World Barefoot Center Day Three and Four

I’m blown away.  The gals who are at Women’s Barefoot Week at the World Barefoot Center are nothing but phenomenal.  A breast cancer survivor/dentist who does a front-to-back effortlessly.  A gal with a broken neck who’s back on the water after a two-year hiatis.  67, 66, 61, 60 and 58 and 50 year olds, all doing toe-holds, backward barefooting, tumble turns and more.  A bunch of younger gals– some relatively new to barefooting and others who are pros.  What a great mix of women!

Swampy, Keith and David gamely joined the fun.  They got in touch with their feminine side this week.

As they came out of the house one by one in their pretty, pink “Handle Boy” t-shirts and skirts, the laughter roared on and on.  At first, it was clear they weren’t too comfortable in their dainty wear, but they soon loosened up and pranced around.   Take a look at the sexy legs on these guys:

On Day Three and Four, I focused on learning the backward deep water start.  I had this start on my vision board at home– a picture of Judy Myers skiing backwards.   Yesterday morning, I got up on shoe skis for a very short time and fell.  In the afternoon, I tried again.  On my second try, I found myself staring down at the water and thinking, “Wow, the water’s quite a ways down there…” and I realized I was up and skiing backwards!

What an amazing feeling!  As the boat idled back, the whole gang was standing up waving some deaf applause and signing “awesome!”  I’ll treasure this day forever!

I finished off the set doing doubles with Judy Myers.  Most of you know the story– I was inspired to get back on the water after seeing Judy  on the Today show.  So it was a great honor and pleasure to ski with the gal who helped me unwrap a passion that was buried long ago! Thank you, Judy– you’re awesome and you ROCK!