Lotus was long!

We took three crews up to Lotus Iron Saturday. We didn't have enough women available to field a full women's crew so we had a mixed crew of Minnie, Rives, Melissa, Will, Todd, and Lianne steered her first race. Our men's blue team was Alan, Eric, Jesse, Clem, Kevin and Tom steering, the men's white team was Frank, Ernie, Patrick, Ed, Jason, and Troy steering. It was the latest race start I've ever had before, scheduled for 2 pm. In Canada the women's crews race together and afterwards the men's and mixed crews race together.

The race course was leaving in front of the Lotus Clubhouse across the Burrard Inlet north in to the Indian Arm, turn around Raccoon Island, then south towards Cates Park, then west back into Burrard Inlet to a turn around McBarge, and then a final eastward run back towards the Clubhouse. The race distance was posted as 17 km which converts 10.56 miles. I think it was actually closer to 19 km because my GPS read 12.1 miles at the end of the race and we really didn't do that much zigging and zagging around.

Two boats huli'd within 3 minutes of the start line. The wake across Burrard Inlet was substantial, there is a lot of big (huge) boat traffic along the Inlet. We may have been a little cautious but I'd rather be cautious and not huli during a race. Will and I worked out a system where Lianne would call out "Protect the ama!" and whoever was on the right side would switch over to the ama side, I kept calling the changes so the others wouldn't become too fatigued staying on one side too long and when things had calmed down Will or I would switch to the side we should be on. Once we were further up Indian Arm it was less bad but there were still moments of some pretty big wake. As we came upon Raccoon Island I saw a couple sunbathing, I'm not sure if they were completely naked but they definitely were from the waist up! I didn't call it out to the rest of the boat, didn't want to distract the guys (lol). On the other side of Raccoon Island there was a boat full of partying youth, I didn't see them but heard afterwards there were two topless girls, I just heard the guy hollar that we were dead last; not true there was another boat behind us! However, they did pass us once we were back into Burrard Inlet. We were getting tired by this time and had nothing left to try and fend them off. On our way to McBarge one of the chase boats was hanging nearby us and the crew which had just passed us. It was both endearing and a wee bit annoying that the guy was calling out to pull and twist, general pep-talking kind of thing. One part of me just wanted him to bed quiet, while another part of me actually pulled a bit better for the encouragement!

We were finally into the home stretch, tired and needing to make it that last bit, Lianne dipped the her steering blade in for a slight correction and the current ripped it out of her hands! Todd gave her his paddle and went for the spare paddle taped to the iako. We started to turn back for the blade when the guy in the chase boat offered to get it for us! We kept on towards the finish line and he passed off the blade to Lianne. With the exception of the start of the turn to go back those of us in the front would never have known there was anything different happening! Way to go Lianne! I was (and I think most of our crew was) thinking that the finish horn would happen a minute or so before it finally went off, but we had to keep paddling until we heard the horn. So tired, so tired, but finished!

Our men's blue team finished first overall/first open men's, at 1:24:17, the men's white team finished 11th overall, eighth open men's, at 1:39:00, and our mixed crew finished 19th overall at 1:57:40. I was in line for the BBQ plate lunch when I heard one of the race officials asking around for one of the SSP mixed crew paddlers. I called him over, he wanted to confirm that we had registered master category (35 and over). Yup, we were all over 35, we were masters. He then said we'd taken first place! Seems we were the only crew to register master mixed. HA! We went from last to first in a heartbeat!

Between the late start, long race, lunch, awards, and loading the boats we weren't on our way home until 6:45 pm. Talk about a long day. I finally got home at nearly 10 pm. Thanks to my neighbors for taking the dog boyz out for a few potty breaks today and feeding supper, too.

And OC1 on Sunday

As you may remember I was planning to paddle to Red Hook Brewery via the Sammamish River on Sunday. I heard enough negative feedback that I decided to scrap the idea and I believe I've come up with a much better idea. I/we can paddle to Agua Verde in Lake Union via Lake Washington and the Montlake Cut! I am totally down for margaritas and mexican food. I think the only place that has better rice and beans is Wahoo's Fish Taco and the only time I get that is when I'm visiting the Bro in CO (or SoCA, where I travel far less frequently than CO). Anyhoo.. I went to neither Red Hook or Agua Verde, saving it for another time. Anyone want to come along?

