Jet Ski World Finals

Today was the fifth day of racing for the Jet Ski World Finals, and I decided to get some photos of the vendor row, or "Performance Alley."









As the sun set, I headed over to the other side of the property to check out the motocross races (big piece of property, to have World Finals on one side and motocross on the other)
Shay's dad has him racing motocross, and I've never been able to get to one of his races. They're usually scheduled while I'm out of town or working at some other event.
As I weaved through the thousands of people, I looked over at the track to see what age group was racing. I had no idea where to find Shay.
Then this tall blonde kid came walking toward me, I could see him out of the corner of my eye. It was Shay! I guess I forget how tall he's gotten.

I was not in time to see his first race, and his next wouldn't be for two more hours. So I took a couple of photos.



Here's Shay and his dad:



And, no, his dad did NOT look like that when we were together.
That whole look is a part of his new life.

Parade Nonsense

It seems I've been in the parade every year for the past ten years. My family has never seen me in it, because they don't come. But I always find old friends along the parade route and say "Hi!"
Today my parade entry was to promote the upcoming farmer's market that I'm working on. And since the band backed out, I couldn't talk anyone into helping me on parade day, and I knew I really really REALLY needed to get out there and promote the market, I did it.
And it turned out pretty nice...



I had antiques, flowers, ivey vines, paper flowers, flags, a quilt, and of course pumpkins. All with the ton of hay bales. I wore the biggest cowboy hat I could find, and waved my rake and flag down the street.

My neighborhood (during parade staging) was one that seemed a bit circus-like. There were the Agave Queens, next door:


And the harem behind me:



I think that's Heather on the inside of the tent. Giving me some gang signs.

She posed with me before we took off:



She also walked up the street with me to see the creepy camels:



What a huge parade. It began at 10:00, my float was towards the back so I didn't get moving until 11:40, and we were done with the parade route at 12:30.

Exhausting.

I Saw Someone Die

I almost never see things as they happen. I'm usually caught up in everything else going on around me and I fail to see the moment as it arrives.
Unfortunately I saw something yesterday, and I only saw it because I just happened to be looking in its direction.

When I work at the jet ski races, I don't watch the racers if I'm not scoring them. Yesterday I was walking around taking a survey of the spectators (it's for the Convention & Visitor's Bureau, not just for fun) and as I spoke to someone I gazed toward the nearby water. There was a race going, and I saw two very large jet skis hit each other, very hard. When these guys are racing, they are going 60-70 miles per hour. That's a pretty tough hit to your body, should you be unlucky enough to sustain it.

As I watched the medics pull the hurt rider from the water, I could tell that this was a very, very bad accident. Indeed, it was...he was gone.

His name was Cesare Visrara, an Italian racer who was no stranger to the World Finals that's held here every October. We've had almost thirty years of Jet Ski World Finals on Lake Havasu and there's never been a fatality. It was shocking, to say the least.

I was a bit pensive last night, thinking about how surreal it must be for the guy's family. Maybe they came with him, but most likely they did not. He raced all the time, and to go halfway around the world to see him in yet another race probably wasn't reasonable. So they hear from his teammates over the phone that he went to Arizona and was tragically killed during a race. How does someone deal with that? They're thousands of miles away and they can't even go to him and say their goodbyes.

It makes you think about your loved ones, where they are, and what kind of effort it would take to go to them and make sure they are okay.

Desert Ranch

On Sunday Steve and I took the plane out since the weather finally dropped below a thousand degrees.
He had the excursion planned, with some interesting places to explore. A friend of his owns some acreage out in the middle of nowhere. Literally. We flew there and landed on the dirt runway.



We checked out the cool little cabin hidden under the salt cedar trees:



Oh look the out house has such beautiful lighting!



As this photo snapped Steve joked that it would be a portrait of us in front of our future retirement home:



The salt cedars were enormous, being fed by the ground water of the nearby Bill Williams River.



We also flew to a bump in the road called Vidal Junction, California. Not far from there is the home where Wyatt Earp and his wife Josie lived out their retirement.
I wish we'd have gone there instead! Vidal Junction is the California border, and there's a convenience store nearby. And homeless people. They sure had their world rocked by an airplane landing in their desert. We parked near the sign to a now defunct trailer park and hotel.



Not a lot to photograph there, so we moved on.

Maybe this weekend we'll have more adventures.

The Obama Nobel Prize

Apparently Will wants me to rant about the Obama Nobel. Quite frankly, I can't. You know that rule, "If you can't say anything nice...." well that's not the reason why I don't have much to say about it. I'm just not surprised at all that the Nobel committee would cheapen such a prestigeous award. Those scientists, those authors, those activists of the past have seriously EARNED their prize and they've got to be wondering now if maybe the Nobel committee has decided to completely change their criteria.
Or maybe the Nobel committee has just taken leave of their senses.

Muscles. Extra Muscles.

This past Saturday I was the Finish Line for a Stand Up Paddle Boarding race on the lake. The Finish Line was under the London Bridge (World Famous, mind you)

I learned all about Stand Up Paddle Boarding last week. It's similar to a surf board, but the rider has a kayak paddle of sorts and just paddles along like they would in a kayak. But standing straight up. My friend tried it (Kenny!) and said it was the toughest ab workout he'd ever done. It's hard-core training for the core of the body.
These Paddle Boarders had an eight mile track on the lake. In between each mile they had to stop at the beach, run up and check in, and then run back to their board and hit the lake again. Then they paddled their last mile over to see me at the Finish. Does your body hurt thinking about that? Mine does.

We had forty participants, and the winner was a fifty-something muscle-bound smiley guy who did the race without a problem. E.J. was his name.

Well, E.J., you're a better man than I.....