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April 15 Spring Sailing
Yesterday I was going to go sailing with Gen. It was a beautiful, beautiful day. Gen arrived at 2PM and we were going to put the cruising sails on the boat, making the shorthanded sailing a bit easier. Just as we started pulling off the racing main it started raining. Within 15 minutes we had the sail down and the rain was really coming down. No sailing this weekend. March 31 Phthalates may cause weight gainI read a rather startling article in last weeks Science News. Here is the first half. The rest is available on the Science News web site.
January 01 Sailing with Kevin DolanNew Year's Eve was a perfect day for a little sailing on Lake Union. Kevin came over to help figure out the problem with the bilge pump float switch on Penelope. After determining that the switch had failed we decided to sail. It was a clear, beautiful afternoon. Pictures at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/downtheyforgot. I've been off of work long enough that I'm itching to get back. Oi. Oh, I'm not big on resolutions but here are two things I want to be better at this year:
I used to easily knock off 10 miles a week in the past but after a couple injuries and some general laziness I've gotten off track. As for the Saturday races, this should be easier to do, just requires getting up EARLY on Saturday mornings to get the boat through the locks. Also requires springing for a set of racing sails. Happy New Year! December 26 Winter Feast Photos PostedYesterday Avi, Genevieve, Kristen, Leo, Nori, and Zephyr came over for Winter Feast. Click here for the pictures. I used to post pictures here on MSN Spaces but I can't figure out how to post photos without them getting all weird and pixilated. Flickr, sadly, does much better. No power. No Internet.During the windstorm a couple weeks ago my neighbor’s tree snapped about two-thirds of the way up and broke the power lines. When the power went out I thought it was just temporary. After all, I live in the city and we never have long power outages. Never… I get up the next morning and it is 58 degrees in the house. Hmmm… Clearly the power isn’t back up. It’s a Friday morning, my last day of work before taking the rest of the year off. I shower (there’s still hot water in the hot water heater) and get ready to head to work. Cathy, one of the women on my team, calls to say that she’s been to Microsoft and there is no power. Work is canceled. Okay, that’s fine with me. Avi, Genevieve, and I decide to meet at Le Pichet for lunch. As I’m leaving I see the fallen tree:
And here is the downed power line:
I point out the fallen tree and downed lines to Dave, a neighbor. He agrees to call the power company and tell them not to turn on the power without correcting the downed lines. After all, it could start a fire. There are downed power lines everywhere in the Seattle area; there’s little chance we’ll have power anytime soon. I pack everything up to go and sleep on my boat. The boat is great because it’s designed to be unplugged. When I come back on Sunday afternoon I see this:
Turns out the power company turned on the power three hours after Dave spoke with them and they agreed not to turn on the power. Apparently the flames from the downed power line were five feet high. In some spots the electricity burned through the concrete leaving dime sized holes:
The noise was so loud you could hear it a block away. There were three explosions. The first was when the power came on. Apparently the second was when one of the dancing wires hit the telephone box, blowing out the phones for my whole block. The third was the transformer down the street blowing. The fire department is just a few blocks away and they were on the scene almost immediately. They cordoned off the block and a police officer sat outside for several hours waiting for the power company to show up. So, we have no power and now the phones are out. The power company got the power back on Sunday afternoon and by Saturday we had phone service again. I use DSL and so without phone service I’m also without Internet access. I was totally surprised by how dependent I’ve become on the Internet, email, and IM. Totally sucked. It’s been a rough week but I’m beginning to remember what we did before the Internet... October 30 The OkCupid TestI typically hate these kinds of tests but I saw one on Ariel's blog and decided to take it. Besides, I'm home today having thrown my back out and my desk chair is the most comfortable place to sit. OkCupid! The OkCupid Test
October 05 Back to FridayTonight I'm back near Friday Harbor. After tying to the mooring buoy I cranked up the heat and took a hot shower on the boat. So great. And a shave too. Feels great to be clean. I think it was the Romans that considered themselves superior because view were cleaner than others. They also fed their foes to lions. Oh dear. No stars tonight. Instead, clouds: probably going to rain tonight. Sent from Windows Mobile 5.0 October 04 The San JuansLast night was my first night in the San Juans and I stayed at Turn Island, just outside Friday Harbor. I arrived later than I had hoped and found an open mooring buoy. Good thing, too: the winds gusted at 20 knots that night and it was a rough ride. I had dreams about coming untied and crashing into the shore. Today I sailed to Sucia Island. There was a small craft advisory with high winds. It was a wild ride and I had to reef the main sail solo in 20 knots. Totally nuts. Tonight I arrived at Sucia. Near of was another guy with a C&C sailboat. Turns out it's Fred Butler, the guy who bought my last boat. Wacky! I drank plenty with Fred and his companions. He's done some amazing work on my old boat. Lovely to see her looking so good. Sent from Windows Mobile 5.0 September 25 Marrs Needs Women[Anyone else remember the Meat Beat Manifesto song Marrs Needs Women??? Starts with "We will control all that you see and hear."]
