Given what is shaping up to be another monster travel-season for event coverage, I toyed with the notion of skipping the Performance Boat Center Spring Fun Run early next month. For good reason, I haven’t missed one in years.
Thanks to owner Ron Szolack, the Tom Cat Skater catamaran will be the author’s ride for Performance Boat Center Spring Fun Run early next month. Photo by Pete Boden copyright Shoot 2 Thrill Pix.
The season-opening affair, which is set for May 9 this year, is my second-favorite Lake of the Ozarks happening. The first is the Performance Boat Center Fall Fun Run.
Shootout week runs a distant third. And I mean way distant.
Still, a Mother’s Day weekend trip to the Central Missouri waterway for work isn’t what I need to start the month. I have a writer and a photographer who will be there. I easily could skip it.
But that damn Ron Szolack, a longtime friend who lives at the lake, got to me. So, too, did Greg Harris, another longtime friend and rabid Lake of the Ozarks fans I bumped into a couple of weekends ago at Charlotte Douglas International Airport on my back from my daughter’s wedding in Maryland. Harris, as it happened, was on his way back to South Florida after from the lake, where he’d just spent the weekend.
OK, so it wasn’t exactly a hard-sell for Szolack, who told me our mutual friends Todd and Danielle Fountain were coming to town and like me would be staying at his place. The four of us, he added, would run the famed Tom Cat 46-foot Skater catamaran he purchased last month from his best friend Fountain.
Only a fool would pass on that. So I booked a flight and I’ll be there. So, too, will speedonthewater.com contributing photographer Jeff Helmkamp. And our coverage will appear the day after the event.
But what really sold me on the trip is the scale and nature of the spring affair itself. Somewhere between 60 and 80 boats likely will show up. But no matter how many boats materialize, the Spring Fun Run vibe—like of that of the Fall Fun Run—is chill. The weather can get toasty, but not on order of the brain-melting, run-for-the-AC kind that typically slams the Lake of the Ozarks Shootout. August at the lake will make your fingernails sweat.
And the Spring Fun Run crowd is manageable, especially for those folks—OK, me—who are allergic to big groups. There’s no rush to be here or there. There’s no rush, period.
Earlier this month, I was committed to staying put in Southwest Florida and being nowhere near an airport before the work-travel season explodes. Now I’m committed to springing back to the Lake of the Ozarks for the Performance Boat Center Spring Fun Run in two weeks.
Damn that Ron Szolack.