End of Summer

It’s good to have friends.

Over Labor Day weekend we got to go to our friend’s lake house in Connecticut. It’s on Candlewood Lake, which is the biggest lake in Connecticut and quite beautiful. And this summer they got a boat for wake surfing. If you aren’t familiar with wake surfing, the boat is specially designed to produce wake in the shape of a continuous wave. The back of the boat has large ballast tanks that fill with water to add weight and there’s some mechanism to direct the wave (it can be either on the left or right depending on the surfer). The boat goes quite slowly compared to water skiing (10 – 12 mph) and you surf fairly close to the boat, since you need the wave it is producing. You are initially pulled up with a rope, but once you get good you can throw the rope back to the boat and simply surf the wave.

I did get to try it and while I did inhale much of the lake at first, I ultimately did get up and rode the wave for quite a while, but with the rope. It’s quite fun.

This is our friend Dave (owner of the boat) doing it right:

And for the kiddos, they have a “tube”. Now when I hear “tubing” I think of being pulled in a large inner tube. I don’t picture this ginormous beast…

They got whipped around and thrown off (the ones in back anyway) and had a general great time.

All in all a great end of the summer weekend.