Than_Bogan

Least surprising observation of the day:: Freddie Winter on 1.5 legs looks better than I do on 2.

I love outside the box ideas and I really do think this general idea could work. I don't think there should be credit for shortening the rope on the mini-course, though, because the increments only make sense on the full course. For example, -38 is much harder than -35 on the full course, but in the mini-course those lengths would feel almost the same. We could invent a sequence of lengths for the mini course, but why? Just let mini-coursers use whatever line length they want, and then move to the real buoys when max out speed on the mini!

I actually think mentioning sinusoids is a bad idea. People who have no idea what they are will get nothing, but what's bad is that people who sorta know what they are will end up with a wrong idea in their head that the ski's path is a sinusoid in the slalom course.

Nooooooo! It's all over! How can I wait all the way to Moomba!?!? Until then, I demand weekly "Freddie has improved by 1%" video updates!!

I'm pretty sure it has something to do with Sea Turtles.

Fwiw, Elizabeth Montavon has a big S-lines sticker on her ski and was having more trouble than most with the rope.

I have all these silly streaming subscriptions, but the best entertainment of all costs me nothing. Should I buy some TWBC merch? (But the website's Shop page says coming soon.) Should I donate to something or subscribe to something? (Where/how?) Should I try to buy every product that sponsors TWBC? (I sorta do that, such as S-lines, but usually I don't actually need any of the things the sponsors sell!) Post on every social media platform that I use that TWBC is awesome? (And ... I've now done that... yeah this is as close as I come to social media.) Other?

@Freddie Winter And with your endorsement, I am now up to 1 signature!!! (Btw, I am a BIG fan of intentional misinterpretation, and that is the best one I've seen in a while!) On a related topic, after you heal up, is there any chance you can get into a Transporter accident and duplicate yourself so that you can both ski and announce all of the pro events next year? I am so missing you skiing right now, but next season I'm gonna miss you almost as much in the announcer's booth. Meanwhile, the information on this thread has been very useful, and we found some hopefully-suitable dock floats that we could get delivered to our nearby Home Depot. Thanks all!

I've seen professional dock installers using floating platforms in the neighborhood of 6' x 4'. This seems very handy for taking dock pieces in and out, but I'm struggling to find something like this for sale. Does anybody have recommendations or at least some google search terms that would help?

Back when I actually did Nationals, I always thought it was BIZARRE that it was in the middle of the season. September would have made way more sense. Even earlier would just be goofy. I do appreciate the need to work with school calendars, but those seem all over the map so maybe actually NOT worth overly accommodating? I won't be attending in the future anyhow, but just sharing my past experience.

@Adam Caldwell Yeah -- at the time that was happening, I wondered why they did that stuff, because it seemed soooooo dumb. Many years later, I realized a *lot* of people really get drawn in by it!

@EM_ I 100% agree with the "high road" sentiment here. That's how all things should be, and especially waterskiing! But on an almost-related note, sports do tend to build fan bases in part from rivalries. They don't have to be mean-spirited -- indeed they can be very fun. But it's far easier for a non-expert fan to get drawn into "I wanna beat Regina!!" than "I wanna improve my personal best." Even just a silly montage where a few top folks alternate "no YOU are goin' down" in a non-serious way could grab the attention of a non-expert fan in a way that "actual" waterski content cannot. And regardless, keep making actual waterski content for the BallOfSpray audience!!

The nearest slalom course to Boston is on Lake Cochituate's South Pond in Natick. Unfortunately, it's a pretty tough place to get any ski time unless you have your own boat and crew. There aren't many hours per week that it's actually skiable, and those of us who ski there all have our routines pretty set. There is a "real" club at Dubes Pond in Hooksett NH. Can get there in an hour from Boston on those VERY rare occasions that the traffic is not bad.

There are exactly zero casual viewers of 10 hours of waterskiing. Please don't cater any of the broadcast to this nonexist audience. If we really want to try to involve some casual fans, somebody would need to edit -- and create special commentary for -- some VERY short clips. Honestly doubt that's worth anyone's time, but it at least *could* appeal to casual audience.

@ErinPeckham You've made an extremely compelling case for the inclusion of MW in Nationals. To be clear, I have only one issue, and it has nothing to do the existence of MM/MW/OM/OW. My one and only concern is that when any skier can choose division, it leads to some weird dynamics. Specifically, what division a given skier chooses can significantly impact the results in all of the divisions that skier could have chosen. Perhaps you and Jason already have some good ideas to address this! I personally have only thought of a few options, and I don't love any of them. 1) Get rid of these divisions at Nationals. I'm kinda OK with this, but as I said you've made a compelling case that these divisions add a great deal of value for a certain audience -- and arguably one of the most important audiences for the event. 2) Set a cutoff score (or average or whatever) and those who are above the line must compete in their "super-elite" division. Personally, I think this is the best option, but it's still not great because the threshold would be so arbitrary. Still, I'd rather have a set line rather than the winner of the age division is "the best who chose not to compete in the super-elite division." 3) "Overlay" the super-elites as special prizes. For example, give a giant medal and have a medal ceremony for the 5 best scores by a woman over 35 in any division. This kinda sounds good at first blush, but I don't think it actually works. The conditions could end up drastically different for different age groups, and it would be impractical for the all the top folks to hang around to the very end to see if they got a super-elite medal. Plus it wouldn't have the "feel" of a competition. So here's hoping you have better ideas! Of course, what I'd really want the solution to be is drop MW from Nationals and replace it with an entire tour that is all MW. That would be amazing competition and I would absolutely watch it. But unfortunately, we can't just write a rule that says "now there will be Master Womens tour." A whole lot of people would have to put in a whole lot of work to make that happen. And it's unclear how any of them would get paid for their time. So, yeah, someone do that please. 🙂 And email me the TWBC link!