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WATERSKI MagazineOn Lake Sammamish near Seattle, there's room for everything under the water-skiing sun. But one group creates a scene wherever it goes, which is usually right down the middle of the lake. Slalom crews pause to gawk. Wakeboarders stop and stare. Riding behind three boats abreast is a hydrofoil squad that gets funnier looks than The Monkees.
“We try to be as obvious as possible, so we'll do fly-bys with three of us doing inverts at the same time,” says Bill Kinnison. Kinnison is co-founder of the Air Junkys, a group of about a dozen hydrofoil riders who participate in the impossible task of bringing a lake as big and active as Sammamish to a halt. It's common practice for a Junky to take an artful spill near a boat brigade and then recruit one of the spectators for a ride. “We're always trying to bring in new riders,” says Jake Kinnison, Bill's brother. “All we require to be a Junky is that you try to go big and you put a sticker on your boat.”
When they aren't sitting high above Sammamish behind their specially dressed MasterCrafts, they're sitting at computers hawking stickers, T-shirts and hats over the Internet. During weekdays, though, they're sitting in offices as software writers, Boeing mechanics, engineers and bankers. Their preferred seats are obvious.”Some of us would eventually love to tour the country as Air Junkys,” says Jake Kinnison. “But for now it's just a fun thing to help push the sport and be known around the lake.”