I did meet Lianne and her son, Kyle, to go for a nice out and back paddle from SSP. We headed north at a modest pace. We didn't want Kyle to fall too far behind and he wasn't feeling too motivated to paddle. He wanted to surf the wake left by passing boats.

I ultimately decided to paddle hard 10 minutes out and catch up with them on my way back. At my turn around point there were two people in kayaks out having a nice Sunday paddle. The guy decided he wanted to keep even with me. HA! As if my (not so thinly veiled) competitive nature would allow that!?! I dug in and pushed a little harder, but actually not that much more, and completely dropped him. I had brought my camera along in the waterproof housing so I stopped to shoot a couple snaps. As I was finishing he came up alongside me commenting on how my boat really moves. 'Damned right it does', I thought to myself. "Yup", I said to him. We chatted a moment and then I picked up the pace for the remaining 1.5 miles back to the beach, where I finally caught up with Lianne and Kyle. Turns out they headed back straightaway and surfed their way in. I'll post a pic once I get them downloaded.

14 Miles Saturday

We had ideal weather conditions for our Saturday morning paddle, warming but not hot and partly sunny but not too much. Since you should be paddling reasonably hard you really don't need the sun beating down on you, too. Our crew started out with Kristen stroking, then Meilee, Nancy, me, Rives and Lianne steering to get practice for Lotus Iron coming up on June 28. Can I just say 'I love following Kristen at stroke!' Her pace is comfortable, her reach is long, and her stroke is powerful. She is so easy to follow, she is also an awesome steerer. Too bad we can't clone her to have her sitting both ends of the boat! Minnie and Lianne are doing a fine job stroking, but they are still quite new in those positions. Over time I have no doubt they will really grow into those positions. Lianne is already showing a lot of potential at steering, too.

So, we paddled south past the 520 bridge and onward towards the I-90 bridge. We hit the 7 mile mark off the marina at Leschi. No chance of seeing our dragon boating team members, they were all up north in Vancouver for a huge weekend of racing. We took a nice easy turn and then stopped to swap people around. Lianne to stroke, then Rives, Nancy and I kept our places, followed by Meilee, and a somewhat tired Kristen to steer. Kristen hasn't sat anywhere but steering much at all this summer and that is a very different type of fitness.

The last mile or so were tough. We went 14.2 miles total and it felt like it. It was a good workout and it helped bring us another step closer to being ready for Gibson's.

After we got back to SSP Clem and I documented dings and wear spots on the three OC6s. We're hoping to get some rough time and cost estimates from the guy who is repairing our ama so we can figure out when to pull the boats for maintenance.

lake is getting warmer, sort of

We had only three people confirm for practice last night so we decided to opt for an OC1 practice. Funny, looking at all the OC1 paddlers we had we could have taken an OC6 out! There was Meilee, Lianne, Tom, Kyle, John, Kevin, me, and Bromley on the surfski.

We have enough women on the team now that we are going to have to do a time trial to select the crew for the Gorge race in July. Our time trial will be from SSP across the lake to Denny Park and back. Meilee, Lianne, and I decided to paddle the time trial course to get a little practice. I got to Denny Park first in just under 15 minutes, Lianne came in just over 16 minutes, and Meilee, who'd said she planned to paddle more leisurely, arrived in just over 17 minutes. As we were regrouping we saw John headed our way, we didn't realize he was planning to paddle the course with us as well so we waited for him to get to Denny Park before we headed back.

We decided to take a more relaxed trip back, paddling and chatting and working on technique. When we got most of the way back to SSP we met up with Tom and Kyle and Kevin and Bromley. There were a few bumps (small waves caused by boat wake) that we paddled and tried to catch! That was lots of fun.

