Tampa Bay

Tampa Bay is a large natural harbor and estuary connected to the Gulf of Mexico on the west central coast of Florida, comprising Hillsboro Bay, McKay Bay, Old Tampa Bay, Middle Tampa Bay, and Lower Tampa Bay. The surrounding area is home to about 4 million residents, making it a heavily used commercial and recreational waterway but putting much stress on the bay's ecosystem, which once teemed with enough wildlife to easily support an extensive indigenous culture. Much greater care has been taken in recent decades to mitigate the effects of human habitation on Tampa Bay, and water quality has slowly improved over time.

The term "Tampa Bay" is sometimes used as shorthand to refer to all or parts of the Tampa Bay area, which comprises many towns and cities in several counties surrounding the large body of water. Local marketing and branding efforts (including several professional sports teams, tourist boards, and chambers of commerce) commonly use the moniker "Tampa Bay", furthering the misconception that it is the name of a particular municipality when this is not the case.

Tampa Bay Water

Tampa Bay Water is a regional wholesale drinking water utility that serves customers in the Tampa Bay, Florida region. The agency is a special district of the state created by inter-local agreement among six member governments. A nine-member board of directors composed of two elected commissioners from each member county and one elected representative from each member city oversees the policy decisions of the agency. The member governments that make up the board of directors are: The cities of New Port Richey, St. Petersburg, Florida, and Tampa, and Hillsborough County, Pasco County, and Pinellas County. These member governments provide water to over 2.5 million citizens.

Tampa Bay Water, formerly the West Coast Regional Water Supply Authority, was created in 1998 to deliver drinking water in an environmentally sound, cost-effective and reliable manner. To achieve these goals, the Agency created a diversified water supply system to reduce dependence on a sole source—groundwater. The regional utility built the C.W. Bill Young Regional Reservoir of 15,500,000,000 US gallons (59,000,000 m³), a seawater desalination plant with a maximum output of 25,000,000 US gallons (95,000 m³) per day, a surface water treatment plant with a maximum output of 120,000,000 US gallons (450,000 m³) per day, and interconnected more than 200 miles (320 km) of large-diameter pipeline. The system spans over 2,000 square miles (5,200 km²) to deliver drinking water at an average rate of 171,000,000 US gallons (650,000 m³) per day.

Water skiing

Water skiing is a surface water sport in which an individual is pulled behind a boat or a cable ski installation over a body of water, skimming the surface on two skis or one (slalom) ski. The sport requires sufficient area on a smooth stretch of water, one or two skis, a tow boat with tow rope, three people, and a personal flotation device. In addition, the skier must have adequate upper and lower body strength, muscular endurance, and good balance. Skiing is a fun pastime that allows people of all skill levels and ages to enjoy. There is no minimum age necessary to water ski.

There are water ski participants around the world, in Asia and Australia, Europe, Africa, and the Americas. In the United States alone, there are approximately 11 million water skiers and over 900 sanctioned water ski competitions every year. Australia boasts 1.3 million water skiers.

There are many options for recreational or competitive water skiers. These include speed skiing, trick skiing, show skiing, slaloming, jumping, and barefoot skiing. Similar, related sports are wakeboarding, kneeboarding,discing, tubing, and sit-down hydrofoil.

Ski

A ski is a narrow strip of semi-rigid material worn underfoot to glide over snow. Substantially longer than wide and characteristically employed in pairs, skis are attached to ski boots with ski bindings, with either a free, lockable, or partially secured heel. For climbing slopes, ski skins (originally made of seal fur, but now made of synthetic materials) can be attached at the base of the ski.

Originally intended as an aid to travel over snow, they are now mainly used recreationally in the sport of skiing.

Etymology and usage

The word ski comes from the Old Norse word "skíð" which means stick of wood or ski.

In Norwegian this word is usually pronounced [ˈʃiː]. In Swedish, another language evolved from Old Norse, the word is "skidor" (pl.).

English and French use the original spelling "ski", and modify the pronunciation. Prior to 1920, English usage of "skee" and "snow-shoe" is often seen. In Italian, it is pronounced as in Norwegian, and the spelling is modified: "sci". Portuguese, German and Spanish adapt the word to their linguistic rules: esqui, Schier (a German plural of Ski) and esquí. In Dutch, the word is "ski” and pronunciation was originally [ˈʃiː] as in Norwegian, but since approximately the 1960s changed to [ˈskiː]. Many languages make a verb form out of the noun, such as "to ski" in English, "skier" in French, "esquiar" in Spanish, "sciare" in Italian, "skiën" in Dutch, "esquiar" in Portuguese or "schilaufen" (as above also Ski laufen or Ski fahren) in German.

Tampa, Florida

Tampa /ˈtæmpə/ is a city in and the county seat of Hillsborough County, Florida, United States. It is located on the west coast of Florida on Tampa Bay, near the Gulf of Mexico, and is part of the Tampa Bay Metropolitan Area. The city had a population of 346,037 in 2011.

The current location of Tampa was once inhabited by indigenous peoples of the Safety Harbor culture most notably the Tocobaga and the Pohoy, who lived along the shores of Tampa Bay. The area was explored by Spanish explorers in the 16th century, resulting in violent conflicts and the introduction of European diseases, which wiped out the original native cultures. Although Spain claimed Florida as part of New Spain, it did not found a colony in the Tampa area, and there were no permanent American or European settlements within today's city limits until after the United States acquired Florida from Spain in 1819.

In 1824, the United States Army established a frontier outpost called Fort Brooke at the mouth of the Hillsborough River, near the site of today's Tampa Convention Center. The first civilian residents were pioneers who settled near the fort for protection from the nearby Seminole population, and the small village was first incorporated as "Tampa" in 1849. The town grew slowly until the 1880s, when railroad links, the discovery of phosphate, and the arrival of the cigar industry jump-started its development, helping it to grow from a quiet village of less than 800 residents in 1880 to a bustling city of over 30,000 by the early 1900s.