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September 26, 2022 8:51 AM

For more than two decades, Kurt Steiner has dedicated his life to skipping rocks. His record of 88 skips may never be touched. But spend a little time with him, and you’ll realize it’s not really about records. Stone skipping is so much more than that. Skipping has brought Steiner respite from a life of depression and other forms of mental illness. It has also, in part, left him broke, divorced, and, since the death of his greatest rival, adrift from his stone-skipping peers. Now, in middle age, with a growing list of aches and pains, he must contemplate the reality that, in his most truthful moments, he throws rocks not simply because he wants to, but because he has no choice.

I flew from Europe to Detroit, where border guards had a hard time believing I was entering the U.S. to interview a stone skipper. Then I showed them a video of Kurt’s magical record throw, and before long a group was gathered around a computer screen, counting the skips and hollering “No fucking way!” before letting me through. From the moment I met Kurt in Erie a day later, it was clear that his hibernation had ended. By 10 p.m. on our second evening, when he fashioned a can of Monster energy drink into a makeshift bong, we’d spoken for 12 hours straight.

posted by AlSweigart (30 comments total)

That second paragraph’s story, when added to the first, makes this one of the most anticipated FPPs in my queue. Thanks for posting!
posted by armoir from antproof case at 8:59 AM on September 26, 2022

88? I'm bad at everything!
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 9:00 AM on September 26, 2022 [1 favorite]

I reached a point in my early teens when I could reliably skip a stone over ten times (and that's not counting all the little barely perceptible ones at the end). The water didn't even need to be particularly placid -- just placid enough. And the stone didn't need to super flat -- just flat enough. It was all in the wrist action, the physics of trajectory and velocity and surface tension and ... other stuff.

I got to be quite the show off until maybe sixteen years old, I did something to my elbow. Which never really recovered. To this day, I can't throw anything overhand properly. Just big pain. Ended my baseball days but for whatever reason, it didn't affect my tennis serve. And thank god, I could still type.

a little relevant music
posted by philip-random at 9:12 AM on September 26, 2022 [2 favorites]

I can see why the guards were so impressed by that video! (But that still doesn’t excuse them for being jerks in the first place.)
posted by TedW at 9:19 AM on September 26, 2022

MetaFilter: fashioned a can of Monster energy drink into a makeshift bong

I used to skip stones.. I still do (etc)

Just got back into it after years--decades!--of not visiting beaches, not walking and eyeing the ground for those good rocks, not whipping the good rocks to skip-skip-skip-skipskipskip

Time well spent, highly recommend.. thanks for the terrific Monday post, AS
posted by elkevelvet at 9:27 AM on September 26, 2022 [1 favorite]

Also see the doc Skips Stones for Fudge.
posted by dobbs at 9:36 AM on September 26, 2022 [1 favorite]

Is this where I come down to reality from skipping a rock 24 times and feeling pretty good about it?
posted by Chuffy at 9:55 AM on September 26, 2022

No, the reality is that 24x is still pretty good.
posted by aniola at 10:04 AM on September 26, 2022 [11 favorites]

We make fun of ESPN8 but by god, if it existed I would need no outer sports channels. That is where so many of the most interesting things and the most fascinating stories are.
posted by mhoye at 10:09 AM on September 26, 2022 [2 favorites]

Light hearted fluff piece on stone skipping takes hard turn, causes people to look in to the meaningless void at the heart of our lives.
posted by vorpal bunny at 10:56 AM on September 26, 2022 [7 favorites]

Man, what a joy are Outside long-form articles like this.
posted by ZaphodB at 10:57 AM on September 26, 2022 [2 favorites]

Light hearted fluff piece on stone skipping takes hard turn, causes people to look in to the meaningless void at the heart of our lives.
posted by vorpal bunny at 1:56 PM on September 26

In fairness, it's Outside magazine. "Light hearted fluff piece on [recreational activity] takes hard turn" is basically their modus operandi at this point.
posted by ZaphodB at 11:00 AM on September 26, 2022 [4 favorites]

It's a strange and remarkable career.

I love to do it myself and I'm a pretty good skipper, have probably hit 20-25 a few times in good water (it's so hard to count..) and I'm happy for the record holders. It always seems a funny thing to me when something graduates from "damn 34, that's awesome, let me try" to "my stone preppers are buffing the edges off my next 20 shots, I have to hit an average of 45 or I won't make the regionals." But that's so many hobby-sport continua. Some people love to quantify, some love to compete, some love both and that's where they and I amicably part ways.

These days I've found it most fun to teach kids. My nephews, young cousins, even randoms on the beach... they don't care about whether you skip 25, only that you do more than 4 or 5 and get a bit of distance. For kids certainly it's kind of magic. They just want to be able to pull it off at all.

