1st Ever Skyaak Games

The Resort Village of Manitou Beach hosted an exciting, fun day yesterday called "Manitou Beach Land and Lake Relay Race". The race consisted of eight legs: 1) 3.5 km. bike ride, 2) 1 km. run, 3) canoe across Little Manitou Lake, 4) run up the steep incline on the north side of the lake, 5) run back down the incline 6) canoe back across Little Manitou ( about a half-mile) to meet up with a 7) swimmer who swam into shore, 8) three-legged racers to the finish line.

This all sounds well and good, but the whole event was made somewhat more challenging by the stiff northwesterly wind that persisted in blowing the whole time. This presented a problem for the bicyclists, as they had to grunt their way through a constant head-on wind for their entire 3.5 kms. But it was even worse for the canoeists. They had to battle their way due north across the lake despite the ornery breeze that blew up three-foot breakers in their faces the whole way. They had to point their noses in a northwestern direction and arc across the lake to arrive at a point straight ahead of them.

Two of the canoeists actually ended up being swamped by the pounding surf, and capsized into the chilly waters. Too bad for them, because that unfortunate turn of events ended up losing them the race.

I actually entered a team in the relay and we ended up placing third place. Les Jones’ team
( Corbin Hansen’s actually) snagged first place while a team dominated by a contingent of Saskatoon gals headed up by Ms. Upshall took the second prize purse. The prize money was quite substantial. Check this out: first prize was a whopping $2500.00! Second prize was $1500.00. And third prize was a cool grand. Not too shabby, eh?

Eric Upshall, Gene Angers, and their sub-committee of volunteers deserve a lot of credit for pulling this fabulous event together. The relay race was an initiative of the Manitou Beach Recreation Board. Congratulations to this group for a great event! A gentleman named Leonardo ------- from Chile happened to be at the beach on holidays and he took it upon himself to photo-document the day. He did a great job, and has promised Gene that he will be in touch ASAP to share the pictures with us. I was quite involved with the whole thing so taking pictures was not an option.

As soon as Leonardo follows up on this, I will post a bit of a photo-essay.

The relay proper was followed by a bunch of fun games that were very well-received by the crowd of spectators that provided a rousing cheer for each entry. The games included a raw egg-throwing competition that was a blast. Here’s the simple premise: one partner throws a raw egg and it is then caught by a second, hopefully without breaking. NOT as easy as it sounds, once you get out past about fifteen or twenty feet! The trick was to somehow cushion the jarring effect of the landing... or else the poor egg would SPLAT. As it turned out, Gene and I entered and ended up with the longest successful completion. For my part, it was a great feeling to run and leap into the air to snag the flying egg, then gingerly cradle it in my hands as I crashed backwards onto the ground and did a sort of tumbling roll back onto my feet. After the dust cleared, I held up the intact egg to the enthusiastic cheers of the little crowd. It was quite an adrenalin rush! I can totally understand how athletes could get hooked on the cheers of adoring fans after that!

All of this fun was followed up by the first ever Skyaak Games. We held three events:
1) accuracy 2) distance, and 3) style. I acted as judge and co-ordinator of this event. For the accuracy competition, I simply held up a ‘Hula-hoop’ and had the participants toss their Skyaak cleanly through the hoop from a gradually increasing distance. We started at about ten feet and graduated up to fifteen and then twenty. The winner of this event was a young lad named Matthew who was visiting from Montreal.

The distance competition was won by a young pal of mine named Charlie who is a summer resident here. Charlie lives in Thailand. He was also awarded the style prize.

These two guys were thrilled to take a packaged Skyaak Model 3 home with them. The event was extremely well-received by both the participants and the spectators. I really believe that this idea of holding Skyaak Meets has a ton of potential to create a lot of interest and excitement around the Skyaak phenomenon. Various people approached me during and after the event to extend their compliments and best wishes for continued success with the Skyaak project, as well as to encourage me to carry on with the idea of bringing it out into the public eye like this. Quite a few folks remarked that they had read Ilara’s great article that was published last week in the East Central Connection. That was cool.

Life is a grand experiment, and I treated this event as such. I love working out new ways to expose Skyaak to a larger audience, and this particular venue/format holds much promise for future development.