We didn’t expect this… and surprisingly most of the Sicilians we have talked to didn’t know about wakeboarding here. A couple of my hockey teammates grabbed Jess and I and took us to a random lake in the middle of Sicily. The lake is called Lago Nicoletti and its near the town of Enna.
The lake is incredible because its a natural reserve and not a single house in the area! It was like we were explorers and discovered this lake. I don’t think I have ever seen a lake that didn’t have any kind of development around it… and I have seen a lot of lakes growing up in Michigan.
Back to the wakeboarding…. Jess and I have never done it.  I was very skeptical because despite my many years of surfing in San Diego, I failed miserably at snowboarding. I don’t like the feeling of being locked into the board in an awkward stance. Surfing is nice because you can move your feet around as you please. Wakeboarding looked like it was going to be another snowboarding experience for me.  Our group all went through the rounds and made it look pretty easy. Then my friend Luca (also a first timer) tried a few times and had some wipeouts, but eventually got it.  So this gave me some confidence to just give it a shot and see what happened. It started out as a disaster!
Three times in a row I tried to do what everyone was telling me to do in broken english. “Keep your butt down” , “keep your arms straight”, “keep the board horizontal until its ready”.. but when is it ready I asked myself? All that kept happening was I kept my butt down and strained my arms as the boat pulled them out of the sockets… and I would turn into a human torpedo … just like the torpedos that you see in old submarine movies! Eventually I couldn’t hold any longer and the rope would snap out of my hand and the speed boat would have to turn back around.  The Italians threw the rope out to me like I was a jumbo buoy just bobbing around in the middle of the lake… and thats exactly how I felt. I gave it one more try and for some reason as the boat started pulling I had a breakthrough!  Turn the board earlier.  For some reason I was thinking that I was going to have the board horizontal when I got to my feet, but I needed to turn the dang thing to pop up.  I don’t know why no one told me this!! I should have figured it out, but its a lot easier blaming them for my embarrassment. 🙂
After that it was smooth sailing and I was popping to my feet with ease and cruising around.  Up next was Jess. I was nervous for her! Jess’s nickname when she was young was “twiggy” and not too much has changed since then….ha. Thats all that Im going to say so that I don’t get into too much trouble here. But as usual the joke was completely on me because super nervous Jess popped up to her feet the very first pull!! We were all in shock! My friend Luca and I (Both super tough hockey players 😉 ) struggled to stand up and Jess just cracked it in her first try. Needless to say I was very proud of Jess and I have some videos and pics of our adventure below.
Don’t tell “Primitive Man” about this lake, ha!
Oh geeze…this is embarassing. That video is deceiving, when you are on the board being towed, you feel like you are going 100 miles an hour! I look like I’m just cruising here…you should have posted the faceplant video instead, ha…that hurt. Gotta love our Italian friends – they were so encouraging!