Water+Skiing

I’m cutting through the wake towards the dock. I drop a ski. Now I’m slalom skiing, the wake crossings get more violent, the turns faster, where there’s only a foot in-between my shoulder and the water. I pretend that there are six orange buoys in the water as I weave in and out of them, as if I were in a slalom competition. I cut towards the dock, let go of the handle, glide over the water and grab onto the dock, setting myself on it. I took off my slalom ski and looked for my drop ski, but it is nowhere to be seen. “Do you see my ski?” I asked my mom who was idling into the dock “It’s under the dock,” she said, my eyes following her finger to a space between the dock boards. “I see it,” I said jumping into the water and diving under the dock. I grabbed the ski while taking a breath and swam back out. I hauled the ski onto the dock. When I got out of the water, I ran up the hill towards the barn and grabbed the knee board. By the time I got back down onto the dock, my mom had already coiled the rope. Then I got into the water, grabbed the handle off the dock and layed down on the knee board, and the boat started to idle out. “Hit it,” I yelled when the rope got tight (and I was slowly being dragged through the water) and the boat took off. Once I was on a plane, I very slowly crawled up onto the knee board into a kneeling position and ever so slightly started to get the strap around my knees. Then I did a couple wake crossings to warm-up. Then I got to the center of the wake. This was the hard part, front-to-backs. I pulled in the handle, let go with one hand, leaned a little so I turned, and caught the handle. Yes! I thought. It was successful. Now for the easy part, turning around. All I did to do it was let go with one hand, let the boat pull me around, and grab on again behind my back. A couple more front-to-backs and some wake crossings and I was ready to head in. When the boat came around to our dock, it did one tight turn, so I let go of the handle and glided slowly into the dock. Once everything was put away, we walked up the small, but steep hill towards our cottage. On the way up my sister started to tease me. “Always thank your driver,” she said trying to imitate dad. “That reminds me,” I said. “Where //did// dad go?” “He went to the gas station to get some grubs,” she said. “Yeah!” I said, remembering the grub races we had around the inlet. When we where done (and the grubs were about to die), we would slip them on a hook and catch a fish or two with them, and then also remembering the foot-long northern that my sister caught with one of the grubs. When dad returned from the gas station, he came straight to us to give us the grubs. After a couple track races and one or two free crawls per grub, it was about time to slip them on a hook, so we did. “I’m going to name this one Bill. Bill will now have his funeral,” I said as I slowly lowered the grub to the surface of the water. Bam! A fish jumped up and grabbed the hook! “Get the basket,” I yelled at Ann. The basket is a chain mesh thing that goes in the water so the fish won’t die, and can’t swim away. When Ann came back with the basket, I wriggled the fish off the hook and into the basket. I tied the basket to a dock post. ‘Thanks,” I said too Ann when the basket was at the end of its rope. “That was the least amounting of time it ever took me to catch a fish,” I said. Then Ann lowered her hook into the water. Bam! Ann caught one. Bam! I caught one. Bam! Ann caught one. This went on for about 2 minutes until we had 9 fish and were out of grubs, and it was dinner time. But this time for dinner we weren’t having the usual brats or hamburgers (which get kind of boring after a while) because the grill didn’t have a fire in it. “Hey mom where are we going to eat?” I asked. “Mystery, you’ll find out when we get there,” She said to me. I thought for a moment. Well, at least we’re not eating here. Just as we were leaving the phone rang. “I’ll get it,” my mom said. It just happened to be the neighbor girl wondering if Ann wanted to watch High School Musical II with her. Of course, Ann said “Yes.” When Mom, Dad, and I set off again and got to our diner destination (which happened to be Snug Harbor Inn) we ordered and walked around a little to wait for our food, which took a long time since it was Friday night fish fry. While I was roaming, I found a quarter. After we finished eating, I decided to put it in the gumball machine for a gumball. I put in the quarter, turned the crank, opened the flap and there were two gumballs! After giving one of the gumballs to my mom, we went back to the cottage. By the time we got back, it was 8:00 p.m. I had set up the tent earlier that morning so I could sleep in it. This was one of the nights that just happened to no rain. I went inside, changed my clothes, brushed my teeth and went back outside to the tent. Once I was in the tent, I zipped the window and the door shut and lay down. The fun thing about camping is that you can hear all the crickets