Water-Skiing is So Hard! Triumph and a Question -

I'm capering this evening. Kinda wincing as I do it, but still. I was awesome today and apparently you can sometimes teach an old dog new tricks.

I water-skiied for the very first time!

Holy crap that's hard. But it was a gorgeous day and I had just the right combination of bananas, malt liquor, and Red Bull to keep me fueled and intrepid.

I got up. I wooshed behind the boat a little bit. I got an epic water-wedgie. I avoided any Bruckheimer crashes, but did manage to rip the toenail off my big toe. (Its okay. It was a goner anyway after I injured my foot a few weeks ago.)

My question is this: I didn't drink too much of Lake James, but still have a good dose of it sloshing around in my ears. Is this a problem? What do I do about it?

Mumut said:

My first time on water skis I had to stay up. It was at Ambunti on the Sepik River, PNG. The ski boat thundered around a few times to scare the crocs away then we took turns to ski. So I've never fallen off them.

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Yeah, that's motivation in the extreme.

I'm sore in every muscle from the base of my jaw to the wrists and hips, with selected hot spots throughout my legs.

But I did it!

I actually put some rubbing alcohol in my ears and that ran the water right out. Silly as it sounds, I can't shake my head, almost at all, without putting myself at some risk. My neck vertebrae are a ruin. I'm waiting for my titanium replacements to come out of clinical trials (I'd be in the trials, but they only allowed people who need one and I need two or three.)

Interestingly, my physical therapist was all for me trying water-skiing. He said, "You know what you can and can't do." And he's right. My range of motion is limited to straight planes, no combo moves. So, I can ski, but I can't shake the water out of my ears. That's silly.

But what a good time.

Yeah, it took me probably fourteen tries to get up (spread out in three stints.) It's an all-over math thing. I work out a lot, so I was definitely strong enough, but timing and balance issues has made be, ahem, not much of a dancer.

The single biggest help was tightening the skis on the last go. Snug skis make easy work of keeping them parallel. I wish I had known that the first two times.

I am so sore and the bad news is that I have a tendency towards more soreness the second day.

Of all people, I thought you'd have a comment about my banana/malt liquor/Red Bull fuel.