Travel

Meet The Jetskis

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No, it’s not the title of a futuristic cartoon series set in Poland. I’m talking about a highlight of my family vacation last week in Key West – a rash bid by a group of novices to quickly circumnavigate the island on rented personal watercraft.

Yes, I was surprised to see myself attempting this on such a powerful machine. I’m slow at virtually every activity I attempt and I’m much more of a canoe traveler, speed-and-noise-wise. Even when I’m driving the car, there’s a lot of coasting and enjoying the scenery. But Key West is all about loud, raucous, obnoxious fun. So when Gus (age 22) gravitated towards the jet ski tour, I decided to go along and give it a try.

This, despite the fact that playing in the ocean is always risky. I think James Cameron had a better idea of what he was getting into, and was probably safer in the process of doing it.

We signed up for the first group of the morning, leaving the dock at 9:30 for a 90-minute spin. You can rent individual machines or pair up and ride double with no increase in price. In the best father-son tradition we opted for solo water rockets, which turned out to be a wise choice. Four others who approached this as a couples event endured emotional trauma at the launch point, with one reluctant young woman storming away from her boyfriend with these parting words – “I HATE You!” The ever- helpful tour guide said “You’re better off going without her, dude. She wouldn’t have enjoyed it.”

No kidding.

Another couple had the opposite problem – once they were informed that the trip would not be taken at a leisurely pace (It’s a big island, dude), she seemed plenty willing to let him go it alone.

Him: “If you don’t want to come along, I’m OK with skipping it.”
Her: “No, it’s fine. You go and I’ll wait here.”
Him: “We can do something else instead.”
Her: “No, I’m perfectly happy to stay behind. You go.”
Him: “I don’t want to go if you’re not going.”

Both wanted to back out without ruining it for the other, so they rode together. Miserably.

No, those aren't my feet.

My victory? Aside from not dying? I didn’t fall off, hit a dock, a rock, or get run over. Which is remarkable when you consider I was deafened by the engine and blinded by the spray for most of the journey. Keeping up with the guide was a white-knuckle experience, and I couldn’t slow down because I knew there was a single file-line of rookie pilots right behind me, all of them as oblivious to their surroundings as I was, or else fully engaged in arguing with their partner about whether or not they should even be there.

The only part that was more terrifying was the moment when the guide went back to retrieve one member of a two person sled who had tumbled into the water, telling we three individual survivors that we should “just mess around in this area here”, meaning we were supposed to zig-zag around a bit, keeping a sharp eye out for boats, obstacles and each other. Sitting still in the rolling waves presented a strong risk of capsizing, but “messing around” meant we could wind up colliding at high speed. Hmmm. Which would be better?

We chose random skittering about and got so turned around we mistakenly took up with another tour group as they cut across our playground. Oops. My excuse? When you’ve got a snoot full of briny foam and are feeling desperate to be back on land, every passing water jockey looks like Our Dear Leader.

And yes, in spite of it all, the jet ski experience was a definite highlight of the trip. But the next day (and even today) every muscle felt the strain of hanging on for dear life.
I’m glad I did it, and I’m glad it’s done.

When have you been exhilarated AND terrified?

67 thoughts on “Meet The Jetskis”

  1. Ah, I sympathize, Dale! I think my water skiing attempt when I was a teen would rank right up there. I eventually got “ski-borne” about the 3rd try, and I was on these clunky wide beginner skis, but it was wonderful to finally be up, and we did the loop around Clear Lake (Iowa) without mishap. Came in for a landing near the dock, and my knees were shaking so bad I could hardly stand.

    Curious – do you think will you try it again next year? 🙂

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  2. Rise and Shine Baboons!

    Dale, this was Laugh Out Loud funny–you had me snorting coffee, the true indication of successful Baboon humor. Also, you have inspired a new nickname for yourself on this blog–Our Dear Leader–to replace “Alpha Baboon.” Perhaps you and Gus could do an audio skit for the blog–this begs for some parody.

