I keep seeing all these parents on the lake in their motorboats pulling their kids on floats. The kids just have to sit there and hold on. What ever happened to water-skiing? Or swimming? Or boats that require paddling? OK, thanks for letting me get it out. Now to go paddle!
Waterskiing requires a little finesse… My grandson tried it… He liked tubing better. When I was little I could not get the hang of it either but used an Aquaplane a precursor to a wakeboard.
Our lake is full of tubers, skiers ( there is a slalom course) paddlers SUP’ers and everyone has a swimming dock… You really cannot do all at the same time. Most homes have a motorized boat and four or five paddlecraft. And a floating flamingo…( don’t ask)
Tubing for adults can be exciting… My hubby of a certain age did it… he lost his swim trunks… Well that was exciting as he fished for them waving the powerboat off.
We can talk, Doggy Paddler. It’s those little battery powered cars for kids that irritate me. They need to work their legs.
Yes, water-skiing involves skill acquisition. I maintain you’re doing kids a favor to encourage them to attain skills, of some sort, in whatever arena they gravitate toward, rather than only introducing activities that are essentially passive. But like I said: curmudgeon alert!
Rex, I haven’t seen those much. But I’m sure if I did they’d irritate me too!
Yes sure, here is Cruiser sitting down behind the boat. See the picture in the mirrow. Kids…when the grands are here just don’t have the skills, but they can still have a good time on the tube. You can’t be everything…grands do baseball, football and cross country. Skiing not so much.
Yeah, that’s legit. I should just remind myself those kids might all be very skilled in other areas. Maybe it’s just the power boat exhaust I don’t like…
@kayamedic said:
Waterskiing requires a little finesse… My grandson tried it… He liked tubing better. When I was little I could not get the hang of it either but used an Aquaplane a precursor to a wakeboard.
Our lake is full of tubers, skiers ( there is a slalom course) paddlers SUP’ers and everyone has a swimming dock… You really cannot do all at the same time. Most homes have a motorized boat and four or five paddlecraft. And a floating flamingo…( don’t ask)Tubing for adults can be exciting… My hubby of a certain age did it… he lost his swim trunks… Well that was exciting as he fished for them waving the powerboat off.
On the “Flamingo”:
Where we launch at the lake, across from it there are boat slips and one has a humongus two story house boat that never leaves the dock. Last week tied to the stern there was the largest blow up pink Flamingo that was bigger than any water float I have ever seen. The neck of it reached the second story of the house boat.and you could see it from a half mile away.
My comment was : “How long will it last ?” - Monday when we launched the neck was leaning over into the water, and yesterday when we launched the whole thing was deflated and one big eyesore that will probably end up on the bottom of the lake
Peer pressure played a big part growing up in Miami. Like when you are out on your girlfriend’s dad’s boat and he thinks it’s time you learned to slalom…Then it is time to learn to slalom.
Life was so tough back then… B)
Back then there was no such thing as a tandem skydive… If you wanted to say you did it, you did it alone not as a Disney ride.
The contrast between lakes that have a no motor policy vs lakes that have anything goes policy is just so stark. Jet skis in particular are the most annoying things to be around. Looks like fun for those enjoying them but the shrill noise is like a combination chain saw and weed wacker piped into your skull…
The lake I’m on is putatively a no jet-ski lake, but through some weird loop-hole in the rules, if you can get three people on it, it qualifies as a boat, and then you can use it, even if only with one person. No one likes them except the people on them.
Waterskiing seems to have been taken over by wakesurfing/wave boarding. See and hear lots of them since the boats are equipped with speakers and those folks think it’s fun to play loud music on the water. Sometimes I have idle thoughts of stealth kayaking at night with a pair of wire clippers in my kit.
@PhotoMax said:
The contrast between lakes that have a no motor policy vs lakes that have anything goes policy is just so stark. Jet skis in particular are the most annoying things to be around. Looks like fun for those enjoying them but the shrill noise is like a combination chain saw and weed wacker piped into your skull…
- Then you’ve never been around airboats.
- They have very big ones jet skis, aka wave runners, now that carry three people. Many of the fishermen in NE Fla rig them for off shore fishing. AND they go off shore to fish…………in a hurry.
