International (Europe/Japan/Southern Hemisphere) Trip report from waterskiing in Spain

[Eleeski]

Trip report from Spain!



First, I’m totally stoked to have made it here. It’s a real honor to be able to represent the USA in the Senior World Waterski championships.



It has been a difficult path to get here. Competing as a senior is quite different from my younger days. Managing the body’s decay and optimizing what is left is a challenge – both physically and mentally. I had a few good tournaments to get here, now we’ll see what happens.



The trip really started a couple days ago. Flights out of LA to Madrid were so much cheaper that we rented a car and drove from San Diego to LA via Bakersfield. Actually, I needed a practice ride behind the same boat as Worlds to test out my recovering hamstring. Good dinner with my son on the way there, good ski ride (I’ll be able to do an easy run) and a nice swim to loosen up for the flight. An hour delay for catering (they shouldn’t have waited – bad airline food) and we were off.



Madrid airport is pretty cool, they have enough customs people to make the entry experience easy. Tried to rent a Fiat Panda but got a VW instead. Bare bones, manual transmission and no GPS (we had Lisa’s phone set up for Europe so no problem). Followed directions perfectly through a very confusing drive to the airport hotel and had a nice night there.



Practice was early at the site so we dragged our jetlagged bodies into the car early. The embassy (McDonalds) next door wasn’t open yet and it was pitch black. We headed on the 40 minute drive to Seseena following our detailed directions. The GPS on Lisa’s phone wouldn’t work (we should have been aware, it didn’t work in LA the day before either, hmmm)



Somewhere I missed a turn. The road signs are quite different and we thought we were going right – until the sun started to rise and we realized that something was wrong. The rental car map was worthless. We pulled into a town and asked a guy for directions. Very confusing, especially when we went the wrong way. No turn around for several kilometers and the traffic circles made us feel like the Griswalds. After going nearly to Portugal, we got to the site 3 hours late.



Howling wind, a bit chilly, people stressing over practice and a travel weary leg – I’m better of without practice. Mediocre lunch at the hotel with a bunch of waterskiers and we had arrived!



To fill the afternoon, we went touristing to the Spanish Royal’s summer palace in Aranjuez. It started pouring rain so we missed the garden tour (sorry no pictures as cameras weren’t allowed inside). Beautiful castle meticulously maintained.



The rain stopped for us to get a nice swim and party in the room with some of the skiers. Nice afternoon.



Woke up jetlagged. Tossed and turned with the fight or flight adrenaline going whenever I thought about the morning’s prelims. This competing is tough. Maybe if I type a trip report I might be able to get a couple hours of sleep…



Eric

 

[Eleeski]

Darn international plugs. Computer battery is dead and adapters aren't working. My Mcgiver setup didn't work either. So no pictures until I figure out a charger.

Last post from me neglected to mention the dinner out next to the Irish team. Fun banter with some great guys. One of the little experiences that make a trip so much fun. New friends.

The skiing was tough for me. Trick skiing is a performance. While I have done all the tricks many times, cobbling a new run together to compensate for a minor injury adds huge variables into the performance. Add jetlag and tournament pressure and some bobbles can happen. A slip on my opening trick required a huge pull out recovery - which lit up the sore hamstring. I was able to get through some of the run, but not enough to guarantee advancement.

For a couple of hours I was pretty sure that I hadn't advanced to the finals. A bit of soul searching goes on but the immediate reality of being around so many friends, in such a cool place and just being part of the show was magic. More magic when the news that I'd advanced came in.

A massage, some more Alleve, some sleep and a few days to heal more gives me confidence that I will be OK for the finals. And certainly able to enjoy some touristing.

The site is great. After so many manicured perfect lakes it's cool to see one that is a bit more natural. The conditions were great - excellent wind sheltered water (which we needed as the weather was a bit adverse). I appreciated (unfortunately) the cutouts in the cattails so I could swim out of the lake. The road in is a challenge but is the one destination in Spain where I didn't get lost (every one else did - GPS didn't help).

The opening ceremony was a fun pageant. A nice party for the skiers. The group photos and meeting old and new friends all together was wonderful. And really, I didn't walk through the Goode team photo on purpose ( I do snow ski on Goodes).

