I used to really enjoy kneeboarding. It’s an activity where you’re kneeling on a board while being pulled behind a boat. The boat’s wake makes a ramp you can use for jumping or sliding around on. I was able to master a couple of minor kneeboarding tricks, but for some reason I really had my heart set on doing a barrel roll.
I’ll let you in on a little secret. I didn’t realize it at the time, but that particular trick wasn’t possible to do with the setup we had. The boat we used only had the factory/stock pylon, which is where the ski rope connected to the boat. For this trick to work, we needed an extra tall pylon or a ski/wakeboard tower, so while you’re still mid-air, the rope is pulling you up, rather than straight ahead. It allows you to get a little extra hangtime, resulting in some additional rotation.
Of course, I was blissfully ignorant of this. I figured I just needed to work harder on my technique. I’d get halfway, maybe three quarters of the way around, then crash into the water. Sometimes my face would be the first thing to hit. Other times I didn’t know what hit first; I’d bob to the surface with my neck suddenly sore from an awkward entry into the water. Every now and then the kneeboard would go flying high into the air in a spectacular wreck. The life jacket was nice because I’d be so disoriented upon being thrashed into the water, I didn’t know which way was up. Thankfully, it pointed me in the right direction.
I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong. We tried different speeds so the shape of the wake changed, but we determined the speed range to get the best shot. I figured “well, I probably just need to hit the wake faster and tuck tighter so I can rotate quicker.” Looking back I don’t know if this trick was even possible, but I sure tried hard to squeeze every bit of rotation out of each attempt.
At the time, I had a video camera, and I had someone in the boat film so I could try to figure out how to get better. I could probably show you snapshots from 20+ failures when attempting the roll, but I found something I thought was more interesting. Like the post’s title says, it’s funny what a big difference a single second can make. I grabbed a couple of snapshots of one particular attempt.
In the left picture you can see me setting up for the jump. I’m trying to pick up as much speed as possible before hitting the wake. I’m zeroed in on what I’m trying to do. Just one second later, in the other picture, it’s perfectly obvious everything has completely fallen apart. There’s a crash landing in progress, and the board looks like it decided to travel in another direction than the one I did. Chalk this one up to failure.
In fact, chalk them all up to failure. I never landed that trick.
Now, I’m not saying I would’ve been able to crack the code on this trick if I’d had more time, but I’m saying a situation can look very different even if two different snapshots are only a second apart. Have you ever been in a situation where you found that to be the case?