@Rex said:
We can talk, Doggy Paddler. It’s those little battery powered cars for kids that irritate me. They need to work their legs.
I don’t mind when our next door neighbor’s 3 year old drives over with her 2 year old sister…they get plenty of exercise doing other stuff. What I hate is what I’d call “car tourists”. People that drive up to boat ramps or put-ins and just park and sit in their car (sometimes with car running and windows up with a/c on) so they can look at the water or watch other people doing stuff without ever getting off their lazy butts. Sometimes they’ll snap a picture of me and the dog. It’s always grown-ups…never kids.
I saw something a couple weeks ago that I thought was pretty cool. These two guys had electric powered hydrofoil paddle boards. These things were almost silent and moved right along at maybe 25 mph. I don’t know if they will replace wind surfers and other stuff, but they were different. I didn’t ask how much they cost, but I’ll bet they ain’t cheap.
@Doggy Paddler said:
The lake I’m on is putatively a no jet-ski lake, but through some weird loop-hole in the rules, if you can get three people on it, it qualifies as a boat, and then you can use it, even if only with one person. _No one likes them except the people on them. _
So true!
Around here, the thing to do is brainwash very young kids into riding ATVs. Betcha those tiny kid never even tried bicycling. Most recent case was a mother riding her own ATV on our public dirt road, following a side-by-side driven by a couple of kids probably all of 6 yrs old. Back and forth, up and down the middle of the road they went. Street-legal ATVs are allowed on county roads here, but the operators are still supposed to have earned drivers licenses! Stupid mommy.
TomL, the boat ramp hogs who do not have a boat bug me, too. Just as bad is what I call the Mommy Brigade. We live near a small reservoir that is owned by an irrigation company. They closed the place to motorized boating (AIS) but it is open to hand-paddled craft. When the season turns hot, the Mommy Brigades show up with several carloads of kids and cover the entire boat ramp with floatie junk, towels, food containers, babies, kids, and often loose dogs. They treat the launch area as if it is their own backyard beach, a concrete beach. Some of them are so dumb that when they see someone carrying a boat or SUP towards them, they stare like deer in headlights and you have to tell them, “I need access here, so would you move this out of the way?” The worst group had iPhones and other things scattered on the ramp that could easily have been put in consolidated piles, but no, literally each item was laid down on its own patch of concrete, as if to deliberately deter boaters from coming through.
Next time that happens, I will deliberately drain water from my kayak onto the phones.
Sounds like that launch ramp needs a sign: “Please keep ramp clear for boat launching. This is not a beach!”
Kids on ATV’s make me cringe. My partner for many years was an emergency room doc in a rural county with a lot of ATV and jet ski users. He saw plenty of injuries to adults and, most tragically, to young children from reckless use of those machines. One time the ambulance brought him a 6 year old boy who he recognized as the child of friends – he had to be the one to tell them that their son was now paralyzed from the neck down because they let him ride an ATV and he rolled it down a hill.
Well pikabike I guess it’s nice to know it could be worse. I’ve definitely had to ask people fishing at the boat launch to please excuse me while I launch my boat. Occasionally a whole bunch of people show up to swim in a small lake I visit and one time some gumball in an Audi actually doubleparks and (almost) blocked my vehicle so I did try to drip into his open sunroof when I carried my canoe back to my vehicle.
@willowleaf said:
Sounds like that launch ramp needs a sign: “Please keep ramp clear for boat launching. This is not a beach!”
They won’t do it at DNR boat launches in Michigan. Precisely same problem here that pikabike describes. What ultimately happened was the closure of the boat launch because the high water level left only two parking spots. When filled by the Mommy Brigade, no way a boater could turn around to launch without asking the parked vehicles be moved. Or back down the steep access road.
Complaints were made about these bozos treating the boat launch as their private beach so the DNR installed posts, a heavy chain across the entrance, and signs closing the site. Some entitled folks remove the chain and drive past, replacing the chain to make it look like no one is down there. Those actions are not reported to the DNR as their solution is to padlock the chain and require waterfront property owners to set up an appointment to bring in/take out their watercraft. And wait a few hours until a ranger can get there.