    Frankly I have found most of life terrifying and exhilerating, each morning thinking, “What will happen today?” I guess it is a good thing I am an optimist or I’d never get out of bed. My business experience has been exhilerating and terrifying. Just paying the tax payments some quarters has been such a challenge, but with the IRS there to inspire my compliance I never miss one.

    When I was in college at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, I would go visit my Aunt and Uncle in near by Nevada. My uncle had a plumbing contractor business which was very lucrative. But Uncle Hugo was also a child of the depression who quit school in the 8th grade to support his fatherless family. He never forgot that, and was always motivated to pay as few taxes as possible. The IRS was motivated to MAKE him pay taxes. I was there several times while the IRS was auditing him and I had nice chats with the agents who were laboriously examining the receipts, one-by-one, for the year in question. My uncle found it exhilerating to out run the IRS. I was terrified for him. They never “got him,” of which he was very proud

    Just this a.m. I finished reading yesterday’s entries:

    PJ welcome home.
    BiB congrats on the new kids
    BiR Happy Belated 29th birthday
    MIG fun blog entry.

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  3. First lines is perect, Dale and rest is great.
    Told you all about this a year ago: my son driving us up to Lick Observatory and back, with height-challenged me white-knuckled in the back seat. But it was the highlight of the trip.

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  4. Good morning to all. I am similar to you, Dale, when it comes to doing things like riding on a jet ski. That is something that I would not enjoy very much.

    Your jet ski experience reminds me of my trip to explore a cave with some cavers that I knew. When I was shown the narrow entrance to the cave that we explored, I wasn’t sure I wanted to go into it and I was frighten almost the entire time that we were in the cave. I didn’t like crawling in narrow passages and going under places where I thought the ceiling of the cave might come down on me. I did see a few unusual cave dwelling insects that were of interest to me and I’m glad I did get to see the inside of a cave like that one. That is an experience that I probably will not repeat.

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  5. Jet skis in Key West – niiiice! I live 10 minutes from the ocean and know a couple of people who own jet skis, but I never do go out on them. I have only used a jet ski when I’m on holiday somewhere else, as ridiculous as that is. Just seems to me like such a “vacation” type of thing to do, for some reason!

    “Exhilarated and terrified” pretty much sums up the moment when I went into labor with my daughter. That ride to the hospital (and the 11 or so hours following it) brought on the most panic and the most excitement I’ve ever felt in my life. I was simultaneously scared that I wasn’t ready yet, that things were happening too fast and spinning out of control, and overjoyed that I would finally be able to see and hold my child. I’m generally a fairly calm and level-headed type of gal, so the very complex and intense set of emotions I was feeling that day probably would have been overwhelming if not for my husband and family being so calm and supportive. Also, the IV drip they eventually gave me took the edge off considerably. Morphine – ask for it by name! 🙂

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    2. saw anne lamotte last night . wonderful author who has done a second take on her operating instructiuons book on the birthing and then raising of her son as a single mom. the new book is called “some assembly required” is co written with her son on his becoming a father at age 19. great line from the new book having a child is realizing you have a terminal illness but in a good way.
      having children is the most exhilerating and scary thing i have done and its not even my body at risk.

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  6. When I was a junior in high school our church youth group went on a canoe trip in the Boundary Waters. I have never been a real fan of small boats, and we had to set out on our trip in a windy rain storm. It was terrifying and exhilarating to paddle that canoe quite a distance in the strong wind and waves until we reached our first portage.

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  7. Beautifully conceived and written, Dale! We’ve missed you.

    I’m the sort of liberal ecofreak who hates jetskis and snowmobiles, and like most other liberal ecofreaks I am a horrible hypocrite who would be thrilled to take a ride on one of those noisy, polluting machines. I vaguely remember my first ride in a bass boat with a 200-horsepower motor (in southern Florida). The boat’s owner asked, “Is yer hat on good?” Then he hit the throttle and the bass boat leaped forward, although my stomach and lungs remained back at the dock. And it was fun.