Kyle, at 12, has already got awesome technique. Not surprising with an awesome paddler like Tom for a dad! Lianne has got some mad skillz, too. Tom was giving us some tips on how to fly the ama. I went over in fairly short order! The lake is not as cold as when we huli'd the OC6 a few weeks ago, but it certainly isn't as warm as a late August swim would be either. A little later Lianne was working on flying her ama and went over, but not quite as spectacularly as I did, she slid off her seat and didn't even get her hair wet! Right after that I went over again, too. At that point I decided that I'd probably had enough for the evening, but it was fun and worth it.

Saturday we have a big paddle lined up. We are continuing our training for Gibson's by paddling from SSP down to the I-90 bridge, the western side, and back. It should be about 15 miles! Looks like the weather should be pretty nice, too! I plan to bring my camera along and get a few snaps while we are out.

Google As Rice

This article was written by Managed Networks and it's pretty amazing. It puts the volume of information in to a perspective that I can actually wrap my brain around. Sorry about the funky formating, was a hack copy and past job and I'm just not savvy enough to make it pretty. I just thought it was really cool and wanted to share it.

Picturing Google: I never knew Google was THIS massive.

The blogosphere was amazed earlier this year when it realised the true size of Google. Think Google is the King Kong of search? Think a million King Kongs and you’re getting close. Google processes 20 Petabytes of a data a day. Don’t know what a Petabyte is? Check this out:

An MP3 is about 3MB. The Beatles recorded 214 singles- that’s close to just one gigabyte. 1024 gigabytes makes a Terabyte and 1024 terabytes makes a petabyte. Lost and confused? We were too.

Our poor mortal minds haven’t been so boggled by the ‘big numbers’ since a legendary wag fooled his elders out of ‘quite a lot’ of rice by using a chess board a few hundred years ago. We’ve used the same unit of measurement – grains of rice – to try to put Google’s electronic brain power into perspective.

Let’s relate a grain of rice to a byte. A byte is normally eight binary bits, eg ‘10011000’. It can also be written as a two digit hexadecimal number. In terms of data, a byte is generally used to store a letter. One byte = one letter = one grain of rice.

Bearing this new representation in mind, we can now look at a kilobyte (1024 bytes) as a small bowl of rice. It’s about half a portion, not enough to fill you up – and in data terms a kilobyte would only be a few paragraphs of text – not much to mentally stimulate you there either.

Next up is the megabyte, which is around the size of all the text on an average website, or a short novel. On the rice scale, a megabyte would be a 25kilo bag of rice; enough to feed over 420 people in one sitting, if you have enough chairs.

1024 times larger still is the gigabyte. Back in 1995, I bought a PC with a gigabyte of hard drive space, and managed to store everything I needed on there for the next few years.

To store a gigabyte of rice I’d have needed a bigger garden…. the size of two shipping containers to be more precise. And I could have treated all of those curry-loving Mancunians to a meal. The equivalent of finding a single word in a gigabyte of text is finding a few grains of rice somewhere inside those two containers.

Moving up the scale again we reach the terabyte, equivalent to 1024 gigabytes. I have a terabyte drive sitting in front of me – it’s the size of a small shoebox. But to search through all that data – even on my most powerful desktop machine – would take longer than my patience could bear.

To transport a ‘terabyte’ of rice we’d need to hire this container ship. We could use its contents to feed everybody in the EU.

Finally, we arrive at the mighty petabyte. At this stage, we’re well beyond the size of data that most individuals or small companies handle, and into the realms of some of our Enterprise clients. It’s the same as 210 of the largest container ships that have ever been built, EIGHTY bowls of rice for every person on the planet, or…

…what you’d need to cover central London in 1 metre of rice!

Remember, Google processes 20 petabytes of data every day; or if you prefer – over 4,000 gigantic ships bursting with rice, 1,600 bowls for everyone on the planet, or central London drowned in 20 metres of the stuff. This is spread over 72,000 jobs each taking an average of 7 minutes to complete. Their data processing capability is a big contributor to their position at the top of the online world, and also no doubt to their estimated £1million monthly electricity bill.

Google should never leave you feeling unfulfilled again!

