19. go sailing (31 x 31)

Since I was a month old, I have been on the water. Born in February, this means that bundled like a moth in a coccoon, I was sailing with my parents in March of 1981. For those who are unaware, sailing season "officially" starts in May...

My dad has owned a few boats. The first one that I sailed on was Whistle Wing and her dinghe was called WWII. We sailed out of the Southern River in Annapolis for the first couple of years and then my dad moved to Arlington, TX where he windsurfed to get out on the water, and then a few years later migrated further west to Long Beach, CA. He had the second boat, Samoset, which was a family name, shipped across the US when he settled. I remember what a big deal that haul was to him.

Sailing on the Pacific Ocean is vastly different than the Chesapeake Bay. Samoset had a centerboard in her keel which was rarely used on the Bay but it was used so often on the Pacific that it actually fell OUT of the keel somewhere in between LA and Avalon, Catalina.


Dad moved to California when I was about six years old... if I remember correctly. We were out sailing ALL THE TIME. He would charter the boat maybe two weekends out of the month and let the charter company use it for sailing lessons during the week but other than that I looked like a Mexican jumping bean from all the time spent on the water during the summers. When I was about 11 we went on a week-long sail all along the Channel Islands. The only time I have ever thrown up from sea-sickness was on that trip. We were sailing from Santa Cruz island to San Nicholas (I think) and we caught the most awesome waves, I mean 15-20 foot troughs, we were surfing in a 32 foot sailboat, under full sail, and it was impossible to navigate out of the current without capsizing the boat basically. I don't remember how fast we were going but it was terrifying and it was nauseating... it also could have been the mayonnaise used on my ham sandwich.


When I started to make friends and was old enough that the friends could come on sailing sleepovers, we would pack four or five girls on the boat PLUS Dad and sail to Catalina for the weekend. We got into so much mischief over there. One time we took the dighe to shore (leaving Dad behind) and made a game to see who could bum more money off of the drunks. My team was totally winning until we were busted by an off-duty cop. Then we decided to try to drive the dighe between the two hulls of a catamaran and got stuck. Dad would film all this on his camcorder: us scooting away on the dighe and returning a half an hour later. He said we were trolling for boys. Girls just wanna have fuh-un. One time we bought henna to dye our hair and neglected to work out the logistics of washing the henna out when three of the four of us had really long hair and only a 25 gallon tank of fresh water. Turned out, I rinsed mine out in the ocean.

Between all of these excursions, we had to get from Point A - Long Beach to Point B - Catalina and so learned how to sail, every man-jack of us. How to sail by the tails on the genoa and the main sail, by compass, and by GPS. How to set and raise an anchor, how to catch a mooring. How to reef a main. How to protect your wenches. How to tail. How to speak sailor: starboard - right, port - left, head - toilet, line - rope, bow - front, stern - back. And a lot of other stuff.

The summer of 1997 was difficult, I didn't return to California until 2009 when I moved there with my bestie Sarah and her family. My Dad moved back to the east coast in 1999. He sold Samoset and left her in Long Beach. Occasionally, he would charter boats on the Chesapeake and I would join him for a couple days. This year, he bought a boat, Beaumaris, from an 81 year-old sailor on the Great Lakes. This boat is 20 years old and has never seen salt water. She finally made it into the Connecticut River in June and I finally got to sail her on Tuesday. It's been a long time since I have been out on the water, and it did actually take me a minute to get my sea-legs back. I never realized how dependent we are on our knees to help balance on a rocking ship. It has helped me build some strength back in my knees from all the running and it felt great.

Dad took off half a day from work and I packed a picnic for onboard. We sailed from Old Saybrook to Plum Gut into Gardiner's Bay and then returned on the flood tide.


Beaumaris handled the 15 knot wind beautifully. We had a broad-reach south across the Long Island Sound and then sailed close-hauled on our return. On the return, the current was with us and the wind was coming from the NE. On a 350 degree course we clocked 8.4 knots at top speed. Not too shabby!


