Category Archives: wakeboarding

Bikini Contest Letter #2

Posted on by
Reply

I love wakeboarding.  I do it everyday–I wakeboard too much.

Most days I am proud to be a wakeboarder.  Last Saturday I was not.  Last Saturday I saw a side of wakeboard culture that did not showcase the full potential of the beautiful young women in the contest.

Women who wakeboard.  

These beautiful young women were given no forum for their skills in a tough action sport, but they were encouraged to define themselves according to the barest number of centimeters used to cover their rear ends.

Or not.

All the women who made it past the first round were wearing a style of bikini which deliberately exposes the buttocks.

And after that I could not watch.

I would like to direct the rest of this letter to any action sport sponsors who marginalized women athletes:

Because I am deep in the sport, this hurts me.  I know you.  I own products you sell.  I don’t want to associate your brand with the exploitation of women.

Wakeboarding is still a young sport.  We still have time to change this. 

Women can add so much to this sport–on the water, throwing spins, hitting rails, in the kind of clothes it actually takes to be brave.

I beg you to consider putting your sponsorship clout into women in wakeboarding, not women in sexually compromising positions.

update:

This post had a first stronger iteration which I modified after the owners of the wake park told me that I would have to apologize to one of them in order to allow my family to enter Points Chase National Competition.

I apologized.  They competed. 

More bad stuff happened….and I no longer can say that I wakeboard almost every day with enthusiasm.

I am no longer able to separate the degradation and shame of what happened at the bikini contest with the lovely process of riding a sliver of wood and fiberglass at 19 miles an hour.

It takes hundreds, maybe thousands of people to look the other way (or in this case stare voraciously) as human beings are exposed and humiliated.

I am not proud of any of it

I am not proud of “us”

The wakeboarders who let it happen.

A million times

Posted on by
Reply

I tell 

The young man that I have

Fallen a million times

(Felt like it anyway)

A million falls

A million failures

A million times 

An arbitrary number 

Not as funny as bazillions or gazillions 

Arms spread wide to denote the bigness of the thing

God sent His one and only Son

…to fall like this?

Fail like this?

Criminal nailed to a tree?

His falling and my falling, so different

His fall just

To rise to life,

Me in His arms

Do something (brave)

Posted on by
1

My blog is littered with drafts. I haven’t published anything for awhile because I struggle with–why bother?

In the aftermath of what happened to my family, a lot of people let us down.

It could have been because I was too vocal. It could have been because we were too risky. It could have been a lot of things.

It took a toll on my evaluation of humans. How could so many “nice people” run like rabbits? Or worse. There was always worse.

I battled insomnia. If a person you have fed peanut butter sandwiches can hurt children, the world feels permanently unsafe.

I wrote. I wrote and then wondered why?

Then I began wakeboarding.

I like wakeboarding because no one tells me I can’t do the things that terrify me. In fact, they show me how.

I like it because the people there are brave.

Not just spin-in-the-air brave, but also push-yourself brave.

Many of these brave people restore my faith in our broken world.

Which leads me to “ordinary brave”–

Men who are faithful to their wives are brave.

Judges who prosecute pedophiles are brave.

Health officials who fly into an Ebola epidemic are brave.

Paying your bills and your taxes on time

Holding a lackluster job to provide for your family

Befriending the powerless–

All brave.

When I see brave, I want to be brave.

Philippians 4:13

Posted on by
Reply

Dearest M,

This was the verse tattooed inside a cross on a rider’s back yesterday.

I have gotten very good advice on doing the big kicker from him, but I have been too scared to take it.

What you did yesterday was a triumph. I could tell by your face you did not think so, but I know it was.

How?

Because I fear the fall and I fear the hurt and I fear the scrutiny and you have left me no alternative but to face those fears.

Thank you.

So much.

It is so easy to be a coward. I know because I am.

But to be brave? But to risk yourself? Especially in front of others?

That takes such beautiful courage.

And quite frankly it teaches others to be brave as well.

There are no words for that kind of triumph. Trust me. I am an old woman. I know.

The Hole in my Chest

Posted on by
Reply

Four years it’s been since I knew I had an invisible arrow lodged in my ribcage–what comes of adopting “damaged” children.

We are all damaged somehow. Who can repair us?

I knew the answer–arrow or no. I knew the power of my salvific God.

But the arrow remained.

Sometimes it would hurt me less. Sometimes more–the ache rising with the deep regret of the past or knowledge of our frailty.

And then I began to wakeboard.

I learned that having this thing I could throw myself at would keep down the ache of the wound. I had let my children down. I had lived with a costly illusion for years.

