At first, it looked like I was going to miss yet another D2D.  Heather and I had been planning to move to Wisconsin.  This, along with a newborn, would make it impossible to make to the event. Thankfully, the plan changed. We decided it was best for us to move to Houston. The move to Houston would allow me to finish my bachelors degree, continue my pursuit for World’s gold, and also make it feasible for us to attend the D2D. It was now time to find a team to ski with. I had told my good friend Richard Grant that I wanted to ski with him, but he couldn’t make it.  I had heard down on the Brazos River from Phil Gustafson, who opted for the vacation in the Florida Keys, that his spot was vacant on the team Homers Heroes.  So I made the call to Bruce "Homer" Launius and firmed up my spot on a team with a legitimate shot for the gold.  Thanks goes out to the Launius family for their hospitality.

With the arrival of Spencer and a move to Houston, I had little time for training.  The year before I actually decided not to compete in the D2D because I was not in the mood to train after a hard summer getting ready for Worlds, and I did not want to show up for a D2D unprepared.  After all, I have put together five winning teams in the last nine years.  Two of those years I didn’t even go. So, going into this event I was more confident in my team than in myself.  Bruce told me that the young guns on our team, Kevin Lee and Heath "Naked Boy" Cooper were primed and ready for minutes on end at 50+.  He also told me that Mike Hartman and himself were good for the usual 5-6 miles in the high 40‘s.  This told me that with my experience we had a great shot at pulling a big win.

Friday night at the party it was pretty quiet as far as "trash talk" was concerned.  The only trash talk came from the team that Billy Nichols brought up from Florida, The Barefoot Breakfast Boys. These guys knew how to talk trash.  According to them, they could all ski 45 minutes and their 1980 something Barefoot Nautique could do 55m.p.h.  We knew these guys had limited experience in racing, and they had no experience in the D2D.  We also knew that there wasn’t a Barefoot Nautique on the planet that reached even close to 50.  Billy just laughed and said "these guys are all talk".  It turned out that these ‘ol' boys could ski and that old bathtub hauled ass.

Saturday morning we were in the first heat.  There were two heats of six teams, and the top three in each heat advanced to a six boat final on Sunday.  We felt we had dodged two major bullets by not drawing Team F3 and Team WFO in our heat the first day.  Despite that, we were still facing a  tough heat with Team Barefoot Breakfast Boy’s and Team Red Bull.  We liked our chances. Our game plan was to ski just hard enough to make the finals, and we ended up having to ski pretty hard.

I was first in the water for our team. The start was pretty hairy. Apparently Team Viagra and the Barefoot Breakfast Boys had a near collision.  The Barefoot Nautique screamed out into the lead, and Team Viagra somehow worked their way behind Billy missing him by inches.  You have to experience the start of this race to understand the intensity and insanity of it all.  Luckily, there has never been a serious injury in this event.  The first land mark in this race is the 360 bridge. The 360 bridge is a beautiful span bridge about 80 feet above the water. Many years ago I jumped off this bridge. That was the most stupid thing I’ve ever done, but that’s another story.

My goal was to make it to the bridge, which is about 4 1/2 miles.  Between the start and the bridge is the roughest water of the race.  Though the wind was calm, the bulkhead down both sides in front of the million dollar homes made it a bathtub of rollers.  My feet cook up on me, so I have to do one foots almost the entire time.  One of those rollers caught me and I was down and out before I knew it.  The only guy to out ski me was the Billy Nichols, the endurance world record holder.  However, Jason Lee was in the water second for his Team "Red Bull," and we put Kevin Lee in.

We flew passed the Barefoot Breakfast Boys and were nearing the bridge. As we approached the bridge, a wakeboard boat trying to get out of the way, took off from one side of the river to the other.  This left a fairly roller free path for us around the right, and I thought Jason was cut off.  My boat was laughing and cheering "they’re screwed."  But, to our astonishment, those crazy suckers shot the gap between the wakeboard boat and the shore. They had to go inside the "no wake buoys" at the boat ramp, and the wakeboard boat had to throw it in reverse. They ended up getting through on a sheet of glass. This picture was shot from the bridge just before this moment.

