Imagery
New York, 2006
The next day we went water-skiing beneath a beautiful blue sky that tried to pretend it hadn’t dumped bucketloads of rain on us the night before. Hyunjin took this picture, because at this point I think I was already in the water and getting my skis on. I include this shot because you would never guess from Brian’s smile here that he just badly bruised a rib with a pretty wicked fall. He’s always been quite the trooper.
And as fate would have it, Matthew just happened to be recording at the moment that Brian exited stage left. It is with great pleasure that I present to you: Brian’s wicked fall. At the start of the video (you might have to turn the sound way up to hear anything) you can hear my dad saying, “Oh, look at what’s coming!” He’s referring to one of the ferries that plies the lake. They are very big boats, and they have very big wakes that make for some fun waterskiing.
Anyway, Brian was trying to pull off a double wake jump, where you swing out as far to one side as you can and then cut back in across the wake, hopping over both sides. He failed to land the first jump properly, but he was too committed to stop himself and down he went. If you listen closely, right before Matthew (almost gleefully) shouts “Down! He’s definitely down!” you can hear me say, “Oh, he’s down” before Brian even hits the water. I knew there was no way he was going to recover.
Thanks again to Matt for the video. Sorry B, but this cracks me up every time I watch it.