Hi

Hi.  Sorry that I haven’t had any updates here for a while.  I’ve been somewhat busy lately and have been letting this slide.  I still have to get the vacation pictures off of my camera and consolidated. 

Jenny and I have been taking sailing lessons at Moraine Sailing Club at Moraine State Park.  They’re good people.  I have one skill left to demonstrate, and that is the man overboard (MOB) response drill.  We don’t actually have to pick up a person–the instructor along for the drill tosses a cushion out at some point and calls out "man overboard!"  The skipper then must enter into a broad reach to pick up speed and get a stable course.  He or she then comes-about in a 270-degree "chicken jibe", aiming to put the boat downwind of the MOB by two to three boat lengths.  Once there, he or she luffs-up toward the MOB, finally letting all sails luff as the MOB is approached on the windward side of the boat.  Why the windward?  Well, for one thing, if the MOB was approached on the leeward side, the boat may be blown on top of the MOB. 

We’ve been having a good time with that stuff.  A couple of weeks ago was the last session that I could make it to this season.  I only had the MOB and the capsize recovery drills to complete.  Unfortunately, due to some delays doing the capsize recovery drills, I didn’t get a chance to do the MOB drills. 

Capsize recovery, you say?  Yes.  We went out in pairs on Sunfish (small dinghy-style lateen-rigged sailboat), then had to intentionally capsize the boat, recover the boat, and resume sailing.  We each had to do this twice–once as the crew and once as the helmsman.  By the time I got out, it was me and another bigger guy, and we had a boat that already had its hull structure partially flooded from previous drills.  Let me just say that it was an adventure doing our two drills. It was a good skill to practice, though, so I think it was well worth it. 

Since then, Jenny and I have been busy with all sorts of things.  We had some family obligations to attend to, and spent some time doing some bike riding up at Presque Isle and on the Yough River Trail.  Last weekend, we finally did our annual Connellsville -> Ohiopyle round-trip ride.  We hadn’t done a long ride in a little while, and our knees were killing us by the time we got home, but it was a great ride. 

Now we’re getting ready to depart for a little journey–I’ll have pictures posted of that when we return.  It should be fun! 

In other news, I think that it is time to drop the DirecTV service. I love it, but I don’t think that we use it nearly enough anymore.  We’ve used it only a little over the past eight months or so.  We’ve used it more to watch stuff on local channels than we have to watch network TV, so I think it’s time. We probably use it most often to listen to XM Radio in the house, so I think we might get an XM Radio subscription–we’ll see. 

Well, that’s about all for now. 

jonathan