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With summer on the lake in full swing, teens take flying leap to deliver mail

LAKE GENEVA (AP) — The main worry for mail carriers on Geneva Lake is neither dogs nor snow. It's wet piers, poorly placed lawn furniture and mailbox doors secured shut with a rubber band — all things that might make them miss the moving mail boat and plunge them into the lake.

The U.S. Postal Service says it's the only mail delivery like it in the nation and it's been done every summer since 1916.

A never-stopping boat delivers mail to the 60 or so mansions along the lake. The carriers, usually teenagers or college students, are hired to jump off a large boat, hustle to mailboxes on the docks and then scurry back to the boat. Up to 150 people on the boat — called the Walworth — get to watch the spectacle along the 26 miles around the lake.

If the jumpers returns safe and dry, the spectators sometimes cheer. When one takes the plunge unharmed, the crowd laughs. A close call prompts worried "oooohs."

"My favorite part is getting back on the boat, just the reassuring feeling of gripping the handlebars and the hearing the applause," said 16-year-old Oliver Pringle, who is among seven jumpers who work the route.

The service runs from mid-June to mid-September in the town where many from the Chicago area spend the warmer months.

The U.S. Postal Service lost $3.8 billion last year, despite cutting 40,000 full-time positions and making other reductions. It announced earlier this month that it faces a $7 billion loss for this year and the same for fiscal 2011, and wants to increase the price of first-class stamps by 2 cents — to 46 cents — in January.