I had this Totally Cool Idea, years ago: water skates!
Basically, they're miniature jet skis. You strap one on each foot and attempt to remain upright, while I stand on the shore with a video camera.
With the improvements in batteries and motors for model airplanes and such, this might actually be a reasonable thing to build, just for giggles.
So, how big do they need to be, anyway?
Well, a flotation device to keep a person's head above water doesn't need to be very big at all, really.
But... here, we're trying to keep an entire person above water, along with the tops of the floats, and have a good margin of extra buoyancy. So, call it about 150 pounds displacement per boot.
Which is getting on toward 20 gallons, at a pint per pound.
I've heard of ten-gallon hats, but a pair of twenty-gallon boots? Seems a bit much.
On the other hand... if we drain the water out of the lake, and replace it with mercury....
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