Friday, September 25, 2015

Sailing makes for slow and interesting racing

The Figure 8 Race is a race through a Bay, then out onto the broad Lake and sailing a figure 8 around two large islands, as well as a very small island between then, then back to and through the Bay.
It takes 3-6 hours, depending on wind.  Here's is listener's family's boat out in front
More boats coming along behind
The lead boat on the right got hung up briefly on some rocks and the second boat nearly caught up.  That made the last leg of the race a bit more exciting!
Here's the finish line! (Well, that little motorboat is the finish line.)  
And the family won! Yay!

6 comments:

  1. listner--Getting off the rocks without holing the boat is definitely number one! Was that your family's boat?

    I sent a copy of the 1874 illustration of the now unusual nib pen grip that seems to give much better control than the usual one. Working on various letters and numerals to decide how I want to write them, and making decisions.

    Yes, I do enjoy (well, much of the time) providing clarification for juries. It is the role of an expert witness to clarify for the deciders of fact things that are not common knowledge--not to be an advocate for one side or the other. People who can and will provide expert testimony on drugs and alcohol are becoming very rare now--it has been an unfashionable line of work for decades. Most of those testifying are employees of law enforcement laboratories, which at least calls into question their neutrality; and almost none of them have any sort of medical background nowadays (it used to be common). There are certainly elements of performance art. So far I have had 456 appearances.

    Well, gotta do my penmanship practice and then hit the sack. Long weekend at the hospital coming up.

    TTFN

    Alan

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  2. listener--did you know there are both left- and right-handed fountain pens? The tine on the leading side is ever so slightly longer.

    Alan

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  3. Yes, Alan, that was my family's boat, and happily it did not sink! :-)

    I have owned a left-handed nib, yes. It helps immensely. But one still must push the pen along rather than simply pull.
    It really is fun to choose your own style, isn't it?! :-)

    And now, on another note, Rep. John Boehner has announced his resignation as Speaker and of his seat in Congress, effective October 30th. The conservatives are spiteful, unherdable cats.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/26/us/john-boehner-to-resign-from-congress.html?_r=0

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  4. Boehner resigns? Good Lord. But let's call a spade a spade--those folks are NOT conservatives--they are radicals, and more specifically anarchists. The basic problem with Anarchy as a political philosophy is that organization is necessary to accomplish political objectives, and organization is not compatible with anarchy. It looks like the Republican Party is disintegrating; since the Democratic party has shifted so far to the right in pursuit of the voters in the left wing of the Republican Party, the logical point of origin for a new party is the left wing of the Democratic Party. Might we be not just on the verge of, but actually IN a political realignment comparable to the disintegration of the Whig Party and its consequences?


    Lefty fountain pen link No. 1 [Click]

    Lefty fountain pen link No. 2 [Click]

    Lefty fountain pen link No. 3 [Click]

    Lefty fountain pen link No. 4 [Click]

    --Alan

    P.S.: Yes, it is a bit of fun choosing my own handwriting style. My coworkers have already noticed and commented favorably on it.

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    Replies
    1. I have your handwriting page all set for 1am Tuesday (assuming we all survive Monday's apocalypse ;-) ).

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    2. I genuinely don't know what's going to happen with the Republican party over the next 15 months. But I don't really think it's going to disintegrate. One thing about the disintegration of the Whig party is that the Republicans already existed. There's no real equivalent in 2015.

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