fdsailor.blog-city.com — August 2005
10:03 PM - Fridays off are wonderful things
Yep, been doing this for a month now, and let there be no doubt - this "work 4 days for 10 hours then get a 3 day weekend" works our quite well. True, the work days seem really long (especially the mornings, which seem to go on forever), but it seems that I get quite a lot done as well. And in the past, when we had half days on Friday is seems nothing got done at all, so I think the company does just fine. And here I sit, Friday night, and it absolutely feels like a Saturday night.
Just got back from another run (yup, you guessed it, a "run 8 km then get Abbot's" run). It has been so hot, it only seems possible to run about once a week. But today is was much cooler, only about 26. Yesterday it got up to 36 degrees - amazingly warm! Gwendolyn was going to sail with Lori in a Lightning sailboat (a "fun race"), but wasn't feeling quite up to it. Well, since it was predicted to be windy (and west wind at that, on Irondequoit bay) I didn't encourage her, but instead took her place. Well, it worked out for both of us. The wind was very puffy, gusty, with the peak gusts rather evil and over 20 mph. We didn't fly 'chute (no one did), but we did a pretty good job of calling the shifts (and not capsizing) - easily finishing first in both races. The lightning is a very different boat from an FD - more solid, quite stable, less nervous. Of course, the sail that makes the boat is the spinnaker, and we didn't fly that. It was fun.
Lot of things going on. Trying to organize the house and get it clean by August 15ths (an arbitrary goal). In a couple of weeks I have a conference to attend in San Diego, CA. And the weekend before that, I am considering either going solo camping at Low's lake (it has been a while since we have been there, and for various reasons I don't think G and I will make it together this year) or climbing a mountain in the high peaks area. But then again, I could always do that later... Hmmm.
Last weekend we sailed a regatta at Monomonac Lake, in New Hampshire. Light air, 3 way tie for first place! After tiebreaker rules we finished second. Can't complain!
8:52 am: Weekend report
Well, a sortta normal weekend, certainly a productive one. Friday was clean house day - Gwendolyn make lots of progress getting rid of stuff in the basement that has been there for 6 or more years, and I cleaned out 3 laundry baskets of bills, paper, and other things that had somehow gotten thrown into baskets instead of put away properly. I also worked on some boat projects (the tiller project in particular, in case anyone is keeping track).
We ate dinners at "Simply Crepes", a very tasty restaurant in Pittsford Schoen place, then we went down to the club to camp, etc. After having a few drinks with friends (there was a regatta going on, but not with the boat that I am sailing), we crashed for the night.
Sunday the weather was wonderful, just no wind. So we hung out (literally in hammocks!) and read. In the late afternoon the wind came up, and we sailed two Lasers in the evening - great medium, steady north wind. Put away the boats "by headlamp".
We also did some planning for the next several weeks. Probably going to the Adirondacks this upcoming weekend (trying to climb another mountain), then take a week off, then go to NJ to visit G's Mom, then return to the Adirondacks to go to Low's lake (canoe camping). Busy, but good.
9:25 pm (Pacific time) - San Diego (again)
OK, so I'm back in San Diego, attending an OMG SWRADIO conference. Not presenting this time, just listening to others. All told should be a mellow week in a nice location, although being home is still preferred. (G will enjoy the "alone" time, I expect).
I am staying in a hotel room that is really, really nice. So nice I feel a bit guilty that the company is being charged almost $200 a night for the privilege, which is quite a waste, actually. But this is where the conference is located, so that's the way it works. I am on the 17th floor, and have a wonderful view over the San Diego bay, where there are many moored boats pointing into the wind. And along the bay there is also an old square rigger ship - it makes for a very pretty picture.
I stay here until Friday, and return in the evening.