I’ve been amazed at how powerful it is for people to collect in focused groups. As a child I went to a church (okay, we were Buddhists, but still…) and I still can’t put my finger on how the atmosphere itself almost changes when people, together, become single-minded. I’m comfortably atheist now and yet I’ve still felt that sensation in a yoga class, or during a retreat. I don’t think there’s anything magical going on, it’s just the way everyone becomes silent and focused.
The tragedy is that this energy can be harvested, cheaply. Years ago a friend of mine convinced me to go to a weekend retreat ($$$) to learn more about myself. My parents are psychologists and the techniques for emotionally charged group therapy are well known. By the end of the second day everyone was diving deep into their pains, crying together, and hopefully vowing to change their lives for the better, if not pay more money for the next, more advanced retreat.
And there’s the rub. I think most of us want to be better people, or we want to deal with our past suffering, or we want to belong. To get there we may almost unconsciously agree to overlook some fallacies. We may quietly agree that certain beliefs make us a chosen/better people, that our suffering is insignificant in comparison to some greater sacrifice, or that we can form a community around acts like the subjugation of women. But none of those things make us better or happier individuals, and none of those things make us a better community. September 18 Opera in your houseI’m a big fan of the Economist and recently they mailed out their most recent issue of Intelligent Life. This special issue is filled with a little more fluff than one normally finds in the Economist but some of the articles are hilarious. The article about how you can now hire opera singers to come since in your house was particularly entertaining:
So, how does this work? Well, it turns out that the economics for being an opera singer aren’t as great as they used to be. In the past there were few opera singers that made most of their salary on lucrative recording contracts. Conservatories and universities are turning our more and more singers, increasing the size of the labor pool. Furthermore, the recording industry is becoming saturated. After all, there are probably 10 very good recordings of Turandot. Anyway, Mr. Hulse, above, scored his private opera for about $5000.
Now, I’m not actually that much of an opera fan. Hell, I have season symphony tickets and I typically miss the nights where singers are the main attraction, but still, having a little opera in your house is, um, interesting in a bizarre kind of way. September 03 Yes. Frustrating.Well, things with Mary didn’t work out. Turns out she has some un-resolved issues with her ex-boyfriend. I broke things off when it became clear that while she wants to date me right now she is hoping to get back together with her ex sometime in the future. Yes. Frustrating. August 27 Guilty PleasureI have these little guilty pleasures in life. Vanity Fair magazine, bad pop music, any issue of Modern Marvels, and the “Sex Advice From…” column on Nerve.com. This issue is okay: “Sex Advice from Kickball Players.”
The previous issue, “Sex Advice from Stay at Home Moms” had a hilarious quote:
June 29 Swimming!It’s shaping up to be a great, great summer: last weekend it was 90 degrees AND windy, something that pretty much never happens in the NorthWest. I’ve posted a set of pictures in the photo gallery.
