This fourth of July, I spent at least half of the day lounging in a swing on the deck of a good friends lakehouse deck. I sat underneath a slow spinning fan, blades drooping, and dozed underneath the bill off my lake water soaked hat. But for the other half of the day, I was doing figure eights wherever I could find some free water out on lake travis. I'd take the gas powered dolphin out there straight across the middle of the lake and just give it a as much juice as I could, looking both ways of course to make sure one of those fountain monsters wasn't racing from one end of the lake to the other. I'd just squeeze the throttle, stand up and jut my chin out closing my eyes once or twice, water spitting and stinging my chin, and wind dampening the other noise of boaters and kids playing in the water. For some reason wind in your ears and hair always feels better when there's a little bit of water mixed in.

So I'd gun it, and then throw the handle bars to the right or to the left and let the rear end slide around and start sinking, stalling (this doesn't look as cool as it feels from far away). It couldn't keep up with what I actually wanted it to do. It wasn't novel or anything like that, but everytime I slowed down to let the thing slide back into the dock entrance, I'd look at everyone on the dock, me smiling, them smiling but not really paying attention, and then I'd throw the handle bars and squeeze the throttle (SUPRISE!!) which looks almost exactly like the brake that you might find on a bike, motorcycle, moped and many other modes of two wheel transportation. Don't ever drive a moped right after you get off of a waverunner. Very dangerous. So like I was saying, I just couldn't let the thing slide into the dock like you're supposed to, I'd always think, just as I was pulling into the "no wake" zone, that I should go spin around a few more times, that I might not ever get to spin around like that again. And it was so hard to just let the engine idle and bring it in, put it to rest.

No no no!! One more spin, I'd think to myself. And then spray the people on the dock, the nose pointing about 45 degrees in the air for the first couple of seconds. It just felt better to come in when the gas light was down to the last bar, that's all. And I didn't understand how anybody else could resist the urge to steer themselves back out away from the "the end of fun". I was amazed at every rider who simply turned off the engine floated in on the very first time. What self control these people had.