More rain and other watersports

We walked into town to check it out. The outskirts are lovely with lakeside homes, and lots of green. The aforementioned cleanliness was spoilt by a chest-of-drawers that someone had biffed in the lake so I did my duty and fished it out. (It was gone the next day, and not back in the lake.)

Veendam centre, I'm sorry to say, was dead like an English town centre. Many shops were empty and there were lots of cheap shops the equivalent of Poundland. No charity shops though! J bought jars of sauces for 5c!!! And we didn't even get food poisoning from it.

J badgered me into giving the waterskiing a go. I feared multiple faceplants but managed to get on my skis second time around. Unfortunately, there were two tight corners to get used to so it took one spectacular (and rather bruising) crash and another less so to learn how to get around it. I was quite pleased when I did though. You are never too old to learn something new and I figure I'll wait a few decades then enter the veterans Olympics.

 Lessons: No jumps, get out of the way if you fall off, if you are in trouble let go of the rope!

 First time was a face-plant within 10 metres

 I'll wait until next time to wakeboard like the dude in the background.

 Pretending to hold my skis up rather than the other way around.

 Here goes - got around the trickiest corner...

 But not the next.

This is how it felt to get all the way around!

Between that crash and the aches from unaccustomed use of arm and back muscles I was rather sore that evening and on. Cool though,  eh?