Current water temperature is a sizzling 84°.
Our Cool spring instantly turned into an extremely warm summer.
Iron Man recap:
2700 registered for the event and from what I recall 2100 started the swim portion.
45 States and 30 countries were represented by participants.
1,560 volunteers which is possibly a record for a first year iron Man.
There were 60 kayaks that day to guide and assist the swimmer portion of the event.
They will possibly be requesting some of my 10 jet ski riders to assist the September 7th iron Man in Madison. Last year they only had two jet skiers volunteer for the Madison event.
Rockford and Winnebago county we knocked this event out of the park with our enthusiastic volunteers along with River residents that had sprinklers running along the running portion of the event.
Luckily one of my jet ski drivers was early for the 5:30 check-in at the ski Bronc dock last Sunday morning.
At 5:15 a.m. when he was approaching the Riverside bridge he noticed a police car turned his lights on on the bridge.
As he was passing under the bridge in the Twilight hours he noticed a female had climbed up onto the cement retaining barrier in the middle of the bridge and was leaning over.
Howie Heaton turned his jet ski around and came back and started talking to the female.
She was insistent that she was going to jump off of the bridge into the river below.
Howie spent the next few minutes consoling her and letting her know that if she was to jump he was not going to let her drowned.
He was ready to jump in and render aid if this was to happen.
This gave responding officers the distraction that they needed to get behind her and pull her off the wall.
The quick actions of Howie and local law enforcement turned around a possible tragic situation.
We all pray that she gets the help that she needs and was just having a bad situation in her life.
On a lighter note the back the Blue boat parade is scheduled for next Saturday at 2:00 p.m. in front of ski Bronx and Rockford country club site and progressing down river to the State Street bridge.
If you have not ordered your flags yet now is the time to do it to have in time for the parade.
4th of July fireworks are Friday night off the Jefferson Street bridge.
In next weekend’s update I will have more information if there are restrictions for the area but I don’t see there being a problem parking upstream of the Jefferson Street bridge.
Let’s have a fun and safe weekend on the beautiful Rock River.