mpeebles wrote on Apr 12^th, 2019 at 12:35pm:

Forgot to ask......where did you end up barefoot skiing?  I heard a story from some guys in Red Lake about seeing someone being dragged down the Chukuni River and over Nester Falls where they quickly lost sight of him.  They thought he was yelling something to the effect of "can't cut the damn line" or something to that effect.  Obviously, no one they told believed the story so they took to drinking and carrying on with women of ill repute.  At least they found happiness.

First I need to confess that the story is not entirely truthful. I was not really barefoot water skiing behind that 60 inch pike. I was wearing my size 13 rubber boots which made the water skiing a lot easier, not to mention a lot less painful when slalom skiing in the rapids on the Chukuni. It was going to be a long swim back to my canoe so I just held on as long as I could. Out in the middle of Red Lake I could not stand the pain any more and managed to cut through that heavy line. It was my lucky day though. When my speed dropped I slowly sank into the water. It took a few minutes to collect my thoughts but was then startled by the throaty roar of a radial engine on a floatplane. I was never so happy to see Hugh but he had not seen my head bobbing in the lake. As he passed I was able to grab his trailing mooring line and pull myself up onto  a float. It was too late to jump back in when I realized we were taking off. I quickly got in front of a strut and wrapped my legs and arms around it. More luck came my way as Hugh spotted a capsized  canoe and landed to investigate. Boy was he in a special mood after spotting me as he clambered out of the cockpit.