Three days since the snow stopped, we’re still digging out. A blizzard bonanza indeed! We’re packed and ready to ski tomorrow morning, Susan alpine skiing and yours truly telemark skiing. (Free the heal!) so snow focused are we that I can’t resist the temptation to switch things up a little bit with a flashback to our 1st wake surfboard sessions on May 19 and 20, 2012.
Incongruous? Decidedly. But sometimes that’s exactly what you need!
By the summer of 2012 Susan and I had been slalom skiing together for 11 years. We loved it. We taught others to love it. And we longed for it during the off-season…
And then we got wind of wake surfing. Riding a surfboard behind a ski boat. And of course we had to try it.
The board pictured in this post was pretty prototypical. First generation. Wake surfing v 1.0. Looots of length and volume. Round, soft edges. Pretty. REALLY pretty. But also pretty far from the wake surfboards we ride today. 
And if you’re at all familiar with water sports on Lake Champlain, you know that May 19 and May 20 is early season. The water temperature is still super cold. And so you’ll know in these photos that Susan’s wearing a dry suit to survive the 30° to 40° water temperature. Truth be told, she pulled her plunges in water, no more than a degree or two above the freezing point. Scandinavian genes, she explains. But when we’re braving the off-season temperatures for any extended period of time in the water, we definitely use wetsuits, and sometimes drysuits. 
With a brand new watersport and a semi steep learning curve, especially on the ultra floaty, soft edged board that we taught ourselves to wake surf with, we spent a LOT of time in the water. Drysuits were critical.
With a dozen wakesurfing seasons behind us, it’s easy to look back and laugh at this funny board and at the goofy times we enjoyed learning how to surf it. It’s also easy to recognize how lucky I am to have a married this incredible woman!
Off to the mountains to see the fresh powder with her tomorrow. Thank you, Susan, for tackling one adventure after another with me. Let’s get some rest and make more memories tomorrow morning. 
What do you think?