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Thursday 26 May 2011

Baltic Wakeboarding - A new Extreme Sport?? & Stormy Edinburgh

So a while ago, the mister and I got vouchers for a beginner's wakeboarding lesson with "on land tuition" and an hour session on the water.... it was only valid until the end of this month and as we're away for the weekend, this week was our last chance to use it... after a week or so of sunny days and warm weather, I was rather looking forward to spending some time on a boat... alas.. mother nature had other ideas...

The weekend was filled with rain.... Monday brought winds up to 150km/hr in some parts of the country... with flights and trains cancelled due to high winds and fallen debris...

Tree branches on sidewalks and on the side of the road...  (this was on my walk home)

If you compare the branch to the road sign, you'll get a feel for how big the branch is!
It's almost as tall as the parking meter...

Loads of broken branches in the park just up the road from my flat... It made me sad... :(

Where the branch is broken is about as wide as a basketball... 
Anywhos... things were not looking promising!! 

Alas, Wednesday morning we sent texts, we sent an email, we called them.. and all replies came back with... conditions are good, we are business as usual! So we hopped in our little City Car and hit the road... it took us 2 hours and quite a lot of... "should we keep going?", "have we passed it?"... "maybe we should turn around?"... but we eventually found where we were going... 

As we pulled into the car park... it started to rain... *sigh*...  the "on land tuition" was about 5mins in the shed telling us how to get up out of the water... with a mini demo of the girl pulling us up using a ski handle... we were then taken down to the jetty and hopped in the boat... 

We both had fun and the mister managed to get out of the water and stand up, which is far better than I fared the first (and second time) I attempted wakeboarding... but Loch Lomond was absolutely baltic!! It's the first time I've ever worn a full wetsuit to wakeboard.. and it was STILL freezing!!  I didn't manage to get any photos because a) everything was so wet, b) my fingers barely functioned due to the fact they were turning purpley blue and c) it was raining too much to get a photo even with my lomo fisheye in its submarine coz the lens was just getting spotted with rain... 

We also got stuck out on the lake in the boat because the boat ran out of gas and when the instructor went to change the gas over, the hose froze and started leaking vapours, but she couldn't get the hose unfrozen to take it off, or unfrozen enough to attach it fully... add to that, the cellphone reception was minimal due to the fact the storm on Monday had knocked out power to the area... and it was a tense 10/20 mins until the other boat came to our rescue!!

No power also meant going bathroom in the dark... and it's great having sensor taps until the power goes out and then the taps don't work at all!! Luckily I had a bottle of water with me so I used that instead... *sigh*

All in all, it was a bit of a trying afternoon but we still had lots of fun... Tho I think we're going to save any future water sporting adventures for much much warmer climes!!! 

Wakeboarding is hard enough work when you're NOT suffering mild hypothermia!!!  I'm totally paying the price today tho... my shoulders and arms are SORE SORE SORE!!
xx Caz

Our reward to ourselves was a super yummy pub dinner on the way home.. stay tuned to see the super cozy pub and what we ate there!!

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