chirping, toads bouncing off the tent while they try to scale the nylon walls, and if there is moonlight, you can see the successful shadows of the tree frogs that can actually climb the nylon. The only bad thing is that if you have a neighbor who likes to play loud music or have groups of friends over at night, you could be listening to that racket all night long, which happens frequently. Luckily, that night the neighborhood was quiet. Since it was quiet and I was pretty tired, I fell asleep quickly that night. The next morning I woke up to the sound of my dad starting the van to go get coffee. Then I looked at my watch, and it was 6:00 IN THE MORNING!!!! When will my dad ever learn to sleep-in on the weekends? Then I decided to move inside, wait a second, I thought. How come all the blanket is on the other side of the bed? I wondered, and I decided to find out. As I was hauling the blanket back to by side of the bed I found a sleeping Ann curled up in the middle of it. That was when I decided to wake Ann up to tell her that I was going inside to sleep more. And once I did she wanted to come too. Once we were inside, we slept for about three and a half hours and woke up some time around 10:30. Once we were both out of bed, we both started getting the usual, cheerios with milk and a banana with half a bowl of oatmeal. Half way through the process I saw a blue box. Could it be? I said to myself. It was! It was a poptart box. Then for breakfast we had the usual with a piece of unusual. After that it was pretty quiet other than the Sponge Bob DVD playing for my sister in the background and my dad pulling in the driveway. Most things in life are a custom to you except when something new pops up, just like the DVD, we watched it once, and from there on it was boring. Then Dad came in. “Hey Ron, Want to do a lap around the lake?” he said. “No thanks Dad,” I said to him. That was Dad, he always wants to pull me skiing at the crack of dawn (or whenever I’m up, which even still is too early. “Can I take the Tractor out instead?” The tractor was really just a riding mower but it was useful if you didn’t want to walk up and down the street to see what is going on, and not to mention, I cut the lots with it to. The lots are only a short walk down the small road leading to Territorial Rd. “Sure,” he said as I made my way into the bedroom and changing into my clothes. On the way outside I stopped inside my mom’s bedroom and grabbed the small key on the hook and then went to the tractor.  “Come on, come on” I said edging the tractor to start while the engine was cranking. “Yes!” I said as it sputtered to life and suddenly as I turned up the throttle it roared even louder. Then I shifted into gear seven and shot of down the road.  When I got to hill I sifted into neutral and rolled down it. At the bottom I shifted back into drive and turned left onto the Lots and drove down the grass to the smoldering pile of ruble that use to be our neighbors old dock that we burned last night. After going in the woods I came out with a pile of branches and a small dead tree the size of my wrist, and then threw it on the pile of smoldering twigs as it immediately caught fire on a leaf. Three minutes later I hade a small fire made of branches, twigs, and leafs. And if you walked up to it, you would see a small trail of leafs going to a small pile under a foot high teepee made of tree bark. This was typical of Ann and me. Whenever we had a fire we would take the bark of the big dead tree and make a teepee to catch on fire. Building it was the fun challenge that we faced every time, trying to get the pieces of bark to lean against each other at the right angle so they didn’t fall over. Another thing we would do is catch the end of a stick on fire, blow it out, and play Tic-Tac-Toe on the road. There were a lot of things we did on the lots and in the cottage, and not to mention, very few people have the privilege of a place to get away to on the weekends. Only one of are friends had a cottage in Wisconsin, and we often got together on lake Beulah to swim, ski, walk on sand bars, talk, and to dive on the high dive open to the public. If you compared the high dive to a building, it would be like jumping off the top of a one story house. The fun thing was actually jumping off it. Just imagine running down the long board and jumping into the air to fall for a few seconds and then to feel the cold rush past your face as you entered the water. That was why you climbed the later to the top. To experience it. That was why you swam from your boat anchored a fifty feet away to the unsteady platform. Another fun thing was the sand bars. There was one sand bar that had a white bench that was about twenty feet long that we almost always went to. The thing about was that the floor of the sand bar was covered with perfect skipping stones, the catch was, if you weren’t a professional at skipping a stones, they all sunk. Although every once in a while you would be able to get one to go a couple paces.