Adventure Planning

I've been thinking about paddling the Sammmish River from Lake Sammamish to Lake Washington. I've learned how to measure distances more accurately in Google Earth. You can zoom way in and then use the arrows to move the map around. By doing this I've calculated that from Lake Sammamish to the boat ramp in Kenmore is 13.6 miles and to go all the way to SSP is a total of 18.7 miles. The river looks wide enough for the whole distance, too. You can faintly see red dots where I mapped out the river and then a while line finishing the route to SSP.

After lunch I showed the course to a co-worker and that opened a whole new can of worms. He pointed out that the river passes very nearby the Red Hook Brewery. We then spent some time pinpointing the brewery. By zooming in and looking around we located it. Then I measured it and came up with a distance of approximately 7 miles. Why, that's totally do-able! In fact I think I'll do it this Sunday. Have a nice paddle, stop, load the boat,and head in for some lunch. Not sure if you can make out the red dots for the shorter route, but they are there.

I mentioned the long course to a few club members and they seem keen on the idea. I'm trying to work out something with Seattle Raft and Kayak for trailering our boats to the launch point. SRK is located right next to SSP down at Magnuson Park. More details and pictures of the adventure to come.

I'm Not a Masochist, Really!

This is where we revisit the wonderful world of foot torture. Blah. I saw Dr. Irving again Monday. My feelings are that the various therapies, massage and prolotherapy sugar injections, have reached a plateau. My feet don't seem to be getting worse (yay!), but while they are better than before starting they don't seem to be showing much in the way of further improvement (boo!).

I've now had four injections in my right foot and one in my left foot. That last injection on Monday was very painful, I didn't kick the doctor though. It's now Wednesday and my foot is still sore from the injection. I'm writing this longhand while the bus is creeping along in the express lanes, on my way home to get the car and head off to Carmen's foot massage. Neither Carmen or Dr. Irving has brought me to tears, yet. But both have made me question my tolerance for pain (it's increased loads) or fondness for pain (ya, really not so much). But I keep going and asking these professional pain inflictors to inflict more pain and paying for the privilege, mind you. WTF?!?

I'm seriously wondering whether I should continue with these therapies. Dr. Irving suggested that it may take upwards of three months for the injections to completely do their thing. I plan to hold off seeing him for at least that long to see how things develop. Carmen, though, I'm torn. She works on more than just my footsies and the back work helps lots. For now I think we'll try every other week versus the weekly visits we have been doing and see how well that works out. Fingers crossed.

11.5 miles today

The plan is to race the last Gibson's race which is more formally known International Howe Sound Outrigger Race held at Gibsons, BC. This year will be both the 10th anniversary and final running of the race. The race is 18 miles long so we need to beef up our training. We are aiming for longer distances on our Saturday practices.

This morning Chantelle, Meilee, Nancy, me, Rives, and Kristen headed north off the SSP beach and up towards Kenmore and into the Sammamish River slough, which connects Lake Sammamish to Lake Washington. Up in the slough it's quite pretty, very peaceful. We saw 3 or 4 herons today, a momma duck with her ducklings, some geese with their babies, too. I thought I'd seen a raptor of some type but it turned out to be a heron way up high in a tree.

As we passed under the bridge in Kenmore we smiled and waved to Nancy's husband, Mike, who snapped a few pictures of us. I hope to get copies and post them. When we came back around Mike was now under the bridge at the boat launch snapping pictures from near water level. At that point we were nearly out of the slough and back into Lake Washington where Kristen went from steering to sitting stroke and Rives steered us back into port. Following Kristen as stroke was wonderful. She was a fantastically long reach and rotation. And she is so consistent about putting that barely perceptible pause at the top of the stroke allowing us to set up properly and really maximize our pull. Wow, never mind we were at the back half of an 11.5 mile paddle, it felt so easy.

It was an excellent workout. Thank you ladies. I'm thinking about planning an OC1 adventure exploring more of the slough. It's approximately 12-13 miles to Lake Sammamish from Kenmore. Might be fun to go with someone and leave one car at the finish so we can drive back. Next weekend we are heading for I-90!

Da Boyz is Famous!

One of the blogs I follow is called I Has A Hotdog and it's corresponding I Can Has Cheezburger where people submit animal photos and they are captioned and posted. Some are cute, some are odd, some give you a big laugh. I submitted a few photos of da boyz and when I looked this evening there they were!!