    As someone who has spent a lifetime as an outdoor sportsman, I have been exhilarated and terrified many, many times. I canoed May’s Rips in spring, when a mistake is potentially fatal. I’ve canoed The Falls at night, when you try to keep the canoe from crashing on rocks you can hear but not see. I’ve been storm-tossed on Lake Superior in tiny boats many times. On one trip my fellow writer (a guy I dearly hated by the end of that trip) got so scared that he emptied himself with a stunning set of explosions from his body’s top opening and the bottom one . . . at the same time. I hadn’t known that was possible! I survived a long early spring ride on heaving Lake Michigan in a little canoe, and what was so terrifying was that my captain was a total fool and drunk who was incompetent to run anything with more moving parts than a rock. I gripped the sides of his little canoe so hard I’m sure my fingerprints are deeply embossed in the aluminum to this day. I was a passenger in an old pickup truck driven by my rancher friend, Larry, when he made a mad chase after an antelope over rough prairie without a road. The Ford did that trip in a series of leaps in which the whole truck was airborne most of the time, touching ground every 20 feet or so before launching into another leap, and only my total faith in Larry kept me from vomiting all over the dashboard.

    I don’t want to get windy here. People who are passionate about outdoor recreation might have experiences like this every few weeks. And no, you don’t get used to it. I remember one boat trip among icebergs on Lake Superior in a wilderness area where nobody could have saved us or even known that we had died. I told myself at the end of that trip, “Well, apparently we aren’t going to die here today.” And I was as surprised as relieved by that.

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    2. Amazing number of adventures you’ve had, Steve, and such a great descriptive post about them! I’m a lot tamer than you with regard to outdoor adventuring, so I envy the fact that you’ve done all that stuff (except for the part where your writer friend was losing his chizz while you were in the boat with him).

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      1. Thanks. I didn’t explain (trying to be brief) that the guy who “lost it” after the Lake Superior ride actually made it to a men’s room before he lost it. What was impressive was how high on the walls he shot his stuff . . . awww, I don’t want to say more about that!

        Guys who hunt and fish seriously often have scary experiences, and I had at least one close brush with death.

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    3. When I was around 8 or 10 years old, one of my father’s clients offered to take my parents & I on a ride in a hyrdoplane. I don’t remember being too keen on the idea from the get go but, somehow, got talked into (or coerced) into going. I have no clue what speeds we reached… all I know is I was the most terrified I’ve ever been. The picture of me on the dock at the end of that run was a very different one from Dale’s. I was a sobbing, hysterical mess… and I peed my pants (literally).
      http://thunderboats.ning.com/video/slo-mo-shun-unlimited-hydroplane-speed-run

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  8. Morning all… sorry I haven’t been around the last few days. Beth Ann and MiG… excellent posts!

    My all time fear-laden exhilaration was going to China to pick up the baby (now the teenager). Although most folks took either a spouse or friend, I couldn’t afford the travel expenses for another person, so I went alone. Our little group (5 other couples) had a guide/interpreter but the whole paperwork process and the whole “now you have sole responsibility for this baby” process was terrifying. Seeing the Chinese culture upclose was fabulous and trying to survive all the Chinese cuisine makes for a good story, even after all these years. And of course the most exhilarating part was my daughter!

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    1. Wow, Sherrilee! I’m so amazed! You must be a really special person. What a story, and what an incredible thing to go to China and return home with a child to love and care for! My daughter’s actually traveling to China in the summer as part of a school trip, but I suspect the only thing she’ll be coming home with are pictures and souvenirs. 🙂 So, any advice on “surviving” the Chinese cuisine? My kid’s already dreading that and asking if they have pizza or hamburgers there. Oy. She doesn’t know what to expect and I’ve never been myself, so I’m not sure what to tell her!

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      1. WTF, you should read Bill Holms ‘Coming Home Crazy’ (about his living in China) …but I’m not sure how relevant that would be in regard to food in the main towns / tourist areas? I’m sure there’s a McDonalds on every corner now isn’t there?

