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By Doug Kemp
My name is Doug and I am a proud Colorado native. I grew up in Loveland, Colorado where I went to Mountain View High School. After finishing grade school I was accepted to Colorado State University, where I studied economics and business. I was very fortunate as a kid and grew up on a lake with my parents and older brother.
As kids we loved to swim and go out in the boats. As you can imagine, we did many watersports with friends and family. A few of our favorites were wakeboarding, slalom skiing, surfing, air chairing (if you don’t know what this is, look it up it’s awesome), and of course tubing. When we were in high school wakeboarding was definitely our favorite. To compare it to another sport, it’s like riding a snowboard on water. There’s nothing like jumping the wake, landing that 360, or stomping a flip. But don’t be fooled, it comes with its fair share of hard falls, bloody noses, and minor concussions. As we have grown older, we have really taken to slalom skiing. Slalom skiing is when you only ride on one ski and “slalom” back and forth as best you can behind the boat. Slalom skiing is a very competitive sport. The lake we lived on had a “competition course” where buoys are set up in a straight line. The boat drives through the middle, called gates and there are two buoys that alternate sides for each gate. The inner buoy is green and the outer is red. Your objective is to get around the outside of the first red buoy then ski as fast as you can to the other side to get around the next red buoy. There are 6 gates total to get through. I have been practicing and trying for years to get all the red buoys in the course. After many failed attempts I was finally able to get all the red buoys this past July. But seriously, you should look up slalom skiing it’s a neat sport!
Over the years since I moved away from the lake I have gained a new-found appreciation for how great life can be living on a lake. There’s nothing like being able to come home from school or work and be able to go out on the lake and relax. It really gives you a different perspective about the city and community that you live in. In fact, when you are out on the water it is like a completely different world. You forget about many of your problems and everything in life seems mellow out. Not to mention you even get a perspective of the city that you can’t find anywhere else. If there’s one last thing that I can say, it’s that although I have moved away, living on a lake is in my blood and I will at some point in my life own a house on a lake and raise a family that will get to enjoy the lake life just as much as I did as a kid.