I really like this one, it hasn't been posted on the site yet, still in the voting section



Another in the voting section



Arthur was soo tolerant of the baby Gus puppster.



Guess I need to upload some more pics of da boys!

Drunk Humor

I had a foot massage tonight and it was especially ouchy which left me feeling not so creative with what to post. My friend Matt emailed me this joke tonight. It made me laugh out loud so I thought I'd pass it on.

-----------

Mike wakes up with a huge hangover after attending his company's get together Party. Mike is not normally a mixed drinks drinker, but the drinks didn't taste like alcohol at all. He didn't even remember how he got home from the party. As bad as he was feeling, he wondered if he did something wrong.

Mike had to force himself to open his eyes, and the first thing he sees is a couple of aspirins next to a glass of water on the side table. And next to them a single red rose!! Mike sits up and sees his clothing in front of him, all clean and pressed. He looks around the room and sees that it is in perfect order, spotlessly clean. So is the rest of the house. He takes the aspirins, cringes when he sees a huge black eye staring back at him in the bathroom mirror.

Then he notices a note hanging on the corner of the mirror written in red with little hearts on it and a kiss mark from his wife in lipstick:

'Honey, breakfast is on the stove, I left early to get groceries to make you your favorite dinner tonight. I love you, darling!

Love, Kim'

He stumbles to the kitchen and sure enough, there is hot breakfast, fresh orange juice and the morning newspaper. The kids are also at the table, eating. Mike asks, 'Kids... What happened last Night?'

'Well, you came home after 3 A.M., drunk and out of your mind You fell over the coffee table and broke it, and then you puked in the hallway, and got that black eye when you ran into the door.

Confused, he asked them, 'So, why is everything in such perfect order and so clean? I have a rose, and breakfast is on the table waiting for me??'

They reply, 'Oh THAT... Mom dragged you to the bedroom, and when she tried to take your pants off, you screamed, 'Leave me alone, I'm married!!'

Broken Coffee Table $239.99
Hot Breakfast $4.20
Two Aspirins $.38

Saying the right thing, at the right time. . PRICELESS

What part of "I don't date married men" are you having trouble with?

The last batch of dating prospects seems to have fizzled out. I'd met a couple of guys and I think the feeling was a mutual 'eh'. No problems, just have to keep fishing.

I re-posted this past weekend. Had a guy answer who seems to be convinced that he is all that. He'd answered a previous posting and this time I said he's have to be more interesting or I wouldn't reply. He couldn't remember answering my post before but this time he was convinced that we were making a real connection and I should send him my phone number and isn't it great that I don't mind that's he's married! Uh, excuse me? married? Ya, sorry, I don't roll that way. My rational is this: If you'd leave someone for me what's to keep you from leaving me for someone else. He was adamant that his marriage is over. I asked him to send me a pdf of his divorce documents and then we could talk. It was more than a little odd that he kept emailing me for over an hour about what a great catch he is and how we'd be perfect together and he's being so honest with me ...

I guess I need to spell it out, don't I? And I realize that I may be preaching to the choir here, at least I hope I am, so here it goes. I have three minimum requirements, mind these are only minimum requirements there are many add on options. 1) Male (I know with the very short hair and the less than girly-girly actions may give other impressions but it's true, romantically I prefer the company of men). 2) Single (that means not married, not in a committed relationship, not but it's been over for a long time, not it's all over but the paperwork. Call me after you've signed on the bottom line). 3) Straight (ya, ok, this one is mostly just to make it more funny, but it is true, I'm looking for a guy that's looking for a girl).

So, these are the bare minimum requirements which need to be met for me to consider a guy as potentially datable. Extra marks are given for wit, intelligence, ability to make me laugh, like or have cats/dogs/or other pets, fondness for the outdoors and water. The list goes on and on. I guess the trick is finding the guy who meets my criteria while at the same time I meet his. Hmm, any suggestions?

