Sometimes It All Works Out

Taking a windsurfing session is a gamble with high stakes. You get adrenaline pumping ecstasy if you score; lost time and money if you miss the wind. Yesterday I hit it just right at Carmine Island on the York River.

I happened to sail precisely when the wind was strongest, between 11 am and 1:30 pm, using a tiny, 4.2 meter squared sail. (It was a little windier at Carmine Island than the Coast Guard Station where the wind is measured, but the trend was the same.)

Around noon a flame-orange Volvo station wagon with darkly tinted windows pulled up to the launch site.

It was "Gloucesterfarian" Paul Dovel, the perpetually-stoked windsurfer turned kiter. I helped him set-up his 9 meter squared kite. We barely avoided disaster launching it because 2 of the kite's 4 lines were reversed, sending it into uncontrollable spirals across the water. Paul was yelling, "Please grab it! Oh God, PLEASE PLEASE grab it!" as it lurched towards a rock bulkhead. But I wouldn't go near it until it settled down enough to assuage my legitimate fear of being entangled and strangulated / dismembered by the flailing bridle lines. Yikes! Eventually I did get the kite, Paul fixed the lines, and we rode for a short while before the wind dropped and I went back to work.

West Virginia - Open for Business?

West Virginia got my business last weekend when I squandered my stipend on a ski vacation at Snowshoe Mountain.

I'm glad I wasn't the one driving, because it's not easy to get to West Virginia. The ancient wrinkles of the Appalachians still conspire to isolate the mountain kingdom. From the East, one must ascend a gauntlet of engine-grinding ridges, and navigate a maze of winding hollows. Deeper in, cell phones stop working, and McDonalds and McMansions are replaced by country diners and cabins. Such seclusion has its appeal, both to hearty locals and to some strange comers from the outside world. The National Radio Astronomy Observatory at Green Bank seems thoroughly out of place, although I'll grant that it might seem out of place ANYWHERE on earth. The relative radio quiet of rural Green Bank is perfect for looking and listening to the cosmos.

Snowshoe Mountain is another strange, outside element in the rural state. Its lines of condominiums and luxury shops are perched on the very top of a remote and windswept ridge. Ski runs trickle down into the valleys below. The set-up is an odd reverse of the ski areas I remember from Washington State, where lodges and resorts were at the bottom of valleys and ski lifts reached UP to the ridges. Although I think it's kind of disrespectful of a mountain to build all over the top, it was neat to be up there in the extreme environment, where torn clouds of wind-driven snow coated every object in a patina of frost.

West Virginia's former "Almost Heaven" and "Wild and Wonderful" mottos were apt descriptions of the beauty and uniqueness I observed. But not everyone thinks the way I do. The state's idiot governor recently decided to change their main slogan to, "Open for Business", inviting all manner of unscrupulous developers and extractive industries to have their way with the land. You can sign this online petition to change the slogan (and maybe the policy) of the state back to "Wild and Wonderful".

Martin Luther King

Remember...



...that peace and justice still need our fearless voices.

RS:X Windsurfing Worlds - Olympic Qualifier

There's a good report on the Windsurfing Magazine website about the RS:X World Championships in Takapuna, New Zealand. RS:X is the model of windsurfer used for Olympic competition, and this regatta was the final shakedown for RS:X riders before the actual games. It was particularly intense for the American women; Nancy Rios, Farrah Hall, and Denise Parris, because unless one of them scored big in Takapuna, the US wouldn't qualify to send a woman to the games.

Fortunately, both Nancy and Farrah sailed well and made the cut. Nice going, ladies. The overall women's winner was the incredible Italian Alessandra Sensini, shown below getting air.

The men's winner was Tom Ashley from New Zealand. The only difference between the men's RS:X and the women's RS:X is that men use 9.5 meter squared sails, which are usually yellow, and women use 8.5 meter squared sails, which are usually red.

First Person Perspective Kona Windsurfing

"MoreForce4" is the internet handle of a Canadian windsurfing archaelogist living in Victoria, British Columbia. The other day he posted this cool, first-person perspective video of a winter windsurfing session along Victoria's urban waterfront. The film was shot with a "GoPro Helmet Pro" camera, which is a funny name, and probably an even funnier looking device. The music isn't quite in line with my own hard-rock sensibilities, but I think the video came out great. Non-windsurfers, or those who haven't yet tried the sensational new "Kona Style" longboard will definitely get the sense of what it's like to fly over the waves on the big board.



Way to go "MoreForce4". I'll have to get myself one of those helmet cameras.

Creased Comics

Cartoonist, animator, and bootleg-voice-over artist Brad Neely is my new hero. His unusual and sometimes profane humor may not strike everyone squarely on the funny bone, but I love it. Neely's one-panel cartoons are similar to Gary Larson's classic "Far Side" comics, but they tend to go a little further, even. The characters are so self-absorbed, desperate, and pathetic that they could almost be real people.

