Water Sports - Counting The Costs

The Price of Catering to Tourism?

First, let me state that I'm not an authority on all things watersports related. That said, I was thinking about what a short time it is until families, friends and every other sort of tourist descend on our county. Hunkering down in Hotels, rental cottages, campgrounds, RV's, and more often than I'd like, back seats of cars in large parking lots and even along the side of the road. Some, too exhausted, broke, or just passed out in their tracks and collapsed. As you might expect alcohol consumption is not only the preferred past-time of many tourists, it is the underlying cause of 95% of the trouble we run into in our small community. I'm not just talking about loudmouthed drunks, or red faced old men cursing in the name of whatever deity they bow before, but real nasty stuff like running Cigarette boats into breakwalls at 60 mph, pleasure boats crashing into and over jet-skis and a plethora of dead bodies that are found by search and rescue teams or simply wash up somewhere. The same goes on the highways and State Routes, high speed head on collisions, 60 mph broadsides and the odd cyclist or jogger who's invariably picked off by a drunk driver.

This is what brings the real revenue to our city and other smaller villages in the surrounding areas, the life blood that our Chamber of Commerce cow-tows too at the expense of the permanent residents, who are taxed heavily to keep our town "spiffy" and in order for the tourist dollars that the C of C members will divide among themselves. The tourist pays nothing of the burden for the improvements that we are taxed for but our city government cares nothing about this heavy burden of increased taxes since they are raking in the tourist dollars. As a lifelong resident, I've never had a tourist walk up and put anything but their middle finger up in the air for me but we're sooooo happy to have you Mr. Big City Drunk, please feel free to abuse the locals.

Before you begin thinking that this just a rant - hold it. I've been watching this for many years and there's not an untruth in this post. In fact, I have been very kind to our tourists and city keepers (I can't bring myself to call them City Fathers - bunch of self absorbed son's of b****es) and could've railed on with many hair-raising tales of the exploits of drunken tourists and fishermen, who are the constant nuisance we locals have to deal with every spring and summer. So, let's change course ok?

There are many great water sporting endeavors to be found here, in fact I can't think of anything really that we don't offer our visitors in the way of fun in the sun, in and under the water. Sunrises and sunsets are spectacular, water clarity is great and prime for diving and fishing. Jet-ski's have become so much of a nuisance - like swarms of angry killer bees, that they have begun to legislate and enforce bans on areas, to preserve safety and some kind of order. There are a lot of sailing purists sporting some very expensive looking sailboats and of course, power boats are thick on the water over weekends and create a constant "chop" on the surface of the lake and bays until night, when the tormented waters lay down flat again. The smell of barbeque is in the air and with it, the smell of 1000 campfires. You can smell them shifting and mixing as you drive down the road with your windows down. All in all, except for the tourism trade-off, a very sweet place to live!

If you're headed our way this summer in search of fun in the sun and all of the great water sport opportunities, bring your essentials and don't forget to bring your camera and waterproof case hopefully, to the beach or on the boat for the memorable pictures of your little ones splashing in the water or the big one that "didn't get away" - see you soon!

Swimming With Whales

Probably Best To Use Scuba Gear

I watched a couple of really cool nature channel type programs in the past couple of days. It was about the life of whales and did some awfully exhaustive amount of filming with underwater video camcorders. They started by zooming away to places where whales are generally spotted and followed a pod of humpback whales. The divers even touched them as if they were petting the neighbors dog. That puts "Moby Dick" in a whole new perspective I'd say.

They went on to talk about how they communicate with each other or was it pinging with built-in sonar? In any case they played loads of audio of the whales moaning and squealing. They were said to be vegetarians, swimming through the plankton rich water with their mouths open so that the little plankton, shrimp and other critters would get snagged in there mouth. When they had a full load in their mouth - they would swallow it and continue. Kind of like elephants - takes a lot of food to keep moving. They did show the Sperm whale chomping giant squid and did some amazing animated footage to show how they would literally explode on these squid who never knew what hit them.