Here are some photos of the guys I've e-conversed with and possibly gone out with once, just wanted to give you a cross section of that gets sent to me. I decided not to post any of the penis pics. One of these men is 26 years old. One of these men called me hot and wanted to have all kinds of sex with me. One of these men has herpes. One of these men is currently married. One of these men lives too far away. One of these men discussed his colonoscopy as dinner was being served. One of these men called me adorable (that still makes me smile). One of these men was nice enough but we both felt 'eh' about one another. I've met three of these men.

SSPO in a one two sweep!

Wahoo! We kicked some serious butt today! Our crew was Albert, Lise, Jason, me, Jen, and John steering. There was a little confusion at the start, the starter insisted all the boats had to be lined up between the two bouys. Our boat had lined up just outside, there was no room at the near end so we had to paddle down the entire length of the start line so we could line up at the other end. We got set and the horn went off, we leapt off the start line and never looked back. We opened the gap between us and all the other boats. Our nearest competition was the SSPO women's crew made up of Minnie, Meilee, Lianne, Nancy, Chantelle, and Kristen steering. I was surprised how close the were at the turn, we turned on the juice after the turn and extended the gap between us.

There was never any threat of any boat catching us! I've never been in that position before, it was kinda cool. Our SSPO women seemed closer during the turns but there was never any chance for them to actually catch us. Although the last 25-30% of the race everyone had slowed down and was feeling tired. It was a challenge to convert what energy we had left into moving the boat faster. Keep paddling until you hear the horn, keep paddling. We heard the toot of the air horn and we made it! A few moments later we hear another toot and see the SSPO women crossing the line! We'd taken first in open mixed at 1:20:35 and first in open women at 1:21:00. Way to go!

We fielded three men's crews. The open blue crew was Kevin, Tom, Clem, Than, Ryan, and Alan steering. The open green crew was Frank, Claude, Todd, Patrick, Michael, Koko from Kai Ikaika steering. The master's white crew was Brady, Ernie, Ed, Ken, Karri, and Troy steering. With our Mirage out of commission since the race at Jericho the first open men's crew used a boat borrowed from Seattle Outrigger Canoe Club (SOCC). Even paddling an unfamiliar boat the blue crew was able to turn in a strong performance, they were second in open men at 1:05:14 and were second across the line. The white crew took first in master's at 1:10:06 and were sixth across the line. The green crew took seventh in open men at 1:16:46, still nearly four full minutes ahead of our mixed crew time, and were thirteenth across the line.

We'd hoped the men would sweep their race as well. But I think it was a good day racing all around. The weather was decent if a bit cool and there was no rain. Next year Da Grind should be back at it's regular August weekend and the weather should be a more like summertime. Thanks SOCC for hosting a great race.

More wind, no huli this time

On Thursday night we got our mixed crew together for a practice, good to have at least one before racing together! Albert, Lise, Jason, me, Jen, and John steering. About 5 minutes after leaving the beach the wind, which was already not insignificant, kicked up. I was still a bit apprehensive from Tuesday so we headed north from the SSP beach.

About 15 minutes in we were already in some 1-2 foot swells and I noticed there were whitecaps, too. We continued north a few more minutes before John turned us around. He did an excellent job. Usually turns are made towards the ama or to the left, which keeps us in a more stable configuration. John turned us wide and slow to the right which kept the boat oriented where the wind helped to force the ama down and remain more stable. I never would have thought of that. Just another reason I'm not a steersman. That and my hind parts are too beamy for that seat!

My left butt bone area got a little bit crampy since I was leaning that way to help with our stability. The ama did pop up a few times but never in a way that made me feel like we were going over. However, we had no warning that we were going over Tuesday. We had taken a short break earlier and I instructed Jason and Jen (in seats 3 and 5) to keep an eye on the ama and help keep it in the water.

I'd like to take an aside here and say that Jen is one tough cookie! Her first go our we had her paddle down to the 520, no short paddle. Then Tuesday we huli her and need to be rescued. Then Thursday night taker her out in aggressive conditions. And she keeps coming out! Perhaps she's got a masochistic streak, I don't know. Regardless, Jen, you ROCK!

We made it back to the relatively sheltered area off the SSP beach and practiced turns for a little while. That was rather important since Da Grind has 4 turns. We started to get them dialed in and decided to head back into the beach. We were as good as we were going to be for Saturday's race.

