘try to get horizontal before he struck the water’.
And so…
Great photos!
Love the expressions of pain!
Currently 99f here as I type and baked brick. That water looks SOOOO good, even if it gets hard at towing speed impacts.
Love that pain expression, um, what pinched? 😉
Nothin’ pinched- I think I was just concentrating on the water. I remember being pretty happy, but focused.
I can’t help but comment on the color of the water; kinda brownish-greenish. No wonder you have that expression, I wouldn’t want to get a mouthful of that either. By the way, didn’t someone just catch a piranha in a lake somewhere out that way?
Glad you didn’t say anything about piranha BEFORE I got out there. Flashbacks to the panicky days of youth.
They did catch a piranha in Lake Calhoun in Minneapolis many years ago. Piranhas can’t survive our Winters so it was one that someone released earlier that year. We don’t have cottonmouths in Minnesota and I would be surprised if they have them in Wisconsin, too. It looks like you had a good time though.
Who’s the old dude?
The old dude? Why, that would be the fellow in the background in that first photo, I suppose. That’s the spectacular Doug whose photos I haven’t yet posted. Yes, that must be who you’re asking about… not the guy with the silly shirt on under his PFD…
Greg … you’re … uh … wearing … a dressy shirt … while … so much fail. 😛 j/k love the photos man. Keep bein’ young. 😀
That’s not a dressy shirt. That’s a Prana hiker shirt with its own SPF rating. I wore it while kayaking the Grand Canyon. I’m surprised it still… well, not FITS, but still can o’erwrap my bulk.
Ok, it’s got a collar, buttons, and ‘tails’ … thus it’s a dressy shirt (short sleeve dress shirt, but still.) and it’s cool it has an SPF Rating … but still … I just gotta josh ya bro. LoL