Quad Cities, I am finally one of you.
Okay, so I've been one of you for a long time since moving here for college in 1988. But even if you've lived here for decades, there's a few things you need to check off your bucket list before you can officially declare yourself a true Quad Citian.
You need to have a Magic Mountain at midnight at Ross' Restaurant. You need to ride the Channel Cat. You need to cheer on the Bandits at Modern Woodmen Park. You should probably have filled at least one sandbag in your life. You need to hear Taps waft out from the Arsenal at dark. You need to experience the rush of adrenaline that can only come from having spotted Paula Sands in the wild.
And until last week, there was one important rite of passage I'd yet to cross off my QC bucket list. It's finally done.
I went to a Backwater Gamblers show.
I shouldn't have to tell ANYONE here about the Backwater Gamblers. If you're from the Quad Cities, you should already know that we have one of the best nationally-recognized water ski teams around. In fact, we have the FIFTH-BEST team in the whole country, according to the 2021 Show Ski National Championships, which is a thing that apparently exists. And every Wednesday and Sunday from Memorial Day to Labor Day, they're out there on the Rock River, putting on a free show for anyone who turns up.
Last week, I turned up.
Why had I never done this before? The most I'd ever seen of the Gamblers were pictures and a few lucky glimpses of practice sessions. When you drive over the Rock and look downriver, you might expect to see a boat or some pelicans. But every once in a while, you spot a human pyramid on water skis and go, "Hmm, don't see THAT every day."
Why have I never gone to one of their shows before now? I'm kicking myself. It was a solid hoot.
As far as I'm concerned, what they do is next to impossible. I can't even swim. A full year of lessons and my proudest accomplishment in the pool was kicking to the deep end while openly sobbing and clutching one of those floaty paddleboard thingys for dear life. I am not cut out for aquatics, unless they one day start handing out medals for speed sinking.
I barely comprehend how people can even swim, let alone strap a piece of wood on their feet and go river-surfing. I have no earthly idea how one stays upright on water skis. But to then take said skis up a ramp, do a backflip, and somehow land without ripping your legs clean off your body? It's just magic to me.
But the skiing feats weren't half as great as the corny scripted comedy. You can't just send people on skis over ramps for an hour straight. Even superheroes need a quick breather. So while the team sets up for their next sequence of tricks, the rest of the Gamblers act out a kitschy Old West storyline full of cheeseball chuckles that somehow manages to be both ridiculous and wonderful at the same time. My kudos to the writers.
It kinda makes me wanna be one.
Now that I think about it, I'm hard-pressed to think of a story that WOULDN'T be bettered by water skiers forming a human pyramid in the middle of the plot. I vote we merge the worlds of local theatre and local competitive water ski performance teams into a dramatic juggernaut of epic proportions.
We could have slapstick comedy on the weekends and cutting edge ski-dramas during the week. We could create "As The Water Churns," the world's only aquatic soap opera with new plot twists daily. We could re-enact historical dramas -- imagine how much more kids would dig history if Thomas Jefferson signed the Declaration of Independence while doing a backwards barefoot flip turn.
I attended the show with a few of my closest friends. Halfway through, I turned and said, "Oh man, what I wouldn't give to write the scripts for these shows. We could have a --"
"Why?" interrupted my friend Reid. "It's absolutely perfect the way it is."
He's right. There's a reason the Backwater Gamblers are a cherished institution in town. It's like the water-skiing equivalent of a bear hug. If you haven't been in a while, I highly recommend crossing the Gamblers off your bucket list before the season's up. Have a Kona Ice, laugh and groan, and watch people strap sticks to their feet and defy gravity.
It's the best way I've spent a Wednesday in quite a while. Finally, I feel like a Quad Citian.
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