Graduation Day

Sailing

Today was our final day of the Learn to Sail course. We spent the entire day on the water, learning how to navigate, read charts (only thing I love more than maps are charts!), and more on trimming sails. We left the harbor and headed for George's Island by sailing south of Long Island and then heading up. The wind was a steady 20 mph so we zipped right along. Once we made the turn downwind toward George's we put up the spinnaker. The docs on George's made for some interesting sailing. We came in on fire, had to lasso a piling off the stern in order to not ram the dock. On the way back, the winds were shifting and gusting making for some challenging sailing. But we all graduated. Luckily, they didn't make us wear the yellow foulies as our graduation gowns. ;-)

Bahsten

While heading to the hahbah today for my sailing lesson, I banged a left onto Commerical Street looking for somewhere to pahk the cah. The gahbahge guys were emptying the cans as I came up to the stop light. He looked over the MINI, smiled and yelled, "Cute cah!"

I love Boston.

Now THIS Is Summer!

Two days of sailing lessons down, four days of my sabbatical gone. Can we please slow it down a bit?!?!? It was a gorgeous day on the water and I have the sunburn to prove it.

According to the pros at the sailing center, today's conditions were superb. I'm sure they were but I found them pretty challenging. Everything happens all that much faster when the winds are gusting to 20 mph. Throw in the dead spots and shifting winds typical of Boston Harbor and things really get interesting.

Today's lesson was supposed to be on sailing off the mooring, getting on the mooring, man overboard drills and understanding the balance of the boat. We had a crew of three on our boat including our instructor. After rigging the sails, we nicely sailed off the mooring and through the mine field of other moored boats. Once out on the harbor, we decided to start where we left off yesterday and practice jibing. So we head on a run, and get set up to jibe. As I start pulling the boom across - BAM! - a huge gust of wind slams the main around and CRACK - a huge tangle of pulleys and lines comes flapping off the boom. WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?!?!?!? Turns out we ripped the boom vang off the mast. Oops.

One of the other instructors came out on the launch with a replacement. He tied up along side and switched places with our instructor - she took over the launch while he repaired the boom vang. I had an interesting time keeping the boat on course while he was busy with that - my very first time handling the tiller and the main sheet at the same time. Happiness.

We finished the day practicing all our maneuvers. I learned a ton - including graduating from my knot ignorance of yesterday. I got to tie the bowline at the end of the day. I wonder if the boat will still be there in the morning. ;-)

Getting Dirty With Friends

I'm not sure what it is - the dirt, the trails, the competition, the beer but the Muddy Buddy is starting to rank up there as one of my most favorite races. For more detail, see the site, but essentially the Muddy Buddy is race you do with one teammate that involves mountain biking, trail running, obstacles and crawling through some serious mud. Sweet!

I did my first Muddy Buddy last year in San Jose with TCB. It took me a while to convince her to do it. I think the competition freaked her out a bit and oh, yeah, there was that shoulder injury that would make doing some of the obstacles a bit sketchy. She was a trooper, though. We used my Surly Cross Check bike rather than a mountain bike. While this bike is fine for 95% of the course, it toasted her on the first (and only) major climb of the SJ course. TCB may have run out of gas in the first half mile, but she was smiling so wide in the mud pit she had mud on her teeth. And best of all, she said she'd do it again. YES!

Two weeks later, I convinced S to attack the Boston course with me. Again, it took quite a bit of arm twisting but she finally relented. The Boston course was typical New England - narrow trails through the shady woods littered with roots, rocks and ruts. It was so opposite the wide open, grassy California trails. And instead of baking in the Cali sunshine, we had the wonderful east coast humidty to deal with. S and I lined up at the start and checked out the competition, marking anyone we saw as a threat. At the gun, S jumped off the line and held us in first through her bike leg. That was the last time we saw first place but damn, we had fun. Yes, fun - despite the header I took over the handle bars on one of the downhills. Somehow, having blood running down your arms in a race makes you feel tough. I don't remember what place we came in but I remember smiling like hell as we climbed out of the mud pit. And the first thing she said to me was, "I can't wait until next year!"

So now it's 2006. I was a no show for the SJ race due to a family commitment. TCB had to recruit someone to take my place. Made me feel like crap - she'd been training hard and even had a new GF Cake for us to ride. But I was out, A was in and the two of them kicked butt and came in 12th. Awesome!

Boston 2006 - S broke her ankle in October and it's still too painful to run on. Surgery appears to be in her future. TCB has to go to Singapore so she can't do the Boston race with me. PFFC to the rescue! Yes, I had to promise beer, supply much cajoling and build up the Muddy Buddy to be the greatest thing since the invention of the coffee roll (if you knew PFFC, you'd know why that was important). The day before the race it dumped 3" of rain on the course. On our drive to the race, the downpours were so hard we doing 40 on the freeway, wipers slapping like crazy, and the bike seat soaking up gallons of rain so our ride would be just that much more delicious. I couldn't imagine what it would be like to race in these conditions.

Fortunately, the rain died and we raced under cloudy skies (at least for the first 20 min). PFFC and I were closely matched - neither of us had to wait at the transitions for the bike hand-offs. The Surly ruled - that bike flew on the trails. Both of us passed numerous riders, handled the huge mud bogs on the route. Running was quite an adventure and I'm really glad neither of us broke an ankle given you could never tell how deep the puddles were. And they ranged from a few inches to close to two feet in some places. No joke. We ran and biked hard, dove through the mud pit and ended up with a 5th place finish in our division. Oddly enough, we would have placed higher in the younger divisions. Go figure.