It's a privilege of the shore-based childhood I had, growing up doing it... something I've learned as I've met other people. I can't believe they can do certain things that everyone in Colorado or Vermont (or Chile, or Gambia) does, and they can't believe I can skip rocks. I do love finding those friendly deltas between people - I don't know why, I guess it reminds me just how much people can do.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 11:20 AM on September 26, 2022 [5 favorites]

My favorite bits were this paragraph and the four that follow it:

To find rocks, Kurt combs the lake for about an hour, appraising the stones like a diamond merchant. One in three he picks up makes it into his five-gallon bucket. Ideally, it weighs between four and seven ounces, has a smooth, flat bottom, and measures between a quarter-inch and five-sixteenths of an inch thick. Once he’s gathered 60 pounds’ worth—around 200 rocks—he sits on a crate and sorts the rocks into four rows of descending weight, arranged left to right.

posted by aniola at 11:21 AM on September 26, 2022 [2 favorites]

I enjoy skipping rocks but I am apparently not very good at it. I'd say roughly half just plunk straight into the water and the rest go maybe 4-5 skips. My best is probably around 8. Strangely I don't think I've ever been around who does significantly better so until reading this article I thought I was fairly normal but now realize that I may still be normal but people are capable of so much more.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 11:47 AM on September 26, 2022 [1 favorite]

My best is also probably around 8.
posted by aniola at 11:49 AM on September 26, 2022

people are capable of so much more.

It really is a good metaphor, isn't it?
posted by aniola at 11:50 AM on September 26, 2022

Obligatory xkcd
posted by piyushnz at 1:24 PM on September 26, 2022 [4 favorites]

Apparently the rules require use of naturally-formed stones. You have to wonder, though, how many skips could be achieved using a stone machined into an optimal shape and weight.
posted by beagle at 1:25 PM on September 26, 2022 [2 favorites]

That xkcd comic says that 5 skips is a lot and is a good throw so I feel slightly better about my personal best of maybe 8.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 3:19 PM on September 26, 2022

When I was around 12, my buddy and I spent all afternoon skipping smooth flat stones on a wide still creek under a dark bridge in dim atmospheric light. We both got to well over a dozen skips, which seemed amazing at the time. My buddy was also a jerk who bullied me back then.
posted by ovvl at 5:56 PM on September 26, 2022

In 1964 my family camped at Interlaken, in the alps. In the evening we went for a walk along the lake shore, and we started skipping rocks. The Europeans had never seen it before, and we had a long line of people taking up a new hobby. Basically it was the whole campground. Very fun.
posted by Oyéah at 7:35 PM on September 26, 2022 [6 favorites]

*sticks face in*

It's called 'jillicking'!

*Hides again*
posted by The otter lady at 7:42 PM on September 26, 2022 [1 favorite]

Steiner? Nomen est omen.
posted by Ian Scuffling at 9:23 PM on September 26, 2022 [2 favorites]

Here's what Jearl Walker, former editor of Scientific American's 'The Amateur Scientist' column, had to say about skipping stones:

June 2006 Recent experiments and wonderful high-speed photos reveal the mechanics of a stone skipping over water. The stone, actually an aluminum disk, was launched by a catapult device that could control both launch speed and rotation rate. The researchers discovered (or rediscovered) that if a stone is to skip, its speed must exceed a certain threshold value or the stone merely skims (surfs) over the water top for a short distance before stopping and sinking. The stone’s rotational speed must also exceed a certain threshold value. The spinning stabilizes the stone much like spinning stabilizes a gyroscope. Then the stone maintains the same orientation (with the front end tilted upward by 10º to 20º from the water surface) for its entire skipping path. From skip to skip, its horizontal speed is almost constant, but its vertical speed (due to its being thrown upward by each crash into the water) decreases, until finally the stone just skims.

Back in 2006, Steiner's world record was 40 skips.
posted by jamjam at 10:07 PM on September 26, 2022

For any given stone, the only treatment I can think of which might improve its performance is making its surface as hydrophobic as possible, but I don’t have much confidence in that approach.

Still, maybe rubbing it up and getting your skin oils all over it would help in a competition.
posted by jamjam at 10:28 PM on September 26, 2022

The Relationship Between Frictional Resistance and Roughness for Surfaces Smoothed by Sanding
posted by Mei's lost sandal at 7:44 AM on September 27, 2022

This is the most Metafiltery post I've seen here in some time!
posted by sudasana at 8:35 AM on September 27, 2022

Name that movie! It is an old one, maybe Connery or Heston. He is challenged by the barbarians (?) to throw a rock to hit the big rock offshore, and he does it by skipping one.

I remember it distinctly, but no further details...
posted by Meatbomb at 12:53 PM on September 27, 2022

Jason and the Argonauts ...?
posted by philip-random at 10:16 AM on September 28, 2022 [1 favorite]