First post Du Jour

Do not go here and after you've not gone there, don't go here.

I've figured out the first one and half of the second one, but they're rather addicting.

The object is to figure *it* out. Clicking on something will cause something to happen which will cause something else to happen. You have to figure out what to click, and how many times, and in what order, to open the portal. Should you get addicted and want a yes or no answered hint, let me know and I will oblige on the first one. I'm still stuck on the second.

( Here's a hint on the first one to get you started )

In an excititing advancement of knowledge, I actually href'ed the above without looking it up in the faq's for the first time. Yay me. In a prime example of my state of brain, however, I had to edit the content of the post at least three times to make it make any sense whatsoever, and it's still not my finest example of writing.

So, today I....

today I started swimming lessons. 45 minutes in the pool with a teacher named "Tiffany" who is all of maybe 19, about my height and perhaps 100 lbs, but I'm going to err on the heavy side because I know muscle weighs more than fat.

It was a HOOT. In my group, the people who could swim but need stroke improvement, there was just me, a guy named Larry and Tiffany the teacher. Poor Tiffany was scared to death of us, you could tell. Every time we completed a lap she'd get this petrified smile on her face and say "that wasn't bad". Boy does my technique suck. I nearly drown trying to figure out when to breath and when to not breath on the front crawl. But it was fun and an hours worth of exercise.

So... this past week:

Monday - walked 5 k
Tuesday - did some upper body stuff
Wednesday - Waked 3 K
Thursday - more uppy body stuff
Friday - Walked 5 k
Saturday - Raced for 3 hours (short handed) Then drank rum and ate pepperoni and salmon, which kind of negates the rest of the week, but oh well.
Sunday - Swam for just under an hour.

Yay me!

Speaking of sailing... oh, I'll make another post. Just sit tight...

Yesterday's Race

Yesterday I raced. Saw 29 knots of wind which is a lot of wind.

Showed up at the Yacht Club expecting to see 25 knots of wind and to only have 5 crew. Got there, there was Shane and Thom. I said "Hiya. So, we got 25 knots of wind and 5 crew, huh." Shane said... Nope. We have 25 knots of wind and three crew.

So we picked up a fourth from the bar... Johnathan. And the four of us raced our 40 foot sailboat in a small craft advisory type race. FUN!

We didn't fly chute, but that's ok. It would have been tough. No, maybe not tough. It would have been positively horrifically frightening - particularly in those winds. (But I can guarantee if the fourth person on the boat was regular crew Thom would have made us do it anyway.) To put a spinnaker up these things have to happen: The spinnaker pole has to go up - this happens in the pit (me) The pole has to come back (Greg usually does this - but he's been in the Northwest Territories for the best part of the summer, so usually the guy on the Main (Don) or the guy flying the chute (pete) does this.) Then the spinnaker itself goes up - (me and shane) and gets flown (by Pete) and the jib comes down (me and shane again.) Thom needs to be steering the boat. All this happens really really fast. During a gybe set (my personal favourite) the boat gybes and then the spinnaker goes up. That happens really really fast.. like this: We go around the mark (usually with a bunch of boats within 10 feet of us) Thom calls for the gybe, the runners in the back of the boat need to be flipped over (by Lorraine) The main goes crashing over (Don) The jib needs to be gybed, (Pete and Greg, or me when Greg's not around.) Then the pole goes up (me) the pole goes back (greg/don/pete) the chute goes up (me and Shane) the chute gets flown (pete) the jib comes down (me and shane) and then we get set up for another gybe (which is another story again.)

So, take Don, Lorraine, Greg and Pete out of the above story. Replace Don with Johnathan and a Gybe set would have looked something like this: We go around the mark (usually with a bunch of boats within 10 feet of us) Thom calls for the gybe, I run back to the runners, and flip them over The main goes crashing over (Johnathan) I run back to the middle of the boat. The jib needs to be gybed, (me and shane) Then the pole goes up (me) the pole goes back (me/Johnathan) the chute goes up (me and Shane) the chute gets flown (?? - probably why we didn't fly the chute) the jib comes down (me and shane) and then we get set up for another gybe = which would never have been able to happen as the runners need to be flipped and the pole needs to go down and back up at the same time and, ladies and gentlemen, I may be good, but there's no chance in hell I could do that at the same time as the runners are at the very tippy tippy back of the boat and my office is in the middle. And I wonder why I'm so fecking bruised. So, we didn't do all that. We stuck with just a jib and a main, and even then we had to double reef.

But it's like a drug to me. I LOVE it. It makes me grin from ear to ear even when I'm being brusied and battered and having the skin ripped off my fingers. Afterwards we drank rum and ate popcorn and pepperoni. Shane and I (both dressed in full wet gear) played checkers with chocolates on a board I made with erasable marker on the deck (and laughed until I almost peed myself)

And that's the end of my story. Now. If anybody would like to come and crew with us, please contact me. It's much more fun flying a spinnaker than not.