I’ve started dating a woman named Mary (orange bathing suit in the photos) and it’s been great, partially because it isn’t at all what I would have expected. She’s very much a Southern girl with a delightful accent and a set of morals and habits that are almost alien to someone like me. She’s likes bluegrass. She likes antique furniture. She’s wild about animals. On the other hand I’m just crazy about her and her about me. She’s clever, funny, a great sailor, and loves to drink as much as I do. Most importantly, I’m incredibly at ease around her. It’s hard to explain and right now I’m pretty happy with not trying to explain it and just having a nice summer. June 05 SwiftsureI’ve been back from the Swiftsure race for over a week but I’m just getting around to writing about it. In short, it was an AMAZING race. Friday we were locked in the port, tied up to the other Swiftsure boats, so we just sat around, drank coffee and did little boat projects. It was very relaxing. Saturday the race started at 10:25AM, an important point to note. The fast boats going all the way to Swiftsure bank in the Pacific Ocean (140 nm) left at 10:05. Super fast boats in our race to Cape Flattery (100 nm) left at 10:15. We left at 10:25 with an okay start. The first thing we noticed is that with the cruising sails up we don’t point as high as some of the boats around us but we do have excellent speed. A couple hours later we were preparing to round Race Rocks. This was the first time I messed my drawers. Race rocks is a passage between a rocky point and a set of islands. There's a picture at the bottom of this post. In the picture you can see the current is pushing pretty hard between the shore and the rocks. The trick for rounding the point at the top of the picture is to stay within 20-40 feet of the shore, quick tacking the whole way up the coast. The problem is that 50 or more boats are all trying to do the same thing. Oh, and the boats are of different sizes and different speeds. The guy who hit me, who turns out to work upstairs from me, called it a washing machine. We started working our way up the shore but while on starboard tack we got hit by a port tack boat. Here’s a link showing us just after the accident. You’ll note there are 6 boats within 20 yards of each other in this photo. We made it partway up the coast but then lost right of way, fell into the middle of the passage, and were carried back to where we started by the current. This happened to most boats, hence the waching machine metaphor. We started up the coast again, narrowly avoiding collisions, and were forced into the current again. Everyone on Penelope was AMAZING, staying focused and diligent tack after tack after tack. Several boats were getting hit and as the current was building fewer and fewer boats were making it around the mark. After our second failure to round the mark we decided to go around the lighthouse at the bottom of the photo. This is where I messed my drawers again. Below the lighthouse and outside the frame of the picture there are some hidden rocks. Our goal was to sail between the lighthouse and the rocks. After an hour we were barely creeping up past the lighthouse. Another boat, who had considerable speed managed to come up beside us, between Penelope and the hidden rocks. We shouted over, “Hey, we think there are some rocks underwater 25 yards from us.” “Yeah, sure. Whatever,” was the reply from the boat. They lost all their speed in the current we were trapped in and, in just a second or two, drifted backwards and were pinned against the rocks. We were slowly drifting towards them. We immediately jibed and headed further out into the current to safely round the mark. In hindsight we should have stayed in the washing machine to round the point. We would have certainly improved our standing in our division, but it seemed toooooo crazy to contemplate at the time. More later. Nic posted some pictures here and I've copied some of them into the gallery: http://www.kodakgallery.com/Slideshow.jsp?mode=fromshare&Uc=y5pge1q.bw8xyk9e&Uy=jtplgq&Ux=0 May 25 On our way to Victoria for the Swiftsure sailboat race. We left arter 5am and got some great practice in with the spinnaker. Here you see up motoring in the light Canadian breeze. Sent from Windows Mobile 5.0 April 23 Over 8It was a great weekend for sailing. On Saturday the wind was blowing 10-20 on Puget Sound. Avi, Kristin, and I motored out in the morning, Avi making scrambled eggs with anchovies and bacon on the way out. Once through the locks we picked up Sonia and Nate for the day of sailing. For lunch we went to Port Madison, tied up to a buoy, and had lunch and a nap. Then we sailed home.
Penelope did GREAT. The way back was a broad reach all the way across the sound and we got up to over 8 knots even with the main reefed. Pictures posted. April 05 a=f/mI'm in Boston for a couple days to talk with customers and present Microsoft's HPC solution to some folks at MIT and potentially Harvard. So, I'm staying in Cambridge at a hotel called Hotel @ MIT. They have the coolest blankets on the bed. Here's a picture from my mobile phone. Hopefully you can read the collection of formulas to keep somone warm at night.
Oh, and courtesy of Ms. Kristin Green I have some photos from sailing on Saturday this last weekend. |
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