We drove halfway to Normandy (it seemed) for dinner in Chinchon. We parked in the middle of the bull ring with everyone else but were warned that they make 200€ off the tourist parking tickets. So I moved the car to a tiny park on a tiny street way up the hill. Easy walk to the restaurant. Tasty lamb? drumstick and nice but too chilled house red wine (just one glass as foreign driving is difficult enough). Walked directly through the maze of streets to the car. Drove forever hopelessly lost to try to find the bull ring again. Good thing the car has unlimited mileage although this adventure wasn't long distance but very convoluted. I know it wasn't the most direct route since I passed my parking spot once. And the car with the plastic bag underneath several times. Once I got to the bull ring, the drive home was really quick and easy.

What an adventure!

Eric

 

[Eleeski]

What was Clark Griswald's wife's name? "Big Ben, Parliament, Big Ben, Parliament"...

 

[Eleeski]

Went out to the site today to watch my slalom event. While it’s a bit of a bummer withdrawing because of the hamstring, no way did I honestly belong there. My lifetime tournament best would not have made the cut and the overall skiers were so far ahead of my recent practice bests that I would not have been competitive there. Congratulations to all those incredibly skilled skiers.



I missed viewing the other trick prelims (can’t see anything through the cattails). But the swarm around the judge's result release was interesting. The judging was horrible. These guys are the best in the world and know their tricks better than the judges. Every single one of them got something cut that they felt they didn’t deserve. Hopefully the judges will let the skier performances decide the finals, not the judge's egos. Trick judging needs to change – partial credit?



We left the site to head to Toledo via a planned detour to the mall and the electronics store. Found a charger (so pics can happen!). Missed the exit and had a fun time winding through new Toledo to the tourist trap of old Toledo. Passed up some street parking for the tourist garage. Good thing, another skier got a parking ticket for street parking – you need a resident sticker. Climbed a huge staircase through the walls into the citadel (normal people were using the escalators but I was working out my legs). Cool old but living city (a family was having a party in their apartment!).



I’m convinced that the giant cathedrals caused the Dark Ages. Too much of the world’s talent and resources had to go into the construction of the monumental churches and the intricate artwork. At least we got to enjoy the enduring results of that work centuries later.



Tourist tapas were fun. We strolled around the old town and enjoyed the views (it is up on a view generating hill). Bought a cool leather belt. Nice touristy time.



Took the long way home (not intentionally) and tried Lisa’s GPS on her phone (we reset some things to make it look like it worked). It worked well enough to give bad directions. A nice meal at Tomate in Aranjuez, our best so far in Spain! They had a beer sin canin that was quite tasty for a n/a beer. Great artichokes! Headed home and got quite lost – we should have used the bathroom first. Stopped some police to ask directions as they were setting up the DUI checkpoint (not sure it was a DUI checkpoint but happy for the sin canin beer). We were close as the crow flies but no roads through. Made it home safely in a couple minutes with the good directions.



Fun relaxing day.



Eric

 

[Eleeski]

Sesena lake.

 

[Eleeski]

Team USA

 

[Eleeski]

Typical Spanish road.

 

[Eleeski]

Toledo

 

[Eleeski]

Breakfast

 

[Eleeski]

I’m tired of getting lost. So we took the train into Madrid. Just got a little confused on the way to the train station but we made our train (there is one every 15 minutes). The train took us with not too many stops and a pretty short elapsed time directly to the heart of Madrid (Sol station). We walked to Plaza Mayor and had lunch just outside the plaza. Since we bailed on Tenerife, we ate at a Canary Islands themed restaurant, El Escaldon. Fun potatoes and sauce.



We went shopping. I needed a navy blazer for the tournament banquet. Might have been better in Milan but I did find a jacket that will work.



Off to the Parque de Buen Retiro. Stopped at the America’s house but it wasn’t the embassy (no McDonalds ice cream). Went in to the Palacio de Ciebeles but there were no paintings on the walls – yet. No shortcuts, I had to get cultured at the Prada.



We walked through the beautiful park with the coolest giant overhead teeter totter to the Prada. Walked into the building that said Prada where the lady at the desk smiled and shooed us away to a huge building with people everywhere. It was busy but we walked up to the line to buy tickets and the ticket line control motioned us to the left. Hmmm, what are those people doing there? So we walked to the end of the line – which wrapped around the corner for at least a kilometer! Tapas and beer seemed like a much better idea. Saw most of the exhibits on paintings that the street vendors outside were selling. My kind of culture.



