Thinking....a strong suit?

So, today was much more like April then Thursday was, and it's only looking up. 75 degrees on Tuesday? Well, that means time to get the watercraft ready to hit the waters again. Well, that will come in time. I couldn't really bring myself to work on it today, with some snow on the ground. It's day will come in a couple of weeks. Hopefully around the 1st of May will be time to get the jetski ready to roll. Today instead was maintenance to the vehicle. Next weekend, it will make a quick trip to the Twin Cities, where I will be on a mini-vacation to watch some Twins games.







Ok, most will laugh when I say I do enjoy occasional challenging puzzles. I do enjoy doing sudoku puzzles, especially when on a camping trip when I'm not out on the lake. Or, one that I was re-aquatinted to recently was the Cracker Barrel's golf tee game. I'm sure you've played, where you have to jump the golf tees, removing the one that was jumped, and end up with only one left. The waitress the day I got mine said I was starting it wrong, and I didn't believe that I was actually starting wrong. My dad said that you should be able to do it with any open hole to start.

So that made me set out on a mission, I wanted to know if it really was possible for any of them to be open, and to be able to beat the board and tees with any open slot, I wanted to find it. So, when you look at the puzzle, the first thing I deducted that I would have to play with only the four open slots show here. This would represent any of the possible starting points. I was successful in about 5 days with defeating it with all the open slots. I showed the waitress what was what on that one, that I wasn't starting it wrong, I just couldn't figure it out on that particular day.

Weather is really making me mad....

Don't know why we call this season spring, because it has exactly ZERO spring like qualities. I think we're going to have more snow in the past 3 weeks here then we had all winter. That is irritating. Winter is over, so it needs to just give up now. It's lost the battle, and it will not prevail. But it still has to make us miserable for a while. I don't know about you, but because of this little attitude it has, winter is sure not going to get my vote for "favorite season" for 2008. I'm really getting irritated, if you can't already tell.

Soccer season was supposed to start on Saturday. Somehow, the prospect of a foot of snow leaves doubts in my mind that we are gonna have that. And that reminds me a story. I believe it was my junior year, and we went out to Custer to play a two game set out there. And we played out game at night, which was always cool, on a Friday. So, we went back into the gym, where we were staying that night, and we went to sleep. I got up the next morning, and was going to go check on the weather to see what the conditions were going to be like for our 10am start. I open the gym door that lead out side, and was promptly smacked in the face by a cold blast of wind, and 9 inches of snow lay on the ground. That was it, we were done. I yelled in dismay, which brought the rest of the players out. We were all in 100% agreement. Pack up, cut our losses, and go home! "You can't come all the way out here and only play in one game..." That was the response we were given from the Custer people, and we didn't like the way this was going. They got a guy with a shovel, scooped off the lines on the field, and they forced us to play. We were not happy one bit. We were a team built on speed and long rolling passes. Well, as you can imagine, snow did not allow much for rolling. By far, it was THE WORST SOCCER GAME I ever played in. It was pathetic. We were cold, pissed off we had to play, and we got beat, because we couldn't dribble the ball. I still hate snow to this day, especially when it gets into and screws up soccer season.

Spring....and bowling

Someone told me tonight that Ravine Lake had open water on it, and my response was, "That doesn't matter, that water would be terribly cold." This weekend is supposed to be cold again too. After 63 today, 36 on Sunday is not gonna sit very well at all. But, I can't do much about that.

This story dates back a while to when Grandpa Pete came here from Kentucky. He was here for Christmas, and not that long ago had to come back to SD for a funeral. Well, both times we got to talking about being in a bowling league. We had several similarites. We both had averages around 135, although his was a few pins higher than mine. We'd both recently bowled games over 160. It was kind of fun to tell stories about wild pin pickups, and an interesting connection for the nearly 50 years of age difference. The big difference is he is a better bowler by average and he has his own ball.

Then, a week ago last night, I set a new high for myself. I bowled a personal best ever 192. Sad I could have had over 200, but on the first ball of the tenth frame, the TW bowler we all know and love came calling and I knocked down only 1 pin on a spare. That cost me the 200 game. But, I picked up the 9 pin spare, and went on to get 7 more pins the last ball and got my 192, which is almost 60 pins over my average.

Molly 1.0

So, 2 days after the birthday for Molly, now we look back on the year that was. The first time out was great, even though I was limited to only 37 mph. But, then, after the 10 painful hours, out she was, uninhibited, the first time I got to open her up, Tom, standing on his doc told me to light it up, he wanted to se her go. So, I got turned, and almost threw myself right off the back giving her the gas. I was used to the 2 stroke engine, which hesitated at first, but this one, not so. It's blink and 53mph. Top speed reached so far, 71 mph, on Lake Byron at the end of the season. She pulls great, and really doesn't have any great stories so far, but I'm sure there will be. Soon, she'll get her birthday wash, polish, and waxing. It's not gonna be long now....

Happy Birthday Dear Molly....

One year ago today, I was rid of Shirley, and stopped to pick up the new jetski on the way home. So, here is how the story goes...

