Lake Trip

One of the last times I (Amanda) talked to Austin he expressed his frustration that he hadn’t come out to my lake house yet. I agreed that it was ridiculous and that we would plan an immediate trip upon his return from New Zealand and Nicole piped in from the background with a, “I better be invited too!” Well, here we are now sitting in the car on our way home from that lake trip, and he definitely helped to make it a good story.

Amanda: My trip began at noon when I left Chico to drive to go to the bay, got to Travis’ house and headed for the airport. Upon arrival we discovered our flight was 2 hours delayed so our 8:45 pm landing was now schedule for 10:45 pm. Awesome. Well my brother was a trooper and still picked us up and we started on the 4 hours drive to Arizona. 3:30 am we got there and passed out.

Kristin, Nicole & Amanda: The fun began bright and early at 6:30 am on Friday morning. We all woke up, made sandwiches, had a sunscreen party and took off for the lake – except it wasn’t that simple. Less than a mile from the launch ramp Amanda shredded her first tire, and it only took everyone in the car behind her frantically waving our hands out the window, pulling to the other side of the road, and two turns later (because of course her brother’s horn was broken) for her to notice. The tire on the Sea Doo trailer not only popped but shredded (until now I always wondered how chunks of tire got on the side of the road, I now know). A set of tools, spare tire, jack, a rock and muscles later we replaced the tire and were back on our way.

Day one at the lake was awesome. Glassy and warm water, it was perfect for knee-boarding, wakeboarding and tubing. The rest of the day was your typical lake day, got home , ordered pizza and we all passed out by 8:30 pm.

 Day two, we got a much more mild start to our day. Fueled up and headed for the lake free of any shredded tire detours. Even through the water was a little choppier we still filled our day with boarding and tubing. A lot of the day was spent on the back of or driving the Sea Doos…or occasionally in the water after being flipped off while doing a gnarly donut. Later in the day we all headed over to the jumping rock and spend some time there throwing and flipping our bodies of various heights of rocks. Everything was an adventure and we channeled Austin to get up after each face plant on the wakeboard or plummet off a rock. We packed up and headed back towards the launch ramp with the intention to jump off of “hole in the rock”….but obviously it couldn’t be that easy. As we stopped all the vehicles in the cove to jump the sight of lightening was announced and we felt the storm blowing in. We quickly started everything back up hoping to beat the storm, however that didn’t happen. (I think Austin is still a little upset he didn’t get to come to the lake house)
The last half of the ride back was full of stormy waves and choppy water that was slightly terrifying but extremely thrilling. Heading into the ramp we had one sea doo out of gas, another on reserve and in a panic to get all the car keys to shore we ended up with one entirely flipped upside down – and let me tell you those are NOT EASY to flip back over in the water. While the three ran up to grab the cars and wait in the pull out line everyone else was getting whipped around trying to get the sea doos in shallow water, oh and did we mention the sandstorm pelting us in the face…but we all had smiles despite the chaos. We successfully got all the vehicles out of the water just in time to discover that Amanda’s brother had locked his keys in his truck…while it was still running. An hour and AAA later we all were back at the house where we quickly soaped and dried all the toys under the beautiful desert sunset. We then showered and headed to Chili’s for dinner at the ripe time of 9:30 pm.

This morning we let everyone sleep in a bit, we all woke up crawling to the IB Profen bottles to relieve some of our sore muscles, cleaned the house and now we’re on our way home. Two full days on the lake was a blast but we’re al feeling it. Thanks for all the detours and bumps in the road Austin, it definitely made for a better story.

Just when we all thought the story was over, we stopped in Barstow on the way home to get some food and some gas. We pulled off the freeway and naturally we stopped at In-N-Out(one of Austin's favs). As we walked into the resturaunt Amanda quickly noticed a "Team Austin" shirt on someone we quickly approached him just asking how he knew Austin and we found out it was Erik who played polo at BU with Austin.  It was crazy to recognize this shirt on someone, especially when we are in the middle of nowhere just driving home from the lake and him driving home from a weekend in Vegas. Crazy how some things work out sometimes.


Love Always,
Nicole, Amanda, and Kristen