The Railey

The railey, or superman as onlookers have dubbed the wakeboard trick, is a stunt that requires an unusual heap of bravery and lunacy.  The speed and airtime necessary to deliver a railey are such that a wakeboarder must hurl his body skywards at speeds of near fifty miles per hour while he flattens out over the water, all the while extending his arms and legs and holding the rope handle out in front of him.  When the trick is done well, the rider looks like Superman flying proudly through the air and looking down from his midair perch, thus the railey’s supplemental moniker.  It is one of the sport’s most exhilarating tricks to watch, and it inevitably brings those watching to the edges of their vinyl seats where they are rendered breathless for a few captivating seconds while the rider glides magically over the water, weightless and careening through the sky with his board and head on an even plain ten feet above the water.    

But the railey is not without its hazards. While this high-flying feat is without a doubt an enchanting one to watch, it is, for the rider, a trick that requires that he put himself in a most vulnerable position.  If the wakeboarder fails to get his board back under him before he makes contact with the water below, he will do a fifty-mile per hour belly flop with a board attached to his feet.  The feeling is something like being jackknifed from a high dive by a WWF wrestler.  And that is not even the worst-case scenario; if the rider gets the board only partially back under him, the lip of the board can snag on the water and hurl the rider downward in positions even more compromising than a belly flop, and at far greater speeds. 

I spent entire summers trying to learn the railey and during the process bruised my ribcage twice, turned both ankles, knocked my wind out countess times, and very probably sterilized myself.  Once, after a hopelessly botched railey, I hit the water with such tremendous force that when I reemerged to the surface my yellow “Live Strong” bracelet had inexplicably been pushed all the way up my arm between my bicep and armpit.  The bracelet was jammed so tightly up there I could not get it back down.  I wriggled in discomfort watching my arm turn blue from lack of circulation as the boat looped back to pick me up, and to this day I do not understand how it happened.  My friends had to cut the band from my arm with scissors.  Seeing it in such an impossible position was like seeing a tiny black ponytail holder around a woman’s neck and wondering how she managed to slip it over her whole head.  It seemed physically impossible, and it was testament to the reckless speed I had acquired when I struck the water.

Eventually, after a couple summers of routine near-death experiences, I landed my first railey. It was the proudest moment of my life.  The wakeboard came down between my legs and the water just before we collided and instead of being blasted into the water, which has about as much give as cement at fifty miles per hour, I found myself gliding above the water atop my board and riding comfortably out in the flats.  I had stuck the trick that seemed impossible just two short years before.  Unfortunately, one good superman did not mean I had the trick whipped and I was only able to land it on about half my attempts. 

Recently I have become a more reliable executor of the superman.  The last few times I rode my wakeboard in Abu Dhabi I landed massive raileys to enthusiastic cheers from my friends aboard the boat.  Because of the long warm season in the UAE and my ability to board year round, the trick that had eluded me for so long back in America was finally becoming routine. 

Then I came back to the States for a visit, and since my return I’ve been unable to land my superman and stranger yet, unmotivated to really sell out and try.  Maybe it is because the boat I ride behind here in the states is not putting out the same huge wake as the boat I got accustomed to back in the UAE, but I am not convinced that the boat is the culprit.  I think the main reason I have been unable to stick a railey on my liquid hometurf is because I am scared to put my body in such a vulnerable position right now.  I cannot get myself to commit to the trick.

See, a wakeboarder cannot halfass a railey; either he sells out and puts his body in harm’s way (and by doing so puts himself in a position to land the trick) or he goes in timidly and really gets hurt.  To land the trick a rider must commit to putting his body in a compromising position.  To go in hesitantly is to increase the chances of damaging your ribs or getting a yellow bracelet shackled to the summit of your arm.  You need to be moving too fast.  You need to be catapulted into the sky.  To quote a good friend whose wakeboarding motto inspired my blog’s title, You gotta want it. If you don’t want it bad enough, it’s not going to happen.   And right now with only 30 days to spend with my friends and family in America, I simply do not want it bad enough that I am willing to risk a weeklong stint in Cox Hospital.

My inability to execute a railey is not the only bizarre detail I have noticed during my holiday in America, though.  I was closing in on 30 years old when I set out for new horizons, and upon my return I found that most of my friends have slipped into legitimate adulthood during my absence.  I returned home after a year abroad, still happily single and unattached, only to find that most of my friends had become fiancés, husbands, fathers, or some combination of the three.   The same guys, who when I left were finishing their tattoo sleeves and seeing how quickly they could suck a beer out of an oil funnel, have been converted into responsible family men.  