On this coast, tides and currents are especially important, and so we took a bit of time on Tuesday to learn about how to read the tide reference book. We also had a little refresher course on bouys: colors, placements, and avoiding driftwood on the river. so happy to be back on the water!

10. drive an antique car (31x31)

There were MANY antique cars in Old Saybrook, CT this week. They all gathered on Main Street to commemorate the 100 year anniversary of a bridge spanning the Connecticut River between Old Saybrook and Old Lyme. It was quite a to-do on Wednesday. There were 25 cars built before 1935, and then a hundred more built between 1935 and 1965, all part of the parade put together by the Old Saybrook Historical Society (which is rumored to be fairly stodgy). The Fenwick neighborhood decided to enter five cars as a group, similar to the 1911 parade where five (of the 17 cars in the entire town of Old Saybrook) came from Fenwick. We all dressed in white and Mart made everyone blueberry pancakes to start off a wonderful day.

Now, we had five cars, we would need five drivers who knew how to drive these antiques. Mart invited her buddy Michael Beaudette to be a driver. He drove up in a 1967 Corvette and I KNEW that was the antique car I wanted to drive.


Mr. Beaudette did not drive the Corvette in the parade, instead he drove Marlene Dietrich's Packard (with a golden cigarette lighter). Rocky and Cricket drove her 1940 Ford Woody at the head of the parade. While we were drooling over each others' cars waiting for the parade to start rolling, Channel 3 news walked up to Cricket in the car and began interviewing her for the evening news!

The parade shut down I-95 North for about 30 minutes while we all drove across, we stopped in Old Lyme shortly and the got back on I-95 going south and parked down at the Dine & Dock. After lunch Mr. Beaudette let me drive his car. I understand that it's nearly sacrilegious to drive a car like that '67 Corvette in first gear and only around the block, but man-oh-man, I nearly inked due to excitement. The clutch was heavy and took some weight to get the pedal to the floor. I stalled about four times trying to get out of the driveway (uphill and on the grass). the engine rumbled like a jungle cat, it wasn't steady like a diesel. the steering wheel was narrow with a wide diameter. The tachometer was to the right of the speedometer (and I felt like such an idiot saying, the engine only goes 60 miles per hour? doh!), opposite to the arrangement in my dinky little Mazda 3. The seat belts were like those on an airplane, low across the hips and no upperbody protection. no roll-bar. no air bags. and all that muscle waiting to be flexed. yes, please.

32 x 32

1. donate hair to Locks of Love
2. establish Needles to Say
3. complete a century ride
4. close out corporate bank account, open up checking at a credit union
5. go play seal/otter/walrus
6. dye & spin my own yarn
7. watch all the alfred hitchock movies
8. go on 3 blind dates
9. re-enact a scene from the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Afred P. Frankweiler
10. regardless of who is playing, attend a show at the 930 club on April Fool's Day.
11. go to Lee's college graduation
12. Be a member of the audience in a TV show
13. Send a message in a bottle
14. Run to the top of the Statue of Liberty
15. Go geocatching
16. Fold a 100 origami cranes and give them to someone special
17. Fly in a helicopter
18. go to a silent meditation weekend retreat
19. go on tour of the Capitol
20. finish trunk projects
21. make garden needles, knit a blanket with +10 strands of yarn
22. be part of the sailing crew on a regatta
23. read something by David Foster Wallace
24. make an anonymous donation
25. improve race time on another triathlon
26. swim across the Long Island Sound
27. make stuffed squid like at Cousin Frank's
28. go to a rodeo
29. knit a blanket with +10 strands of yarn
30. blow kisses to all highway patrol cars
31. steal a choir suit and run around singing, clapping, and praising
32. sit in the gallery during a Supreme Court trial

21. Have a birthday party (31x31)

Not quite sure where my aversion to birthday parties came from, but I'm happy to report that only MY birthday is irksome and that I heart birthday parties for other people.