Who else would he harmed before he was done? And who can fix such a broken soul?

The arrow remained
Lodged in my chest.

Last week I fell wrong off a kicker. I confronted the fear that had kept my mind off the arrow, and landed in a fast tumble.

Panicked, my son said, but I knew it was just speed and my characteristic lack of control.

No one tells you how much it hurts to hit water fast.

I think it is a cartilage injury to my left chest cavity. It makes some things harder.

But the arrow in my chest
Joined by a real wound now
Seems less intractable
Less lonely

With each small, survivable ache
I remember
The spear lodged in His chest
Eternal wound/God of resurrection.

Joe Stalin with an S on his chest

Posted on by
Reply

You will forgive me if I sound like a broken record. I am haunted by two things–the brokenness of history and the voice of Jesus.

There are times in every culture and in the current of human events when a lot of people get things very wrong. And when they do they are self-righteous and smug.

Some painful examples–

Joseph Stalin was treated as a valuable leader and friend by the west while he was making deals with Hitler and starving and torturing his own people. The men who decried his behavior and warned of his psychopathy were suppressed.

For years the US allowed an entire people group to be raped, tortured, pillaged, and sold like cattle and justified this abuse in the name of God.

Oh, wait…that happened several times, didn’t it?

The Holocaust? That was a lot of quiet Germans.

And let’s face it, America’s entire foreign policy for the last few decades….

We back thugs and look the other way when they hurt people.

Humans are broken
History is broken.
We can’t fix it
We need a Savior.

But when he comes he will indeed raise the dead.

Rodents (I have loved and feared)

Posted on by
Reply

Dearest A,

I have already told you the nutria story. I think about my dad and his inspirational message of stoic courage whenever we see nutria at the river.

They come quite close and are reasonably lovable–orange teeth and all.

But I have other rodents in my past. For instance Mouse–red, worn, lovable, constant. Stuffed, so no plague risks.

When I was in Thailand our bungalows were infested with rats. They were so noisy I thought they were monkeys on the roof. Until the night one swung over the rafters onto the mosquito netting sending us all to the boys’ cabin. Five Americans in a double bed. I slept at the foot. Feet.

The next day the man pulled desiccated rat carcasses from the eaves. Like we had unsettled an ancient burial ground.

Then there was the boat to Yang Shuo. Kay said she saw a rat. Said she was moving to another cabin. I swapped bunks with her. At 4:30 in the morning I wake up to the curious gaze of a rat sitting on his haunches–squirrel-like and contemplative. No more sleep for me.

And then there was the year the rats were bad on the coast. They starved out the neighbor’s birds. They ransacked feed beds. They gnawed fruit left on the kitchen counter.

We told ourselves–mice. Silly us.

Until the night of the great racket. A rat shimmied down the wall in the bathroom. J checked but saw nothing. I opened the door and it scurried into the darkened bedroom were the children slept. J was not concerned.

He has a cat allergy. I have a rat phobia. As he slept I ruminated–it is me or it, I am bringing in the cat!

Zippy–always intrepid, stalked the rat throughout the room speaking words of predatory intent. Finally satisfied she curled next to my daughter’s head on the pillow. We slept till morning.

At which point dear J bought traps and caught the entire rodent clan living in our attic.

My dear soft-hearted love–
B

Nietzsche

Posted on by
Reply

Still working on basic cable skills on the water–which means some face planting. This requires humility and a sense of humor.

The latter is especially important for the cable operators who help me. They are patient and kind and one quoted Nietzsche to me–you know the quote about death and endurance.

So I am climbing back up onto the dock and all I can see is Freddy N. wake-boarding, mustache to the wind.

Yeah, would have done him good.

Twisted Lines

Posted on by
Reply

How did they get tangled?
The long lines reaching out and up to the scaffold
Not cloudless but wind-fierce
Like blue could be fire.

I ask my son to count
Them, he gets the number wrong–says six for seven
When number eight shuttles around in a lost circle
Infinite forgotten

I watch this man
Patiently untangle them
Cords missing air balloons
Lines, ropes, braids

Carrying clumsy morons like me

I ask him about the scars along his knuckles
Painful looking
He tells me his story
…one more way to be brave

I am not

I can tell you exactly when I knew
I was a coward
The day I let go of the rope

Forever as you swore at me loudly in this crowded terminal
The people raise their eyebrows perhaps

I only remember the pain, you
A promise
Never to rise again
with the white noise and anger

Airplanes pressing physics
across this merciless deep
Sky