"It's not really tubing until somebody splits a lip."

For some reason I have always been attracted to sports or activities where there was a chance of serious injury. I knew I was hooked on water-skiing after my first true bail that resulted in a complete sinus cleansing and consumption of a dangerous amount of lake water. "ohhhh you let go of the tow rope when you fall. Right."

Since it is my first day back from vacation I thought I would give you a little taste of what recreational time is like in the Bennett camp. For about 10 years of my childhood every summer was spent at a lake in Maine water skiing and trying to survive a tube ride with my uncle Steve driving the boat. This summer was no different. We have revived the Bennett summer get-together and since everyone else in my family seems to have become old and boring I brought along my new favorite toy and had to convince the cousins that severe bodily harm on a wake board was a small price to pay for family wide entertainment.

Wake boarding was a great discovery for me because as many of you know, water skiing once a year uses muscles you don't normally recruit meaning 3 mins of fun equals at least a few days of severe pain. Wake boarding on the other hand is much less taxing on the body. You pop right out of the water and since the boat doesn't need to go as fast there is less stress on the muscles. That is unless you face plant right off the start in which case you may not want to give it another go. Also its pretty much like snowboarding on the water. I convinced my cousins to try it out without considering that it may not feel quite as natural if you have never been on a snowboard. Oops. Hopefully they will forgive me. I managed to escape the wake boarding and water skiing with no serious injury so it was indeed time to break out the tube. One we cleaned out the broken glass inside the tube (It had doubled as a beer caddy to the floating dock.....) we were ready to go. The title of this blog is pretty much the family mantra when it comes to tubing so it was no surprise that after kart wheeling off the tube at high speed on my very first dumping I lay in the water for a second thinking..."yup...my neck is definitely broken.." Thankfully feeling returned to my limbs and I was able to shake it off in time to enjoy more family fun.

So back to the 'real' sports as I put aside wake boarding and water skiing for another year-HOWEVER stay tuned on Totally Broad, (every Thursday night at 11pm-my show where we talk about sports outside the mainstream) we will cover both events, street luge and long board, coming up at Top Challenge on the mountain the weekend of August 25th.