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        1. Supposedly, they will be making a stop at McDonald’s, Ben. It’s actually on the itinerary, because the kids might find it interesting to see the difference between the McDonald’s they know here and the Chinese version. They also have a duck dinner scheduled, which my daughter has already informed me she wants no part of. Her dad’s going with her on the trip, not me, so I wish him luck handling all this food-related drama!

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        2. She’ll be fine… these days in the bigger cities, the Chinese have embraced American fast food big time.

          Ben – I read “Coming Home Crazy” before I went and specifically went out and purchased a Swiss Army knife on his recommendation that it was the most useful tool he had during his time there. Five days into my trip, when I was using it to grind up tablets to dissolve in the baby formula (baby was sick while we were waiting to come home from China), I remember thinking how right Bill Holms was!

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  9. Downhill skiing on a regular beginner (non-bunny) hill was a “once was enough” list of exhilarating and scary all at once. I think I went down a couple of times, but to be perfectly honest, it was the frightening ride on the chair lift that did me in, not the going down the hill part…

    Also, being 16 feet in the air on scaffolding with my legs thrown over a 2X12 beam that was hung from theatrical rigging by airplane wire (attached at one end to a set wall), hammering (yes, hammering – no screw gun – 16 penny nails and a hammer, toe-nailing those puppies in) 1x4s at an angle to look like roof framing for a set…yeah – that was one of those terrifying and exhilarating moments. I wasn’t fond of the height, and not fond of how much of me had to be hanging off the scaffolding to do the work – but it felt really good to know I had the skills to whack those nails in with a minimum of swings without bending nails or losing too many to the floor those many feet below, all the while balancing the lumber I was attaching with the rest of my body…I told the designer I thought that it would look cool when we were done, but was unconvinced, his arguments to the contrary, that real roof carpenters have to do that sort of thing.

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  10. BiB – beautiful babies. Thank Steve for updating the blog so quickly. I love the video w/ the little wagging tails!

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    1. Hi, All – too busy to hang much lately. Steve got the Kona blog up and this morning Lassi presented us with twin doelings that she had all by herself sometime during the night. she kept it a big secret – i checked her last night before bed and she seemed not ready to go yet. she’s a stinker, but we’re so relieved all three are doing well. expect a blog update sometime soon – Steve’s working on it, but might take until tomorrow.
      now Dreamy, very very very soon.
      hope the next three go as well as the last two.
      Lassi’s (yogurt themed) doelings’ name will be Raita and Tzatziki
      Kona (coffee themed) are Macchiato and Pingado (bucklings) and Arabica (doeling)
      they’re like popcorn today already. happy.
      thanks for the good wishes.
      ‘bye

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  11. Wow, welcome back Dale! So glad you made it back safely! Thanks for sharing your tale of exhilaration and terror. I don’t think I’d feel much exhilaration IF I ever tried jet skiing. I’m quite sure I’d only feel the terror. I share Steve’s “liberal eco-freak” opinion of such machines. Like the wife of your second couple, I’d be more than happy to wait on shore somewhere, soaking up sun and reading a (real) book.

    The most exhilarating and terrifying memory I have is of canoeing on the Cannon River one year on March 24, right after the ice had gone out and with patches of snow still on the ground. The water temperature was right around 36 degrees. It was amazing that we were wearing our life jackets. As we rapidly approached a snag in the river, my partner hollered at me to “grab onto the roots!” Someone in another canoe simultaneously yelled, “Push off!” So, I grabbed on and pushed off and in one smooth roll, the canoe dumped my partner and I and my mom’s canoe straight into the deep, cold Cannon River. I remember the involuntary convulsions my diaphragm made. I was aware of keeping my head above water. I was a strong swimmer and with the help of the strong current, made it to the next deadfall snag which had conveniently placed itself in the middle of the river in order to save my miserable life. I looked back for John. He was near me but all the way under water. With my left hand holding the snag, I pulled him up by the collar of his shirt. He reached up for the snag and we both climbed up. I watch my mom’s aluminum canoe spiral downward through the brown water, a silver flash as it turned and lodged itself under the snag. (I had to hire a salvage crew to get it out later and my mom has never let me use it again.) So now, I just get my exhilaration from the pages of a (real) book, safe and warm at home on my couch.

