OK, been reading for awhile now it's time for the first post.
This happened the summer of '74 or '75, no names have been changed - the guilty will recognize themselves and if I could remember their full names I'd post 'em.
Guy at work says that he and a buddy are going to borrow a boat and go water skiing, would I like to go? Since he's old enough to buy beer and I'm usually up for most anything, I agree. So Dave and Jim show up the next day with what could charitably be called a boat, but by no stretch of the imagination a ski boat. My guess is they hadn't invented water-skiing when this boat was originally built.
So this is my first time and I get some "liquid courage" and instructions that basically consist of "put these on your feet, keep 'em pointed in front of you and hold on to this." After about 15-20 minutes of trying my best to stay upright and enjoying my view of the bottom of Lake Campbell they decide to let Jim go for awhile. This is where the fun really starts.
Jim gets up on the first try and he's doing a pretty good job considering the motor is probably older than all of us combined and is really working to keep him moving. So he tries jumping the wake a little bit and then swings out as far as he can get to one side, so it almost looks like he's up even with us. Dave sees him out of the corner of his eye and, I swear I'm not kiddin', says "hey, watch this!" At the same time he cuts the wheel hard over toward Jim and leaves the throttle full up.
I'm watching 1-the rope going slack, 2-Jim sinking but NOT letting go of the rope and 3-Dave laughing hysterically. I'm thinking this will not end well and trying to get Dave to pull the throttle back when several things happen all at once. We hit the end of the rope, Jim gets pulled a couple of feet out of the water, the rope snaps, it goes deadly silent as the motor exits the back of the boat and my legs are pinned to the transom by the control cables.
Jim manages to swim back to the boat, even though he probably won't be able to move his arms in a couple hours, and we all sit around trying to figure out what to do now. Since we don't have a paddle we've got some time to do this. After unsuccessfully trying to pull the motor back up we settle back and have another beer. After about 20 minutes of our situation not improving itself we start trying to paddle with our hands and shortly after another boat starts up on the far shore and makes it way toward us. The two guys in the other boat are laughing so hard they can barely ask us if we'd like a tow. Seems they were on the patio watching our endeavors from the beginning and it took them that long to compose themselves enough to come to our aid.
I was just thankful I didn't have to be there when Dave and Jim returned what was left of the boat. We did manage to get the motor up once we got to shallower water. Even though I continued working with Dave for almost a year, another word was never spoken about water skiing.
This happened the summer of '74 or '75, no names have been changed - the guilty will recognize themselves and if I could remember their full names I'd post 'em.
Guy at work says that he and a buddy are going to borrow a boat and go water skiing, would I like to go? Since he's old enough to buy beer and I'm usually up for most anything, I agree. So Dave and Jim show up the next day with what could charitably be called a boat, but by no stretch of the imagination a ski boat. My guess is they hadn't invented water-skiing when this boat was originally built.
So this is my first time and I get some "liquid courage" and instructions that basically consist of "put these on your feet, keep 'em pointed in front of you and hold on to this." After about 15-20 minutes of trying my best to stay upright and enjoying my view of the bottom of Lake Campbell they decide to let Jim go for awhile. This is where the fun really starts.
Jim gets up on the first try and he's doing a pretty good job considering the motor is probably older than all of us combined and is really working to keep him moving. So he tries jumping the wake a little bit and then swings out as far as he can get to one side, so it almost looks like he's up even with us. Dave sees him out of the corner of his eye and, I swear I'm not kiddin', says "hey, watch this!" At the same time he cuts the wheel hard over toward Jim and leaves the throttle full up.
I'm watching 1-the rope going slack, 2-Jim sinking but NOT letting go of the rope and 3-Dave laughing hysterically. I'm thinking this will not end well and trying to get Dave to pull the throttle back when several things happen all at once. We hit the end of the rope, Jim gets pulled a couple of feet out of the water, the rope snaps, it goes deadly silent as the motor exits the back of the boat and my legs are pinned to the transom by the control cables.
Jim manages to swim back to the boat, even though he probably won't be able to move his arms in a couple hours, and we all sit around trying to figure out what to do now. Since we don't have a paddle we've got some time to do this. After unsuccessfully trying to pull the motor back up we settle back and have another beer. After about 20 minutes of our situation not improving itself we start trying to paddle with our hands and shortly after another boat starts up on the far shore and makes it way toward us. The two guys in the other boat are laughing so hard they can barely ask us if we'd like a tow. Seems they were on the patio watching our endeavors from the beginning and it took them that long to compose themselves enough to come to our aid.
I was just thankful I didn't have to be there when Dave and Jim returned what was left of the boat. We did manage to get the motor up once we got to shallower water. Even though I continued working with Dave for almost a year, another word was never spoken about water skiing.
