Nice Ride

Got off work Saturday morning and took the jet ski for a leisurely little ride on the waterways around Borg Hive Southwest. Since Saturday was the day of our annual employee crawfish boil, it didn't make much sense to waste a two-hour round trip back home, then come back for the crawfish boil and hang around for a few hours until my shift started.

So, I towed my ski to work Friday night, got off the rig bright and early Saturday morning at 0700, and headed straight for the boat launch. I figured I'd plug my iPod into my ears, point the Kawasaki's nose south, and see what I could see.

I made it all the way to the Gulf of Mexico, about 35 miles south of my launch point.

If that's not the Gulf, it's close enough for government work. I actually got a couple miles further out than this, but the wave action was bad enough that it required both hands and all my concentration just to keep the ski upright, much less snap any photos.

Further inland, the water is much more placid.

The water's brackish here, and this far south the spray certainly tastes like sea water when it hits you in the face. It's not as pretty as the Ouachita River near my hometown of Monroe, but it'll do. On a typical ride, I'll see alligators, tailing redfish, ibis, snowy egrets, great blue herons, roseate spoonbills, brown pelicans, ducks and gulls aplenty, and once, what I'm pretty sure was a bull shark almost as big as my ski.

Turns out my Kawasaki has pretty good legs. At full throttle it'll haul 400 pounds of me and KatyBeth at 60 mph, but it sucks gas. If you keep it below 5000 rpm, though, it'll still do 30 mph, and will make the 70-mile round trip on one tank.

Unfortunately, I didnt consider that doing the trip at half-speed also exposed me to the sun for twice as long. Right now, I'm about as red as the crawfish I ate later that afternoon.

Ouch.