    It’s been really hard for me to keep up with everything lately, but all of you have done such a good job with the guest posts. I’ve read and enjoyed it all. With regard to yesterday’s discussion about books vs e-readers, I choose books too. I love the smell of them (someone else mentioned this). I have two favorites: Robert Louis Stevenson’s “A Child’s Garden of Verses” and an illustrated, hardcover Kahlil Gibran “The Prophet.” Both are gorgeous and I love them dearly.

    Welcome back to Dale, Alanna and PJ! You have been missed. Alanna, I’ve thought of you often and wondered where you’d gone. PJ, I hope you continue to mend – glad you’re home. Happy birthday, Barbara, and congratulations, Barb, on the lovely kids!

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      1. I have an unusually low tolerance for river canoeing now, Steve. I’ll go on a nice, placid lake but I’m a basket case in a canoe on a river. It was a really scary experience.

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  12. i had forgotten scaffolding. i had a construction job where the foreman was pissed he got a hippy instead of his typical beer drinking rednecks in that industry and he gave me a task to take the scaffolding down in a 70’s mega high school auditorium with tall tall ceilings, 50 feet of so. he gave me a partner who was afraid of heights so my job was to do the testy stuff. you get that little tingle that runs up your legs and literally tickles when the adrenalin fear kicks in. it always makes me laugh that my fear tickles. i know i am going through with it but it interesting that i am obviously sending out an alarm to keep my senses a little more tuned in than normal.
    mountain climbing is the best example for me. i have not done the stuff with gear, just going aroun the corner on the mountain where the question of if you can come back again is dealt with after the corner rather than before gets my heart pumping pretty good. i am not always sure i would do it the same way again and in fact i often would like do overs but once you are there you deal with what you have in front of you.
    a couple of car trips, a couple of walking into the middle of situations where i would have like to be able to pull out my invisibility cloak after the fact. fast talking fast acting and going forward with commitment and recommitment are the stuff life is made of. the earlier mentioned canoe stuff is a good illustration. my kayaking experiences are that you need to decide then commit fully to going for the hole you see in the rapids knowing the parameters of your abilities and factoring in the stuff that is decision making. you gotta find out how far to push it in order to fully appreciate the everyday challanges. .

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  13. Morning–

    In the show ‘Into The Woods’ there is a lyric, “…Well, excited and scared…” that we often repeat at our house. And I know this group has talked about the ‘Scare yourself a little bit everyday’ mentality…

    There’s also this from ‘Into the woods’. Not relevant but fun:
    [JACK’S MOTHER]
    look at her. (referring to a cow)

    (singing)
    There are bugs on her dugs.
    There are flies in her eyes.
    There’s a lump on her rump
    Big enough to be a hump-

    [JACK]
    But-

    [JACK’S MOTHER]
    Son,
    (singing)
    We’ve no time to sit and dither,
    While her wither’s wither with her-
    And no one keeps a cow for a friend!

    Sometimes I fear your touched.

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    1. I love that gardening! I’ve used the straw bales to make excellent garden pathways. You can break a bale into “slices” and lay the slices between your beds as mulch, weed deterrent and a comfy place to walk barefoot. At the end of the season, they’re great to use as compost!

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    3. Yes, I have neighbors who have done the straw bales at community gardens. Excellent choice for for locations that may possibly have contaminated soil – the bales are easier than constructing raised beds.

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    4. I think this might be a good solution for parts of my back yard that were once landscaped long ago and became a tangle of weeds sometime before we moved in…still fighting back volunteers and landscaping plastic – but this might be a way to have a few things in corners here and there (and would, perhaps, finally kill off the crud I haven’t been able to kill on my own without resorting to chemicals).

