La Cabeza

Una boca para comer,

Una nariz para oler,

Dos ojos para ver,

Dos oidos para oir,

Y una cabeza para pensar.

Newport Beach, California

Marriot Irvine

I laugh when I hear people talk about the end of summer vacation and how rough it is to go back to school. Since middle school, I haven’t really had a block of vacation more than 2 weeks long. Even my supposed “vacation” in California was intertwined with a conference, which was a very good conference, but a conference nonetheless. There’s always time to brush up on outpatient orthopedics, just as there’s always time to go to the beach!

I did get to go sailing, which was unexpected.

If you’re ever in Newport Beach, you can rent a sailing dinghy at Marina WaterSports (yeah, that’s it’s real name. . . ) which is at the end of Hwy. 55 (just keep going and going). You can turn left on Adams Street and park in the parking garage for a heinous $2 for 30 minutes. Or you can do what I did the second day, and park on the street, which is a little farther (and requires exceedingly good parallel parking skills such as mine. . . stop laughing, Matt) but is a heck of a lot cheaper.

Marina WaterSports at Newport Beach

There are only 2 sailing dinghies at Marina WaterSports, and the sails are kind of blown out. Furthermore, they charge $34 per hour (which is almost highway robbery), but they gave me a wonderful tip about visiting Back Bay and told me where to park for free. So I can forgive them.

La Quinta, Costa Mesa

I opted not to stay in the conference hotel, because La Quinta is at least $40 cheaper. And although cheaper is not always better, it certainly was better in my case.

My old boyfriend once asked me if I knew what “La Quinta” meant.

Devich: No, I dunno. What does “La Quinta” mean?

Jason: Next to Denny’s.

This particular La Quinta in Costa Mesa is next to an empty building that used to be Denny’s. But the actual Denny’s is down the street a ways, close to the Foster’s Freeze, which is where I’d rather go anyway.

(By the way, if you have never been to California before, and you encounter a Foster’s Freeze, you simply must try their chocolate chip milkshakes. Like See’s caramels, you can’t get anything like them anywhere else in the country.)

View from cockpit

And I thought for sure, I wasn’t going to go sailing.

Sweet Memories

Every now and then I get a little nostalgic about one of our old club boats. It’s funny how I can feel so misty about a boat, but not have a tad of regret about leaving any of my ex-boyfriends!

Ohhhh! If anyone has a Rhodes Bantam for sale, do let me know.

(Preferably with a spinnaker, but sans is okay.)

Frosty Mornings

Argh! It’s time to turn on the heater. I’m so happy Matt took the initiative to buy a new filter and fix the intake pipe. Meanwhile, I’m sad that the sailing season is close to an end. However, I do keep telling myself that I oughta try ice-sailing sometime.

Windboarding on ice is another option that I wasn’t aware of until today.

http://www.markscranton.com/RMWA_Web/windsurfing/

Captain Ron

I‘d heard of this film before, but never had the time to look it up, much less watch it. But this month is fairly good to me, so I rented “Captain Ron” and watched it the other week. Matt didn’t tell me he’d already seen it, the booger. But I’m glad he didn’t, because it’s nice to watch a movie without someone who’s already seen it making commentary on it while you’re trying to watch it for the first time.

I can safely say this movie has made my “Favorite Sailing Movies” list (even with the bloopers, which are pointed out in the following link).

http://www.moviemistakes.com/film235

Good Friends

It’s almost creepy to me how my good friends have an uncanny way of thinking of me at the same time I’m thinking of them. Just the other day, I was thinking how much I’d like to send a new CD mix to an old friend. So it was weird that I get a letter from her two days later.

Do I believe in telepathy? Naah.

I do believe that some good things are just meant to be.

Ow! Get off my hand!

DiscoverSailing.com

It always surprises me that people regard sailing as kind of an elitist sport. Perhaps it’s because when someone thinks of a sailboat, they don’t often think of a dinghy, but a yacht such as only rich people have.

Haitian sailboat

Although my sailboat is way cheaper than many powerboats that run circles around me, a sailboat, however small, means “money” to people, even though ironically, I spend less on insurance (try “none”) and even less on gas (try “none”) and even less on boat storage (try “none”) than my supposedly middle-class counterparts sharing the lake with me.

Even Matt was under the impression that my boat cost a lot, when in fact it was simply that I was spending far too much money trying to support a sailing club which had suffered from nearly a decade of neglect. Having left that organization, I find my funds (and my free time) are adequate for living normally again.

People also seem to be under the impression that you have to be incredibly physically fit (i.e. young) to sail. I’ve met plenty of sailors — fat and thin and in between, old and young and “I don’t remember” — and the only prerequisite I’ve noticed is the desire to do learn and do something new.

And perhaps that’s what makes my company so pleasant, when I do sail with others.

http://www.sailamerica.com/discoversailing/home.cfm

Boat Shows — Search by Location

I started this Xanga site with a post about having attended the Strictly Sail at Navy Pier in Chicago. I *just* missed an on-the-water boat show in Clear Lake, TX. I really recommend taking the time to go to a boat show. It costs about as much as a movie (and sometimes it’s cheaper). To me it’s ten times more fun (probably because of the caliber of movies that are made these days). Below is a site that has a search engine for boat shows across the U.S. and some overseas, even [Warsaw??].

http://www.discoverboating.com/calendar/index.asp

Central Texas Sailing Resources

This is kind of a neat site. It’s apparently made by someone who decided to compile a bunch of sailing resources in Central Texas, and organize it into a nice website with easy-to-find information. I admire people who do things that help people simply because it’s something they enjoy doing.

http://www.texassailor.com/2_lakes.htm

Note to SalmonCakeDaddy: Thanks! I will definitely look up the movie “Captain Ron.”

Philip Rhodes

Rhodes reliant 1963 design Owner: Ben Stavis, 1965

Philip L. Rhodes was a pre-eminant [sic] sail boat designer for half of the past century, from 1920 to 1970. Because he designed many boats for ocean racing, especially to Bermuda, his boats had to be fast, but they also had to be strong, seaworthy, and comfortable to survive and keep racing through the gales that frequent the Gulf Stream and other race courses. He also designed many other boats, from dinghies to huge luxury cruisers and commercial and military vessels. Whatever the boat, Rhodes knew how to make it work and feel just right. [Short bio by Ben Stavis, taken from his website at http://astro.temple.edu/~bstavis/pr/rhodes.htm.] See http://astro.temple.edu/~bstavis/pr/rhodes-bio.htm for a full biography of this majorly cool sailboat designer.