I sold the old jetski, while properly explaining all the issues, and I even gave her free delivery (within reason) and ended up sending her to the northern part of Minnesota. So, I dropped her off, went and visited my uncle in the Cities, and then continued home, with a quick stop in Watertown to pick up the new jetski. Didn't have to be without one very long, and it was quite simple. Pulled in, wrote the check. Got the instructions on her, and took her home. Very simple, and the major downfall was the point that I was going to have to break her in for 10 hours. The other catch was the max break in speed was 37 mph. It was tough to keep the ski going different speeds for the 10 hours, but I had lots of friends and family that came and helped me work off those first incredibly long 10 hours. Amazing how long it took to put them on, and the next ones (the ones that depreciate the jetski) just ran fast as could be....funny how that works. So, today (March 31) is the day I celebrate Molly's birthday. Happy 1 year Molly!

Shirley 1.2

I did come up with a couple other stories with Shirley providing us the great entertainment value. So, lets get back to the good stuff....

Story #4: I've already mentioned that this jetski did not pull skiers very well, but we were able to get some kneeboarding done fairly easily, because the pull is not just dead weight in the water, so Trent and I really took to that. We were at the lake one day, and I was up on the kneeboard, and was going along just fine. I'm spinning, I'm jumping (not too high, there wasn't much wake) but I was jumping, and was going just fine. All of the sudden, Trent swerves on the jetski, not sure what he was trying to avoid, but as mentioned, Shirley isn't too stable, and off he goes.....at a decent amount of speed. So, i just slowly coast to a stop, and drop into the water while Trent swims after the jetski he had just managed to throw himself off of.

Story #5: This one takes place at Lake Kampeska, and I'm not sure if it was the same day as the Ben story from last post, or if it's a different time, but Trent is out with the ski, which only weighed about 500 pounds, and her power was plenty to get her out of the water on a wave. So, he's doing figure 8's and making huge waves, and we are watching from the shore. He goes up over the top, and back down, and again, and then the jetski goes up......and no one is on it....Not sure what happened, but he's gone. A couple minutes later, it starts up again, and he keeps going. The puzzling, "Ohh, the ski is empty..." was quite a good laugh.

Story #6: This isn't so much a story, but Shirley's description said for 1-2 people. 2 people if one of them was under 50 pounds. I fell one time on the kneeboard, and had hurt myself on the landing, and Trent and I thew each other into the lake a couple of times before I just had to kneel on the back while Trent slowly throttles to keep it going and not tip over. One time with Courtney, she fell awkwardly off the kneeboard and I got back around, and I was going to pick her up and take her back to shore, and she threw me in a couple times before I finally figured out how to keep it upright while someone else got on. It only took me 3 months to learn, but I got it.....then sold it about a month later. Anyhow we got back to shore after I had balanced the ski while Courtney got on and got the kneeboard on, and then, pulling up to shore, dumped us both back into the lake. It was worth some comedic value to everyone else, and a very fitting end to the Shirley Chapter. It was after this weekend, that I decided it was time to take the bigger step up.

Shirley 1.1

Well, enough on the negatives, Shirley did have some up sides. One of them was the comedic value. Not long after I had her, and got her running properly, my uncle Paul came to visit. One thing to note about Shirley was that she was SeaDoo XP. That model is known for a more advanced riders, it was more designed to cut and turn quickly, and she would have no problem throwing you in to the water.

Story #1: One of the great things to watch was people trying to get on. This is where uncle Paul comes in. He was standing by the boat dock, and getting on the ski, when it started to roll, so he shifted his weight to try to stay up, so it went that way due to the overcompensation of weight....over she goes, with uncle Paul still hanging on. We saw the bottom of the ski, and a few seconds later, uncle Paul came back to the surface sputtering water out of his mouth. So, we had to load Shirley back up and I had to go work on her since rolling her over always caused the engine compartment to fill with water. The work was well worth the laugh though.

Story #2: This involves a trip to Lake Kampeska. So, I'm on the beach with my cousin Sherry who brought the kids out, and Ben, who was 3 at the time, wanted a ride, but he did NOT like the water spraying up on him, so he made Trent go slow. He had seen Trent being quite wild, so he wasn't sure he wanted a ride. Trent told him he'd be kind, so Ben agreed to go, but only go slow! So they started driving around. Well, Shirley isn't really stable at low speeds, but Trent kept her upright, well almost. Coming back to shore, it started to go, and Trent grabbed Ben and held him as they both went off the side and into the water. The look on Ben's face was priceless. The look of shock that said, "I can't believe you just threw me into the lake" said it all, and Sherry and I could only laugh at the expression. Ben would not get back on the jetski.

Story #3: We were at the family campout, and we had the two jetskis there. So, my cousin-in-law Jeremy decided to take mine for a spin. It was the first time we'd had more than 1 ski. He managed to get on, but it was wobbling all over, be got going, and was tearing around. Well, he got too wild and threw himself off. I was watching from the shore sitting by aunt Deanna. Well, we watched, and laughed as Jeremy would get most of the way back on, only to be bucked back into the lake. After about 7 minutes, we could hardly breathe we were laughing so hard. Trent got on the other jetski, went out and held mine so Jeremy could get back on and come back to shore to the roaring laughter of the family that had gathered to watch this spectacle. So, thus we did get some good times out of Shirley, despite her obscene repair bills.