“Paige lean!” I yelled to her.
   

My voice was nothing compared to the screaming of my cousins and Paige.
   

“Stay on!” I hollered.
The tube was sideways and about to flip. SPLASH! We all fell into the water…

The boat turned back around to gather our shivering bodies out of the water. Two people got onto the boat and three got onto the tube. Now there were three people on the tube… Sam, Tommy, and I.

G.W., our uncle pushed down the throttle and the boat started to accelerate. We were facing the complete wrong way. We all yelled, “PADDLE!” We frantically paddled so we would not get whipped as soon as the rope went tight. It was a race between the boat and our hands!

G.W. looked back at us with a menacing face. I prepared myself for the most challenging tube ride of my life. The tube was a giant hotdog with 5 seats and could flip easily. Leaning helped us not flip over when we turned so we always leaned the way we were turning. My mind was constantly racing to think what to do to prepare and what would happen. I was scared, but having a blast at the same time! G.W. was really trying to throw us off the tube. I could just see it in his eyes - the determination and that smile.

My mind slowed down for a moment and I gazed off and that's when I saw a yacht cruising by right ahead of us. I yelled back, “Hold on boys!” I already knew we were going through the wake and right into the air just to dive into the water. G.W looked back and I could tell he was thinking, “Are you ready for this?”

I could already tell what G.W. was going to do next. The whirlpool. He started to circle around us once and then he circled us twice and then again and again and again. We were just sitting in a sea of waves like stranded seagulls. We had no idea when he would go straight and send us flying through the waves. After the final circle G.W. finally pulled the boat straight and we all held on like our life depended on it. We gasped a sigh of relief because we held on through the whirlpool. For a second I thought I had been victorious, but then I remembered the impending yacht wake only a football field away. My cousin, Tommy had barely survived the whirlpool and when I looked back I found his whole body off the back of the tube and he was barely hanging.

Later that day G.W. had a great idea, “What about pulling three tubes behind one boat.” We had two hot dogs tubes and one circular flat tube called the Slice. I started on the Slice and G.W. made me flip after putting me outside the wake and turning to the side I was on. The turn created a massive wake and I was literally in the water because I had to lean so hard.

That day we learned the importance of teamwork, if one person leaned the wrong way on a turn the whole tube would flip over. All the people on the tube had to cooperate to keep it afloat.On the lake we had moments of victory and we had moments of catastrophic collapse in the watery abyss… but that was what I love about tubing with my cousins. That was my last fall...