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    5. Wow… this looks great. I’ve been planning on trying out raised bed for tomatoes this summer (the pots just aren’t cutting the mustard) but this looks like it might be a better solution for my back yard! THANKS!!!!

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      1. VS – Be sure to check out Earth Boxes as well. Excellent container gardening with fabulous results — even for a non-gardener like me. I’m talking prolific, 6-8 foot tall tomato plants.

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  15. This is a great question, Dale – much enjoying the roller coaster ride that is reading through the entire blog today. Thought of something else – the time Husband and I towed one car behind the other – with just a big long heavy rope. Uffda, no… ish da. I had to drive the trailing car. I don’t recall now what car was pulling what, but I think the trailing car was at least the lighter one. 🙂 I just remember being terrified that my reflexes wouldn’t be quick enough and I’d end up slamming into the towing car. I imagine we weren’t going very fast, maybe max 35 – we certainly didn’t get on the freeway – but it was white knuckles all the way. (I’m sure this is highly illegal… what were we thinking?)

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      1. They certainly do a good job of marketing the sunset in Key West, VS. I did not see a green flash but the sunrises and sunsets were lovely whenever I looked. My (jaded) attitude towards it was that seeing the sun disappear at the end of the day was the only part of the Key West experience I was absolutely certain I could have at home.
        We did go to the Hemmingway house and enjoyed it more than we expected to. I can’t claim to have read a lot of his work, but I can’t imagine he’d be happy with the way things turned out. Writers put so much sweat into their art and have such a slim chance at fame it seems laughably cruel of the universe to make Ernest Hemmingway the brand name that comes to mind when tourists see a pack of toe-ful cats.

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        1. Dear Dale,
          Listening to WCQS this morning, I had to do a double and triple take; the announcer’s voice sounded just like yours for about 30 seconds before becoming his own again. I’m vowing to listen to some archived shows again, starting tomorrow.
          But about sunrises/sets. . .up on the North Shore of Lake Superior, in the winter, you can watch the sun rise and set over the lake. Of course, you have to be situated on a peninsula of some kind, rather than a bay, but it’s pretty amazing.
          Last time I was up there, there were no jetskis, but there is the occasional plane to break up the quietude.
          Great to hear “you” again!

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  17. I am usually the spectator to adventure. When we were in Hawaii I used the hotel coupons to arrange a “gentle” kayak ride in the ocean for my 12 year old with the broken leg. It was a gorgeous day and I accepted the introduction of the strong nephew who would take my child into the ocean off Diamond Head for an hour. I tried to be calm, but by the end of 2 hours when they were not back survival seemed to be out of the question. At 2.5 hours they paddled in smiling. They had a much better time than I did and didn’t have a watch so were in no hurry to come back.

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  18. For those of you who have expressed some interest in reading my novel: I guess I am ready to let it go. But there is the question of how to get it to anyone. It is 350 pages (and that is not double-spaced). I am not right now ready to print off multiple copies and mail them, just for the expense. It cost all told about $11 to 12 is my guess to print it up and mail it to my sister. Mailing was $6.00 to SD. If you do not know, the library rate no longer exists. I am guessing an email attachment will be a long transfer.
    We could done one of two things I guess. 1) I can send out CD’s. That means you read on screen or you print all those pages or you read on screen. 2) I could print up a copy and you mail it to one person who could pass it on. The three who I remember expressing interest are Steve, tim, and Barbara in Robbinsdale. Since you are all Cities folks, although in three corners of the Cities, transfer could be dome maybe at the book club or by a meeting.
    Let me know your interests and ideas.
    cbirkholz@hickorytech.net

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    1. It’s not called “library rate” any more, it is “Media Mail.” I use Media Mail all the time because I mail books quite often.

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  20. media mail will get it there for 4 bucks or so. use it on your cd also it will save me a buck or two. do you have an account i can send paypal to? or just send it in an envelope via snail mail is fine.

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