The artist also has, in spades, one of the key ingredients of funny, which is the ability to perceive the masked absurdities of life and society, and to reveal them hilariously.

I just love the one with the shark. The stoked dumb-asses in the boat are being delivered precisely the spectacle they came for. It brings to mind the way nature shows pander to our obsession for thrills and our inability to appreciate nature unless it's over-dubbed with macho narration.

Brad Neely is famous for some other stuff besides his single-panel cartoons. He narrates over the first Harry Potter movie with his own sly script in "Wizard People, Dear Readers", and he has a series of short animated cartoons on the comedy website "superdeluxe". The animated cartoons are pretty risque, so, you know, don't say I didn't warn you. The clip below is from Wizard People, which is tamer.

To kite, or not to kite...

...that is the question.

It's a dilemma that every windsurfer faces, and it creates a contentious, ego-fueled debate between windsurfing diehards and kiteboarding converts. There are several key angles to the debate: 1) Which sport is cooler?, 2) Which sport is easier?, 3) Which sport is more practical?, and 4) Which sport is most dangerous?

1) Which sport is cooler?

Kiteboarding is cooler. Duh. I know so because whenever I tell someone I'm a windsurfer he gives a dismissive grunt, scratches his head, maybe picks his nose for a while, then perks up and says, "Hey, so uh, you know what looks cool? That kiteboarding stuff! I saw this thing on the Travel Channel once, and those guys were catching, like, 20 feet of air!" Sometimes I try to respond by emphasizing some of the positive advantages of windsurfing as opposed to kiting, but really there's no point. We windsurfers lost the battle for coolness a long time ago. Kiteboarding is a newer sport, provides a quicker route to extreme thrills, and attracts a younger, sexier crowd... which attracts a younger, sexier crowd.

However, along with coolness comes image-consciousness... the nagging, un-fun compulsion to buy expensive surfer-sunglasses, get a labret piercing, wear ironic trucker's caps, and put boardshorts on over your wetsuit. A wetsuit is one of the few excuses modern humans have to prance around in near-nudity, but of course the fashionistas ruin it for themselves with the boardshorts on top thing.

2) Which sport is easier?

Windsurfing is much easier to learn. With the right stuff you can learn from a friend in less than an hour. But the kind of windsurfing that you can do after an hour is not at all the fast, cool-looking kind; witness the author with a beginner board and sail last summer:

Cool looking windsurfing skills take much longer to acquire, and thwart many would-be sailors. By contrast, learning kiteboarding involves several days of expensive, professional instruction and is very tricky and intense. But at the end of that you're going fast and looking pretty cool, even though you may be wiping out into a garbage scow 5 miles downwind of where you started.

3) Which sport is more practical?

I have to qualify this one. In terms of storing and transporting gear, kiteboarding is more practical. The boards are small as a bath mat, the kites can deflate to the size of pillow, and there are no rigid rig components like masts and booms to worry about. However, in terms of actually getting to RIDE your toys, windsurfing wins hands down. Case in point, I windsurfed within a couple blocks of my house almost every day last summer, while my kiter buddy Sam only got out a couple times. Kiters need consistent wind greater than about 10 knots, a wide-open place to launch and land, and shallow water with no obstacles to dodge or current to fight. (Advice to windsurfers: If you want to maximize the advantage you have over kites in sub-optimal conditions, you need a longboard.)

4) Which sport is most dangerous?

Kiteboarding is more dangerous by far. When you fall off your windsurf everything instantly comes to a stop, and you get back on. When you fall off your kiteboard the kite keeps pulling, sometimes even harder than before, slingshotting you downwind until you either get it under control, pull the safety release, or hit something big and unyielding, like your mom standing there taking pictures at the water's edge. Lots of people die kiteboarding every year. You should tell your mom to stand further away from the water.



Ok, I said my piece. Now it's confession time. I want to try kiteboarding. I've been secretly practicing with Sam Lake and Paul Dovel's kites, and I watched Sam's "Zero to Hero" kite DVDs. The ones produced by Trip Foreman; the Benedict Arnold of windsurfing who founded Real Kiteboarding and created the infamous "windsurfing has been cancelled" bumper sticker. Yes, I know it's shameful. But even if I do end up learning and loving kiting (I might not) I'll never disrespect or abandon windsurfing and my windsurfing peeps. It will probably be a while before I actually get on a kiteboard but it will definitely make this blog when I do. In the meantime, it's supposed to blow 15-20 knots out of the NE tomorrow, and be almost 50 degrees F. Sounds like windsurfing weather to me. :)

PS- Just because, here's Hamlet's soliloquy, the one I corrupted from Shakespeare for the title of this post, in it's original form:

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action. - Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.