Feel like I've been through the ringer. Oh wait, I have!

I woke up this morning feeling like I'd been kinda beat up, big surprise there. I had a chiropractic appointment scheduled as a follow-up to my fall in the shower last Saturday. Hoo, did I need it, all through my shoulders and neck felt clenched up. Dr Hobbs, of Accident Recovery Center, worked to loosen up some of the muscles before trying to make any adjustments. It's always nice to snapped around, especially when it's so needed. I've got another appointment Friday, too.

I went to work after my adjustment, the bus ride was a little painful, my back was really acting up now. Once at the office I was just feeling yucky, pulled muscles, back ache, and very tired. I finished up a little bit of stuff and then headed for home and a good nap. The dogs were happy to see me home early. They are always happy to see me, they're good like that.

After a quick potty trip Llelo was expecting to take a nap with me. It was funny to see, you could tell he was waiting, waiting, are we going to nap now? I put on some pjs and climbed into bed, Llelo hopped up and settled in next to me. I asked if he wanted to get under the covers and he got up and moved around so I could lift the covers over him. Llelo loves to spoon/snuggle even more so when we snuggle under the covers. What elevates it to utter bliss status is when he can snug his nose under my neck, too. He settled right in and headed off to dreamland! We napped for a good three hours, it was delightful.

In the evening I had my regular massage appointment with Carmen. I had told her about my shower fall so she was already planning to spend some extra time working on my back. After hearing about my huli adventures last night she decided to spend the majority of the appointment on my back and shoulders. I could feel the knots melting away, mmm hurts so good. She ended up spending about 5 minutes on my feet, she couldn't leave them untouched, she just couldn't.

Here's hoping my body feels better tomorrow. I think practice Thursday night will be very gentle.

Can I Get a Whoop! Whoop! for Seattle Harbor Patrol & Morgan

I didn't get much work done at home today. Not for lack of trying or desire, though. I just got hung up doing other stuff. I figured I'd have a good paddling practice and then be up working late tonight. Little did I know... We ended up with 7, but Tanja, not having a definite seat for the race Sat opted to head home and get out of the rain. That left us with Lianne, Meilee, Nancy, me, Jen, and Rives steering. And Clem went out on his OC1.

It was raining and quite windy. We headed out towards the dog park and around the point to the south. Once we made it around the point the swell really picked up, 1-2 ft, and washing over the bow and gunwales of the boat. Rives suggested that if it was feeling too gnarly we could turn around. Given my fall last Sat I gave her the signal to turn around after 5-10 minutes of going into that mess. Last time we were in wind like that I was leaning over towards the ama to help keep us stable and it really funked up my back, didn't want a repeat performance.

We made our turn and were headed back towards the point and we ended up beam to the swell. A wave picked up our ama and over we went before we realized it was happening! Wow, a huli in real life! I'd never done one in an OC6 outside the huli drills we have in the fall when the water is warmer. Everyone kept their heads, Jen gathered up the paddles. Nancy and I went to the off ama side of the boat. Lianne and Meilee pushed the ama up and Nancy and I pulled it back over. Then Lianne and Nancy got into the boat to start bailing. The only problem with that was every time they'd bail out a bucket full of water a wave would wash over the gunwale and replace twice as much!

I pulled out my cell phone in it's water proof bag and called Harbor Patrol, I have them on speed dial for just such situations. I'd hoped I'd never have to use it, though. They have to come over from Lake Union, about six miles or so. They said they were on their way and while we were waiting Lianne, Nancy, and Rives were in the submerged boat paddling gently trying to guide the boat towards shore. Clem had caught the bag with the pfd's, it would have floated off to Juanita otherwise. Finally the Harbor Patrol arrived, we were in the water around 30-40 minutes. Their faster boat was broken so they had to take the slower one, the inflatable zodiac type.

We got everyone into the Harbor Patrol boat and all the paddles. The guys tied a line to the OC6 and tried to tow it. Submerged as it was, with the wind and waves as they were, the boat was just not cooperating. They finally had to release the OC6 so they could get our shivering crew to shore. They promised they would come back for the boat and tow it over to the motor boat ramp at Magnuson Park. We were very reluctant to let it go, but, really, what choice did we have?