The three boats in the lead at this point were ours - Homers Heroes, Red Bull, and Barefoot Breakfast Boys. This would stay the same throughout the race with a few changes for the lead. Red Bull, including "the ass rider" Gregg Dagerpont would end up taking the win in heat one.  We came in second, and the Barefoot Breakfast Boys would come in third to advance to the finals.

Heat two would be won by F3 followed by WFO, and then the River Rats. The teams that I had predicted advanced.  We definitely had our work cut out for us.  The preliminary rounds had been completed, and it was time to party a little.  Our very own teammate and Austin Barefoot Club member, Kevin Lee, had his band at the party to entertain us.  They rocked, the BBQ was great, and all had a good time.  The results of the day were posted and the finals were set with lane choices made by times from the morning heats.

With the second fastest time we were the second to choose a lane for the finals.  With the fastest time, Red Bull chose lane 6, which is on the far side of the group.  We chose lane one which is the lane we had on Saturday.  We figured that we wanted to stay away from the possibility of getting pinched out in the middle. 

We had a good start and the race was on.  I allowed myself to look over at the competition only once.  Five of the six teams were still on their feet.  The sixth team, Greg again, was on his ass.  It was great to be relaxed as I watched "the raging bull" look like he was riding a bull.  After a brief look, I refocused on the task at hand which was to be the last man standing.

Slowly but surely the teams dropped off one by one until I was alone in the lead just after the bridge.  Though I had not trained for this event, the D2D really brings the animal out in me.  Looking back, our team should have made a quick transition at this point.  I was whipped and kept asking for slower speeds (below 50) to keep the torch off my heel.  This allowed the other teams to catch up to us by the time I was ready to transition, which was two or three minutes down the lake.

We then put Heath in the water and hauled ass, but we had company. Three other teams, including WFO, F3 and Barefoot Breakfast Boys, had been cruising while we were backing off, so by the time we made our transition they had caught up to us.  This made for a great race.  My team, Barefoot Breakfast Boys, and WFO were three abreast (with the Breakfast Boys slightly leading and WFO slightly trailing) when we blazed by the party spot two thirds thru the race where family and friends were watching.  We stayed neck and neck the rest of the way, jockeying for position. We all gave a respectable lane to make for passing, and team WFO did just that.  They had maintained high speeds through the entire race, and that paid off.  One of their skiers, Colt Mahan, had burned a blister on his foot in the first round, so they knew they had to put him in the water just to cross the finish line.

The last straight away all three teams in the lead were on their third skier. The rules state that everyone on your team must ski.  This sucked for us because we had five skiers, and WFO only had four.  This caused us to have to make an extra transition.  We put our fourth skier in with a great transition.  When WFO started their last transition we were set to make the pass and get across the finish line first for the big win, but we still had to make a transition in order to get our fifth skier in the water.  So yes, we got screwed by the rules.  All kidding aside, I do take my hat off to Team Phillip.  I was mostly impressed with the new comer, Mike Brasher, who has been skiing just two summers and really skied long, hard, and fast in order to keep Colt out of the water until the very end.  Good job WFO, enjoy it, it may be a while before you taste victory again at a D2D.

Top Three Winning Teams

Finals Ln    Team                       Time        Place 1      Homers Heroes   27.49          2 2      B.B.B.                     28.04          3 3      River Rats               48.19          6 4      W.F.O.                     26.46          1 5      F-3                           28.39           4 6      Red Bull                  29.23           5

Special thanks to Red Bull ffor sponsoring the 2001 D2D BBQ

Next year, I will train and lead Team BarefootCentral.com to a victory. More important, we will kick Phillip and his buddies off their high horse and end their two year reign as Champions. Phillip would say three years, but he was on my team the first year.

Make sure you're there for the 2002 Dam-to-Dam!!! It's the grand-daddy of all the barefoot races. It makes for great friendships, fun partying, lots of trash talking, and one hell of a race.

Stokeman OUT!!!