Lam, that is soo funny!
I have YET to make it down the dern river! Its fun though. Cant wait till I make it pass 600 yards.... might take me a month longer.

Don't worry Boutwellt, I'm also fighting that river! My best so far is somewhere near 800m if I remember rightly, but quite often I get much less than that. Oh well, the attitude given by Amy is really wearing off on me - being determined to win against the river!!!!

Are you timing out or crashing out? This game requires good fine control, but at speed. The "at speed" part solves the timing out problem. Again, as mentioned elsewhere, standing at/near the front of the board will help a lot, as even when you stand upright, the game will think your weight is forward.

800m would be about where the river splits around the island? For most points on the river, you need to be looking up near the top of the screen to see what is coming so you have time to react to it. This will allow you to keep the speed up. The other point to bear in mind is that, oddly enough, the bubble is harder to control when it is going very slowly, partly because you usually do this when you are in danger of crashing, so you have less room for error. I think the problem here is that the board is very sensitive near the centre, so much so that you might call it twitchy. As your weight moves out to the edges, the board becomes less twitchy.

Also, you may find that doing the Ski Jump game will help, as it, too, has a fine balance control aspect, but it is slightly more forgiving.

Oh, and keep on practicing.

I always crash - timing out is for people with fine control. Thanks for the tip about the Ski Jump game - I might play that one before giving Bubble Balance another shot.

I feel that there should be a "bee-free" option. This is, after all, a test of balance and coordination, not really a "game" as such, and the bees introduce a frustration that has little to do with balance training.

The timing of the bees is set to "does not make problems if you fast enough".

Actually, the bees add something: the challenge of controlling your Mii well enough to not crash into them, or of having enough fine balance control to hold your position while the bee crosses in front of you.

The bees do help you to gain fine control, though. They are helping to hone your dexterity. Dexterity, here, is defined as 'finding a motor solution for any situation and in any condition'. Otherwise said, dexterity is 'the ability to create a perfect key for any emerging lock'. It's not enough, really, just to have balance and co-ordination: one must be able to apply them.

The bees add an element of the unexpected, that is, they make it so that you can't just proceed on some 'auto' mode. You have to pay attention and come up with a solution to them. The main solution is, as Methusalem pointed out, to go fast enough that they don't bother you. The one at the end of the Advanced Bubble can thwart this a bit, but there are solutions: (a) go fast enough that you reach the finish before he comes out, (b) go around him if comes out, or (c) wait for him to return to the river bank.

Oh, by the way, I didn't come up with these definitions for dexterity. They come from Dexterity and its Development by Nicholai A Bernstein. Fascinating book.