But the best part - PFFC said she'd do it again. And she was smiling. But that could have been the 4 beers talking (yes, we stood in the down pours and closed the beer garden). Or maybe it was the guy stripping off his gnarly, muddy clothes down to his naked white butt and doing a little happy dance a few cars away. Or maybe it was the three cute guys who had to push the car out of the mud we had managed to get stuck in. I'd like to think it's the thrill of competition and getting dirty with friends.

MINIs On Top

MOT 2006

Conga line of MINIs heading up Mt. Washington

This weekend was the 4th edition of MINIs On Top and we took Nemo to New Hampshire to experience it. Now, I'm definitely not a car rally kind of person but this really intrigued me. Sunset on the solstice from the top of Mt. Washington. Plus, getting to see 250 other MINIs and drive some of the twisty roads in northern NH was also a draw.

We drove up Friday afternoon. I had reserved a room at The Inn at Thorn Hill in Jackson. I'm more interested in being up there in the winter for XC skiing, snowshoeing and boarding so wanted to check the place out. The inn was quite nice - the restaurant's wine list even nicer. There were tons of Harley motorcycles out on the road since it was Motorcycle Week up there. It would seem there's some kind of kinship between MINIs and Harleys - many of the riders beeped, waved and gave us thumbs up as they passed.

Saturday morning we took backroads to Loon Mountain to meet up with all the other MINIs. I'm totally jazzed to get side stripes, rally numbers and boot stripes for the car. Also saw a set of checkered flag floor mats that I'm lusting over. We drove the Kanc with a group of 100 MINIs or so and then cut back to Jackson to avoid traffic in Conway. We met up with everyone later for the ride up the Mt. Washington Auto Road.
I remember the first time I hiked up Mt. Washington via the Tuckerman Ravine trail. Surrounded by beautiful forest, then above tree line, nature everywhere. Then upon arriving to the top, you have to climb over a guard rail to get to a parking lot before you can get to the small group of buildings on top. That just seems so sick and wrong! I thought, who would ever DRIVE up here? How lame! Ooops...guess I'm one of the lame ones. But at least it was for the sunset (which we didn't see as the clouds moved in) and at least I was driving a MINI.

Father's Day Thoughts

Having attended a memorial service last week for S's "second" dad (more on that later), I thought it would be nice to write a few thoughts about my own dad and remind myself how very lucky I am that he's still around (and calling me for free tech support on his vintage computer. I think it's a ploy for a new computer as a Christmas present. :-) )

I have three early memories of my Dad but can't figure out which is the earliest. My Dad is an avid photographer so early on I became one of his (unwilling) subjects. I remember holding my baby sister for a picture the first day she came home from the hospital. He was taking forever to set up the shot and in the interim my sister decided to "spice" things up by filling her diaper. I screamed that the baby smelled. My dad laughed. I was a few months over three.

The second memory is of sitting in a very small motor boat , fishing with my dad in the middle of Long Island Sound. There was a strong pull on my line and the two of us excitedly reeled it in. We were never quite sure of what it was that I caught - some huge, dreadfully ugly creature that I think that to this day makes me squeamish about swimming in salt water. I have a distinct memory of even my dad being frightened by this thing - which in turn freaked me out even more. He quickly cut the line letting it sink back to the bottom. Now that I think about it, I don't remember it splashing or moving. Perhaps it was Jimmy Hoffa. Nah - it was too far back for that. ;-)

My third early memory is begging my dad to take the training wheels off my bike. We had gone to visit some family friends and my friend was already riding a two wheeler. There was absolutely no-way-Jose that I was going to be outdone. I (respectfully, I hope) demanded that he remove those dorky training wheels and teach me to ride. I remember it as a warm summer evening. We were in the courtyard of our apartment complex in New York. He held the seat, ran alongside and I rode the damn thing. Forty years later, I still love riding bikes.

My dad taught me tons of stuff and I can't think of one iota of it that has not been useful. I've learned enough baseball strategy to give Joe Torre a run for Manager of the Year. I can do basic car maintenance. I don't throw like a girl. I've learned some very descriptive Italian insults and when (and more importantly, when NOT) to use them. I've built decks, installed hard wood floors, and have put in enough hours doing plumbing and electrical work to know that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing (last year I managed to blow out the transformer on the furnace).

And now, I even get to teach him a few things - mostly about installing more RAM, PCI cards, and using Photoshop. So I can't complain about being his own personal tech support hotline - I kind of owe him. Happy Father's Day!

Summer Business Travel

I fear this could end up being quite a caustic post. I'm tired, annoyed and stuck in the airport waiting for a red-eye from SJC to BOS that's delayed over three hours. I've realized that there's yet another benefit to taking a summer sabbatical and spending it at home - don't have to share crowded flights with old Aunt Edna taking her first flight in years. Or sitting with the Brady Bunch and watching as Bobby reaches over the seat in front of him to bat Greg on the head while screaming, "I SEE YOU! I SEE YOU!" Yeah, well, if you keep that up, you little punk, I'm going to poke your eyes out!