Easy train ride home to Aranjuez and I made it back to the Barcolo hotel without getting lost!



Fun touristy day – I hope I didn’t walk too much.



Eric

 

[Eleeski]

Prado line
See, it really was 1km long.

 

[Eleeski]

Madrid wall of plants

 

[Eleeski]

Off to watch the finals today. Calm warm conditions, good for the performances. Walked to the far side to see Oliver Fortamps trick over 10,000! Very impressive! Most of the skiers did well. AWSA prez Jeff Surdej rocked his run. Kris LaPoint put on a slalom lesson to overwhelm the 4 way tie for second (their scores were pretty phenomenal too). Great skiing at a wonderful venue!



Off to lunch in Aranjuez. Mark Shaw who wasn’t here (glad it was money and scheduling – not an injury!) told us of a must see bar. Closed… But just across the street was the best meal of the trip, gambon and ajuacate salad. Turned out to be shrimp and avocado over hunks of tomatoes. Yumm! Made it there and back with just one quick Uturn.



A swim in the pool – what happened? When we arrived, the pool was nice and warm. Now it’s freezing. Winter is just around the corner. Maybe there will be snow when we go to Andorra in a couple days?



Salad in the room for dinner as I’m stressing over my finals. Bed early - like an old jetlagged insomniac will sleep but that’s how the game is played.



Eric

 

[Eleeski]

Team USA rocks!

 

[Eleeski]

Competition is tough. And I was recovering so well. Hamstring popped halfway through the first pass. Stood it up but was way slow. Barely got the toe harness on for the second pass and the toe tricks really hurt. Stood up but was dog slow. Didn’t score well, took fifth but I did 100% of what my body was capable of this day. Odd Bradhe’s run would have been tough for me to beat healthy, congratulations to him!



I wanted to hang around and watch friends jump but my leg was pretty uncomfortable so we went back to the hotel. Just as I was pulling the curtains to curl up in the fetal position while sucking my thumb and crying, the maids came to clean the room. So off to the pool for full body ice therapy. This is the last day for the unheated pool to be open for the year (winter is coming) and it was realistically too cold for swimming. Still the leg felt better afterwards and we headed back to the site to catch the last of the jumping and the medals ceremonies.



The gas light came on (how did we use so much gas going the 50k from Madrid?). Checking out the gauges I noticed that the compass display was giving weird numbers. Like going from 2 to 3 as I shifted up. Wait, that’s not a compass, it’s a transmission gear indicator. And five looks just like the “S” in south. And I thought we were always heading south on the freeways…



Today’s weather was perfect. Sunny, warm but not hot, no wind and pleasantly dry. Spain is pretty nice. The neighborhood around the hotel is an interesting upscale recent development. A little weird that the huge business park is fenced off and completely empty. The houses seemed pretty suburban but were pretty densely packed with most being townhouses with shared walls. All of Spain seemed to favor big multifamily buildings with lots of open space around. The houses I thought were coolest were the remote houses – which all seemed to be abandoned. They weren’t particularly remote either, a few kilometers to the city. While there was a fair amount of farmland, it wasn’t as actively farmed as the multi cropped land in California. Interesting differences.



For the foodies, today was tournament snack food, peanuts, cookies and big bottles of water. We are off to the banquet – we’ll see if the banquet food is worth reporting.



Eric

 

[Eleeski]

The podium I missed...

 

[Eleeski]

Down dog to loosen up...

 

[Eleeski]

Fun banquet. I drove over so just got to sip the reasonably good Spanish wine (enough people took taxis that many bottles were drained at the table). Needed whiskey to try the minnow on a cracker - no whiskey so no minnow tasting report. Supposedly we had beef cheeks but it was a pot roast variety. Nice banquet food.

The USA team won the team competition and there were some great performances. Tony Knight rocks! Mark Stevens of Canada won my division overall - after recovering from cancer. An inspiration for all aging athletes. Keep playing!

Eric

 

[Eleeski]

Party at the podium!

 

[LiquidFeet]

Whoah. Your Hamstring popped. So sorry to hear this.

Do you need to get it reattached fast before it shrivels and is gone forever?
How does this work? You seem so calm about this. Has it happened to you before? Is it an easy fix?