Now it’s not just my mom and aunts who carefully spin every conversation marriage-and-childrenward.  My old friends do the same thing.  Upon my return, I found that the topics of kitchen appliances or painting-the-baby room can be treated with the same passion that used to be reserved for road trips or the hot girl that just moved in to a neighboring apartment.  A conversation that, in its initial stages, pivots around a new favorite craft beer or an up-and-coming band will quickly spiral into one about diaper prices or how the wife wants to build a bigger deck in the back yard.  Scores of my buddies have stopped using the pronoun  “I” altogether; everything is “we really want to do some traveling after graduate school is finished” or “we really wanted to buy a Big Green Egg, but the mortgage payment is so expensive we settled for a new gas grill.”

Most of my friends have slipped into marriage and fatherhood like a kitten into a sock.  They are happier and more comfortable then they could have ever imagined.  Their lives are purring along wonderfully.  I’ve watched them scoop their toddlers off the floor and zoom them above their heads.  They show me baby pictures and kiss their smiling wives on the forehead. They talk about their babies like somehow the little pips have already found cures for cancer or medaled in the Olympics.  They sell me on marriage and fatherhood so hard that I can only assume they are on commission.  Dude, it’s so great to have a life-long teammate and a little human being to love.  You just can’t understand it until you’ve done it.  So what do I have to do to get you into one of these babies today?

But sometimes in the very same breath they’ll tell me about how cumbersome marriage and parenthood can be.  They’ll heave deep sighs about the never-ending responsibilities, the financial issues, the monotony.  They lament the masculine fires that used to burn in their bellies that have been doused in baby piss and put out by daily trips to the store for more Gerber.  They bewail long weekends with her incorrigible mother. 

And then there are the risks, they tell me.  There’s always the chance you could end up hating her after a year or two.  Or she could end up hating you. She might cheat on you, stop cooking, or put on sixty pounds and refuse to change out of your extra large Pink Floyd tee.   Maybe her family will end up being a total wreck and then it will be your responsibility to comfort her through years of therapy and tears.  And that is just the spousal part of the equation. 

What if the perfect little kid you’ve envisioned comes out mentally handicapped, blind, or deformed? What if you lose your child to a car accident and suddenly the most important thing in your life is taken from you and to top it all off your wife catches a Prozac addiction to deal with the pain of losing a child?  The possibilities for tragedy and misfortune, for a family man, are endless.  And it is up to him to stick it out to the end. 

I reckon what these friends chose is essentially the life-path version of the railey.  When you get married and start a family, you put yourself in the most vulnerable position possible for a man.  You give up control of your life.  You put yourself in a compromising situation and, chances are, you are going to get hurt. 

But to achieve the most rewarding experiences in life, you have to put yourself in harm’s way.  As I’ve learned on my wakeboard, there is no way to halfass it and still get those sensations; a man has to approach his familial commitments with reckless devotion.  He has to make himself vulnerable and in doing so, open himself up to all manner of hurt and suffering – or then again he might touch down safely on the other side having felt the greatest sense of accomplishment available. There’s no chance of pulling it off without sustaining an injury or two, but if he manages to land feet-down he’s in for some exhilaration. 

The friends I left behind one year ago are now bracing themselves for both the greatest pains and the greatest rewards life has to offer.  They are vulnerable, moving way too fast, and they are nowhere near safety, but they are gripping that rope handle between their fingers and hoping they will be able to pull off one of the greatest stunts a man can try - the meaningful family life. 

I’m willing to put my body through hell in order to feel myself carve through the air above the water, arms and legs fully extended while I look down from my midair perch.   I spent entire summers dealing with debilitating injuries in order to stick the elusive railey.  I compromised my body and made myself vulnerable every time the boat pulled me out of the water. But that was just my body.

I have serious doubts that I will ever be able to put anything besides my body on the line to get that feeling.  Fearing for my own life is one thing, but taking responsibility for other lives - that is real risk.  It takes a braver man than me to pull it off.  It takes a stoic acceptance of vulnerability.  And to all my friends who have taken on the responsibility of being a husband and bringing children into this world, to all my friends who have made themselves vulnerable and opened themselves up to life’s greatest pains in order to pull off one of life’s greatest stunts - I don't know how you do it.  I think you are supermen.