They went up to the Arctic regions to show Beluga whales, like kids bobbing for apples. They would find a nice breathing hole and hang around it taking turns at getting their ration of the life giving air. They were in it so much that the water couldn't freeze, even in the below zero temperatures. They explained about the dwindling whale populations and called for the cessation of all whale hunting or harvesting. They explained their life cycle - from breeding to birth and so on to adulthood. They are near extinction and I must agree that they are too wonderful to be completely exterminated form the planet. Yeah - Save the whales!

Your Favorite Water Sport?

Which Water Sport Do you Prefer

My favorite is snorkeling and that finished 5th in a recent poll I saw. If snorkeling is an "A" then snorkeling combined with underwater photography would be my "A+". I love the opportunities I get for great and unusual pictures when cruising along, lazily cruising around a reef or man made structure with my compact camera, snug in a waterproof digital camera case. You never know what's going to pop up next. What you do know is that it is going to be cool and curious and worthy of a few shots.

My compact digital camera is a 4 megapixel Canon and the shutter speed can be a tad slower than some of the larger digital slr cameras, but I only have $389 invested in it and it has paid for itself in hundreds of normal photos and now there isn't much worry about drowning it or humidity and all of the fears that most photographers have about submerging their high end cameras in the water.

Just so you know BTW, #1 was "tubing" followed by "scuba diving", "swimming", (my choice snorkeling), "kayaking" and "surfing" at the bottom of the poll! Surfing is probably the most popular and there's wakeboarding, and body boarding. My gut instincts is that this poll is skewed in some way. Or, perhaps given to a class of Jr. High Schoolers in a Midwest State to come up with those results.

Whatever your favorite water sport, I assure you that there are many more people than you think that are into it as well. So enjoy and stay safe - always go into the water with a partner!

Snow Surfing - Very Interesting...Hmmm?

Riding the Slippery Slopes!

I woke up in the middle of the night and went right away to turn on the TV. They had several 1/2 hour shows of pranks and stunts on a show called "Jackass". This was the most "off the wall" comedy show that I've ever seen!

One of the pranks they did was "snow surfing" with a fully functional surfboard and rudder and they all got some great rides but of course there some spectacular wipeouts - kind of like real surfing in that respect. So today we hauled a friend's old fashioned big board - a really big gun shaped back in the late 60's, out of his garage and drove it over to a local ski slope (we have several around within an hour's drive or less).

We got some hard stares from some of the uppity skiers and we loved it - a few even came over and asked what we planned to do with our gigantic surf board. We're going surfing dude, my son told him which got a slight raise of the guy's eyebrows.

The next tough part was clearing it with the Manager and we informed him of our intentions. We know him but he was hesitant and brought up everything from safety to wrong equipment and liability - you know, Manager talk! He called in Will who was Chief of Safety and Rescue (another "ringer") that we also know.

He chimed in that they had slope #5 closed after making fresh snow and allowing it to cure just a bit before opening it back up to the public. We typed up a hasty liability release note, signed it and had it witnessed. Will said he was going to jet ski over to pick up another employee in case we needed more help than he could provide and was back in 5 minutes. Will towed our board up the slope and we took the ride to the top in the chairs. I remembered to snatch my Billingham Camera Bag which was loaded with my Canon Digital Rebel and Sony Video Camera, loads of memory cards and sticks, extra batteries, chargers and other odds and ends.

We decided against Speedos and jock straps like the Jackasses wore on TV and bundled up - minimal clothing, loose jackets, summer shorts and socks & boots. All snow surf runs were made with shorts and bare feet and no shirts or socks/shoes/boots. We needed true surfing attire to do our own version of "snow surfing."

Our results were much the same - a few nice runs and plenty of spine twisting wipeouts. My youngest son BMR (initials for privacy) did best and had only one bad spill and several clean rides. It was great fun and everyone had as many laughs as I did - behind the lens. I've got some great footage to share with the guys now and some nice stills of us posing with the big gun and the Lodge in the background. If you can surf or ski it would help of course, but it was not that bad or dangerous either. A wipeout on snow seemed easier on the boys than some real grinders I've seen my boys wipeout in, including myself, in my younger days and nothing compared to what you'd see along the North Shore in HI.

No need for waivers folks it was fun and funny at the same time - would anyone care to do a bit of "Snow Surfing"?