This last weekend G and I went to the Adirondacks for 3 days. We tool along two RIT grad students (Yana and Olga), whom we met ice skating some time ago. A good time was had by all. Yana, Olga and myself climbed Algonquin mountain, and this time it was not in the clouds. We also hung around Lake Placid, drove up Whiteface mountain, swam in the river, took some pictures of waterfalls, climbed a smaller (but still 325 meter) mountain in the rain, and hung out with several of Gwendolyn's friends. For a photo accounting, see http://yoj.smugmug.com/gallery
9:11 PM (PST) - Full day almost done
Well, it has been a full day. My body woke up at 4 am today, saying that it had already slept in for 30 minutes longer than normal. I convinced it that it was OK, and slept until 5. I then slowly started doing things.
The official work of the day was of course to be at the conference. But the morning talk was something that I am at least as qualified to present as the presenter, so I stayed in my room and started working on an estimate I needed to do for a proposal. But I had many distractions.
I feel soooo rich! At one point today I was IMing with Natasha, Olga and Gwendolyn at the same time, and later had a long chat with Masha. Thanks, you guys! (or gals, I guess). You don't know how wonderful it is to keep in touch with you all! Better than all the money in the world!
After the afternoon papers, we had a reception - quite boring, but had the waiters that had all of the tasty treats on silver platters that they carry around, and an open bar. I limited myself to one glass of wine so I wouldn't say anything stupid or do anything I would regret.
After the wine wore off I went running along the harbourfront. Lots of people, easy to keep running since there is so much to see. And the smell of salt water. Ran 8 km, then walked for a bit.
They are in the middle of a festival of tall ships - very cool. Here is a link to a few of them - http://www.sdmaritime.com
There is also an aircraft carrier complete with F-15 planes (!!)and a (pretty modern) Soviet submarine! Not your average running place indeed!
12:30 PM – A break from work
This afternoon, I played “hooky” and skipped the afternoon paper presentations, with a plan to go out (somewhere) and play. After lunch I returned to my room and contemplated what to do. Certainly I could buy a ticket and visit the nautical museum, climb on aircraft carriers and crawl inside of submarines. That sounds like fun.
Hmm… Look out the window. Nice day, puffy white clouds, sailboats on the bay. Hmm. The clouds mean that a seabreeze has developed – probably does that each day, now that I think about it. Hmmm.
I get an idea. I check out the idea in the telephone book, and verify my plan. Yes, I think it will work. Just need directions – there have them now. Get in the car, drive a ways. Get lost, then find myself again.
And here I am – renting a sailboat and now sailing in the harbor! I am not looking at boats, I AM one of the boats. Heck – they didn’t even ask if I could sail (luckily I can – quite well, actually). Now this is what it is all about!
3:00 pm – Glimpses of heaven
OK, it is not a perfect heaven. A perfect heaven would have me in a Laser (with good rigging) – instead I am in a Holder 14 with a tiller but no tiller extension. So far from perfect in the details, but for me, today, it will do just fine! I am not complaining. I sail to the far end of Mission bay, check out some small coves, and finally return.
On my way back, I notice what seems to be a rental Laser. I chase the guy down (tough to do since Lasers are faster than Holder 14s!). I ask where he got it, and he indicated the place. Hmm. Maybe heaven could be better – worth the try…
I return the boat – finally getting much better at tacking two sails by myself. Do a competent docking, and the boy (well, young, at least, looks like a 16 year old surfer dude) takes the boat from me, and hands the life jackets to the next waiting sailors.
Well, perhaps not sailors! It is a boyfriend / girlfriend sort – they seem to speak French, and very little English. But it is clear that they are asking “how do you work these things, and how do you steer”?
------- yikes! ------
Well, the dock boy was not deterred. He put them both in, and explained (and I am not kidding here – I stayed to watch!) that the mainsail is like the gas pedal, the daggerboard is there because it is heavy and hence keeps the boat upright, and the tiller is like the steering wheel – you wiggle it back and forth to steer (here he demonstrates, skulling it back and forth..). When asked what the jib was for, he replied “oh, that is just another sail”. The couple nodded enthusiastically and smiled.
O boy! – this is going to be fun – I am not sure I can stand watching!
Well, the boat is more or less on the windward dock (where he had told me to land it – he had probably never seen someone actually back a boat into a dock, which is what I did, per instruction). He leads them up a side dock, gives them a push, and off our new sailors go.