That being said, the goal was to have a birthday party, not specifically mine, so I threw one for my buddy Jenna back in January (again, it's taken me a minute to write about it because I wasn't sure if a friend's party qualified). We were thinking of having a clothing swap, and since it was close to her birthday, we decided that swap-o-rama birthday party was a righteous deal. She enlisted a friend, Style Savvy Kim, to actually vlog about the swappage.



My apartment was upturned and rearranged. We made SO much food! The lights were on and I can't control the heat in my apartment, which was sweltering. Jenna is so creative and thought of a fun game for everyone to play along the lines of truth or dare.

the "do you dress up your pets? If yes, do you have a matching outfit? If no, please draw one for us right now." This is Ginger, the Duke of Fluke in his Victorian Era ruffled shirt and... cape? The picture is now on my refrigerator.

I think the more joyous birthday parties I attend, the more palatable my birthday may become, but don't hold your breath.

29. Participate in International Yarn Bombing Day (31x31)

Michele brought the IYBD to my attention about two weeks before the first ever yarn bombing celebration on June 11, 2011 (which means that this item was not on the original list of 31x31 but I reserve the right to change items when I feel the fancy). It's taken me about three months to write about it, I just kept putting it off, don't know why. Well there are lots of things that I've been putting off or not motivated to complete, but that's neither here nor there... except it is here because I put it here. In any case, I think I put some ideas up on facebook for slogans to intarsia into a long piece for the yarn bomb which would match what Michele was bringing. The one that won was "love is alive and well" which was the one I wanted to win, but sometimes I worry about being too corny so I leave it up to facebook-democracy and if it wasn't good enough, tyranny is always an option.

Michele and I had some coffee and toodled around for a little bit on a Friday night, we walked up to Meridian Hill Park in DC and even though there as a cop sitting RIGHT THERE, we began to emasculate Joan of Arc's horse with a leg-warmer and some pom-poms to hang from his pom-poms... We finished in about an hour, it was such a blast. Something as simple as getting together with a good friend to crochet at night like fibre graffiti artists totally made me glowy for a week.








If you don't know what yarn bombing is all about, I suggest you read about it here. In June, this entry for yarn bombing on wikipedia did not exist, which makes me feel very cutting-edge.

The next morning Michele went to the park to walk her Toto-dog and took some pictures. Apparently we were written up in the Prince of Petworth as well!

11. Complete 10K run, raise $1000 for cancer research (31x31)

On of my favorite cousins, Parker, was diagnosed with throat cancer earlier this year. I didn't know what to say to him, and apparently he felt like he almost needed press secretary for all the calls that flooded the house when the family was emailed the news, so I thought signing up for a LIVESTONG event would say what I didn't have the words for.

The last time I tried to sign up for a run as a fundraiser, it was the 2001 Mardi Gras AIDS Marathon in New Orleans. I learned my lesson about a month into it. I was going to school full-time and working a few jobs. I went to ONE of the team runs but after that first time there was something about the weather that I always blamed for not being motivated to train. I held a yard sale and it was a complete failure from lack of planning and advertising (and the fact that my mother won't let go of anything in the house, boarding hoarder). I was also under the impression that I was going to somehow participate in Mardi Gras festivities and then go RUN A MARATHON.

A decade later, I sort of just fell into Team For the Win. Since I had set a goal of completing the triathlon in September, I thought that running a 10K would be a good warm-up. Along the way for training, I have hurt my right knee by overextension while going home downhill. It means I can't run intervals, so I completely bonked around mile 4 on the course. I did make the cut-off time and completed the whole course, but I was the last of the 10Kers to walk (read: hobble) across the finish line.
There was a lot of mental mumble that went on as the police escort was riding alongside me, "I just raised $855 for cancer." "It doesn't matter when I finish, just that I don't quit." "I only wanted to complete, not make good time." But as soon as he drove away I cried because I wasn't tired, but I was hurt, physically and my pride. I had really wanted to do well. I've been trying to get out and run a lot this spring and summer and I'm just not fast. I want to be better, faster, not in constant pain. The triathlon is in three weeks but I can't train for the run if I want my knee to recouperate, so there is going to be LOTS of swimming and biking in the next three weeks :)