We got to SSP, waving to the kayakers who were looking quizzically at us. Their expressions said, 'um, aren't you missing something? a boat perhaps?' While the others dashed off to find warm, dry clothes I dashed off to find Morgan, the head of SSP and a pretty good guy. I told him we huli'd the OC6 and had to call Harbor Patrol. He asked why we didn't call him, he'd have come and rescued us. I said, "Honestly, I wasn't thinking that clearly, the Harbor Patrol number is at the top of my contact list, and without my glasses there was no way I could find your number." Living so nearby I often don't bring dry clothes down with me. Morgan lent me some ski pants and I had an extra fleece pull over in the car. A hot shower and dry clothes would have to wait until I got home.

We then set to figuring how to get the OC6 back to SSP. Our first plan was to hitch a trailer to Morgan's truck and load the boat onto it. A bunch of the kayakers offered to help us load even. By the time everyone had changed into dry clothes and gotten some hot tea from the SSP office the wind had completely died down. Morgan suggested we tow the boat back with one of the SSP motor boats. Seemed like a good idea to me.

I rode over with Morgan and Dave in the boat. Nancy & Mike drove Jen, Lianne, and Meilee over. Morgan rigged the lines to the OC6. Lianne sat 5 to steer, I sat 4 with the back up steering blade, and Meilee sat 3 and helped lean left to make sure we didn't huli again. Being towed back was really a lot of fun. At one point they started going a little fast-ish and we went off towards the right as if we were on a wakeboard, they slowed down after that. At one point it felt like they were trying to play crack the whip, Lianne was still trying to get things figured out though. After Lianne got the steering dialed in, we sped up again, this time she totally kept us in the middle! We got back to SSP, put the boat to bed, and headed out in search of hot showers and warm suppers.

Thanks everyone for keeping calm and cool under pressure. We were in a serious situation and we all kept our heads and worked together. It was key that we stayed with the boat, kept our paddles, and even though help was on the way we still worked towards saving ourselves. Had Harbor Patrol not made it we could have made it to shore, it would have taken a while and we'd have been a bit hypothermic, but we could have done it. Everybody made it back ok, the boat and paddles were all fine as well. Our only losses were 2 water bottles, a flip flop, a water shirt, and Nancy's GPS, not so bad, really.

an epiphany of sorts and Da Grind

I left the office today with a little bit of a bounce in my step. We finally have enough work that I can bring some home and work from home tomorrow. As I was making my way to the bus tunnel it flashed into my head, I haven't been able to work from home consistently for over a month. And that's, in part, what's helped cause my blogging to be less frequent. I have no guilt blogging during my work from home days but blogging in the office just seems like a really bad idea. I don't know that we will have lots of work regularly, we keep hoping another big project will hit and we'll be so busy we can't see straight but it hasn't arrived yet.

While taking a bit of a break today and looking at a blog I follow I saw this ad. Don't know if it's factual or not but I like their marketing ideas.

I'd like to invite everyone and anyone down to Alki Beach in Seattle this Saturday June 7 for Da Grind. It's an outrigger race sponsored by Seattle Outrigger Canoe Club (SOCC). The women's and mixed crew race will begin at 9:30 and the men's race will begin 30 minutes after the first race has completed. It's a pretty good race for viewing from the beach, it's two laps and the boats pass quite close to the beach. Last year between each lap the boats had to stop have a paddler jump out, run up the beach around a cone, then back into the boat so the second lap could begin. It's silly and fun and a great way for viewers to see the boats and paddlers up close. That little run may not be held this year as Da Grind is being held 2 months early and the water will still be pretty cold. But truthfully, when is the water in Elliot Bay ever not cold! Here's some video from last years race, I'm in seat four of the Sail Sand Point crew. If you have really good eyes you can see me on the start line, I have on a long sleeved dark blue shirt and a neon green hydration fanny pack. Not that my fanny needs hydration any more than the rest of me ...


Hope we can see you down there!