OK, what is the first thing you do? Hmm… Oh yeah – the gas pedal! Well, in goes the sail. Girlfriend follows, pulls in the jib. The somewhat surprised boat starts to drift sideways and shake a bit..
Steering! Gads – the steering wheel! Now how did that work? Oh yeah – you move it side to side, just like the man showed me!. Yes, control! No, maybe not. Hmmm….BANG. Yup, you guessed it, the boat accelerated (refer to “gas pedal”) towards the dock in, found the dock, and tried its best to keep going, per instruction (refer to “steering wheel”). Downwind. DAMN – take the foot off the gas!! Sails out! The boat likes that – good downwind trim! The boat starts to capsize over the dock. Thank goodness for that daggerboard, which must be doing its job and keeping the boat from doing that!
I don’t know how this story ends – I left! The girlfriend didn’t seem that impressed! This was the most amusement I have had since the guy at Low’s lake fell out of his (singlehanded) fishing boat with his trolling motor still running. The boat kept circling, circling, circling…..
I went to the laser rental place. Well, good new and bad news. Yes, they had Lasers, yes, they could rent them. But I needed to be a member / alumni or friend of the University of San Diego. How much that that cost? $45 per year to be a friend. Who says money can’t buy friendship. Doable, but not for today.
The Mission Bay Yacht club looked fantastic. Probably over 100 optimists, a fleet of Vanguard 15s, 20 or so 420s, And Solings, lots of other boats. Now if I could just deal with the fact that the average home price in San Diego just passed over $500K!
After sailing, since it was only 4:30, I decided to drive up to Torry Pines State Park. From past experience I know this is about a 15 minute drive up the coast. So I get on interstate 5 and head north. 4 lanes, traffic moving at 110 km / hr. Then…. a wall of cars. I come to a virtual stop. Well, this too will pass.
Or so I thought. It didn’t pass. The miles crept by slower than I could jog. I finally found my exit, glad to be free of this…. Well, you guessed it, dream on. The road there was backed up. And my “escape route”, through which I could abort and head home, was now backed up and standing still, since everyone else had that idea too. So I sat. And sat. My 15 minute drive turned into what in the end was a 2 hour drive. I am told this an uncommon but major accident had blocked 5, and everyone had clogged all side streets trying to avoid it.
But it didn’t matter now – there was still 1 ½ hours left before sunset, and I had the ocean, the beach, and the overlooking bluffs.
I started on the bluffs. Wonderful, wonderful place to walk. Trails, rocks, many scruffy looking bushes, cactuses, birds. Climb to the cliff, and overlook the ocean from 100 meters up. Ohh, I want to go down there. Find a trail – it is closed and deemed “dangerous”. Well, damn the rules, I will judge my own danger – I want to touch the ocean.
I climb down, down towards the sea. No problems. Near the bottom there is another sign. Oh yes, I see, this section is a bit washed out – but far from dangerous. The signs are there to protect them, not me. Well, I follow the path down – going nicely now, nothing dangerous. I can now see the surf. I follow the trail – I am walking on a ledge about 6 foot about the beach. I could get down, but it is unclear if I could get back up. So I follow the trail, but to no avail. I cannot get to the beach, and the sun is sinking lower on the horizon. I head back.
So the plan must change. I work my back up to the car. No hurry – I am not here to hurry. No running today. I climb, the sun sinks. I reach my car and drive down to the beach.
As I arrive, the sun is large and orange, and appears to hang motionless in the air above the horizon. Time seems to stand still with this glowing orb that seems to be not moving. I long to touch the ocean, only feet away, but I wait.
Slowly, the sun sinks in the sky, reaches out, reaches down, but still does not touch the ocean. Finally, sun, sky and ocean touch.
Simultaneously, I reach down and touch the Pacific ocean. Day is done, gone the sun.
