Let us paint the scenery for you. It’s Monday and you’re having major problems finding enough motivation to drink coffee, let alone the pile of work you had to finish last week. You look out the window for inspiration, but the dreary winter landscape has you dreaming of warm weather adventures. Oh fad, you got a wild idea: What would happen if I tied the river pipe to the car wheel and hit the throttle?
Hopefully, within seconds, you realize how insecure this idea is and move on to something a little more relaxed, like skydiving. The people in this Instagram post are from SpaTurbo didn’t make that jump, so at least we have a video demonstrating what is probably the best-case scenario in such a stunt. So we’ll say it again: don’t try this at home. These people do risky research so you don’t have to.
And what exactly is this research? Tie a rope to a wheel, and we literally mean a wheel – no tires involved. Tie the other end to the river tube. Jack the car so that the drive wheels come off the ground, which in this case is a front-wheel drive vehicle of unknown origin. Put one person behind the wheel, one on the tube, and gently add some throttle.
Judging by the very sudden appearance of the tube in the river, we suspect the last steps were not followed closely. We don’t know how fast this thing was traveling, but we do know it was airborne long before it lifted from the river to meet the car, perched like it was on a bridge. Its human rider exits the tube at nearly the same time, hopping mercilessly along the river for several feet, falling at least twice in the process.
Presumably, the adventurous tube rider is fine. We see heads emerge from the water at the end, so we can sit and laugh a bit at this unusual thrill ride. But as warm weather returns to us in northern latitudes, there are plenty of ways to enjoy a day at the beach that are less complicated and complicated. Parasailing, anyone?
