I want to take a couple of lines to pay respects to a very good friend in our teenage years. Dan and I hung around quite a bit from 1969 to 1972. A couple good memories were one winter we would race two people on one sled down the Schiller park hill. Dan and I would wax our sled runners and we were always faster than any of the others. It also helped that Dan carried some extra weight and I was only 135 pounds. The races were always great but then you had to walk all the way to the top of the hill to the swimming pool area. Many times we spent half the day racing.
The second really funny memory I had was when Dan, his dad and I went water skiing. I never water skied before and Dan and his dad taught me how to position myself in the water to have the boat pull me up on the skis. It was easy for me to be pulled up and start skiing immediately. The laughing part was when I fell, I didn't immediately let go of the tow rope making for a wilder ride. My funnier part of the trip was when Dan's dad got out to ski. He was heavier than I was and we were having a tougher time getting dad up and on his skis. Dan got the bright idea to lay down on the front of the boat to put extra weight to get him up. This idea worked great because soon dad was up and skiing. Shortly after that we hit a small wave and Dan's knee hit the windshield and it cracked all the way across the window. After his ride dad went from happy to have a great ride to furious that the windshield was cracked. My saving grace was that it was my turn to ski and I stayed skiing for about five minutes until dad stopped waving his arms and pointing his finger in anger. My friend you will be missed.