IMPRESSIONS
The parasailors
While hiking on top of the bluffs, I see a number of forms shimmering in the distance. Not moving, really, but not stationary either. Paragliders, riding the sea air as it lifts over the bluffs, hovering. From a distance, they remind me of milkweek flyers being carried on the wind…
The towee
A desert path, an arms reach from the sea. A living contradiction. As I walk along, a small dark bird flits about.the bush tops, watching me, as if to say “it is odd finding you here – what do you seek, here in my land?”
The moon
I watch the sun set, I touch the sea. And I pause for a while, waiting for the deep blue of the ocean to spread over the sky and envelop the world. Now the day is done, and I leave in my car. After departing, I see the full moon rising over the mountains. During the full moon, the sun and the moon split the world exactly in two.
The surf
It is hard to describe, but anyone who has been to an ocean comes to learn and understand the language of the surf. Always changing, yet always the same – once experienced, it feeling goes deep in the soul. It is hard to forget watching the surf on a moonlit night, with the long breakers with their foam crests. No waves to be seen, but undulating white snakes appearing out of nowhere, growing in length, then collapsing on the shore with a muffled boom as the next line forms, repeating the process. Remember this, remember it all of your life, so you can draw on it during times of need.
11:23 - New Jersey, again
Well, this is a New Jersey weekend. To celebrate G's birthday we arrived here yesterday around noon to visit G's Mom, Tim, Aunt Margeret and ???. The plan today is to swim in the ocean - it is a wonderful day for it, and I am looking forward to it. It is interesting however, because for some reason I have started to think it is fall, but the calandar (and the weather) says that it is still before labor day. Put another way, the oceanfront is still in "high season", which will mean lots of people. So I will prepare myself for traffic jams down the coast - nothing to be done about it...
Last night we at at a Vietnamese restaurant - it was very tasty.
I just put the beginnings of a birthday cake in the oven for G (2 layers white). Now add some lemon filling between the layers and some boiled icing on to and we have a cake.
Anya is playing mind games with the cats, and the cats are playing mind games with the dog. One cat I call the "Phantom of the Kitchen" - he sits behind the scenes with only his face occasionally showing and rattles pans around so we know he is there. He is probably wondering if Anya tastes like chicken....
10:31 am - Random music shuffle
Here is an very interesting experience. Now I have all my music in MP3, I can do something pretty interesting. Of course I have music from many different genres - popular, classical, environmental, musicals, bird songs, thunderstorms, etc. With the classical, a symphony of course consists of several individual tracks.
So you take your MP3 player, select "shuffle all tracks" (not just within an album), and press play. Very amusing. Here is a typical sequence:
Beethoven Symphony #5, third movement
Lullaby from Peru
Rachmaninoff Symphony 2, fourth movement
Palm Warbler - song
Enya - (something - they all sound sort of the same)
Fiddler on the roof - "Matchmaker"
Some solo piano piece, probably by Chopin
I do strange things to keep myself amused!
9 pm: The invasion of the night-blooming cereus!
Here - put this plant by your bedside table. Ignore that it looks a bit scraggly - heck, the thing may be dead! And certainly nothing will happen when you go to bed...
Last night we went to a "Night-blooming Cereus" party. This is not the type of party you plan in advance! Instead, you find out about it at most several hours in advance. We heard about ours at 8:27 pm - at that time the flowers were just starting to open...
OK, after those introductions, here is the story. The Night-blooming Cereus is one is the less attractive plants in existance for 364.5 days of the year - they more resemble pumpkin vines with no pumpkins. The do eventually however, start to grow some flower buds:
Exhibit A: it all starts here:
Yup, that's the bud, and you don't even get THAT most of the year. This one is one day away from "hatching". Then, one night (and you can't tell which that will really be until the actual night), it opens and produces the most amazing bloom imaginable. The blooms go from closed to fully open in less than two hours. At full opening, they are about the size of a CD-sized water-lilly flower, with longer spikes. They stay that way until first light in the morning, and then they are done! Following are some pictures from our friends plant:
The center of the flower is amazing. If you want more pictures and detail, go to the photo sharing site (link in the left gutter) and look in the Fairport / Summer 2005 folder. From there, you can change to "large" or "original" photo size and zoom way in (and download pictures). Enjoy!
