The Week in Review

This week was an absolute blast, one of the best so far.  Eric and I along with our windsurfing crew of Doug, Kris and Pat spent countless hours on the water sailing together, showing off our new skills and just having a ball.  When we weren’t sailing we spent the time laughing with and at each other and retold the same stories that we tell every time we get together.  Our annual trip has become just that, windsurfing till we drop, lots of big meals, reciting movie lines and laughing at stories that we could each tell in our sleep without missing a word. And with our jet-lagged friends, the wind up into the thirty mph range all week and our general social leprosy, our nightlife remained mostly falling asleep to world cup soccer. 

Eric and I did make one big mistake in planning ‘the trip’ this year, which we discovered the hard way on Sunday morning.  We encouraged Pat, a triathlete who is always in sick shape and who has more competitive blood in his veins than Eric and I combined, to bring his bike with him to Maui.  Our forty-five mile ride on Sunday turned into a game of try to keep up with Pat, a game we lost miserably.  Actually with Pat in the pace-line we averaged twenty-one mph for the first twenty miles of the loop, the flat part.  I looked down and saw the average at twenty-one and was pretty fired up as that is well above our normal until we hit the first hill where Pat kicked in the turbines and left Eric and I looking at our bikes in bewilderment.  As we climbed up and over the hills I was panting hard and watching my heart rate monitor closely when Pat came blowing past me.  I was a little surprised to have found Pat behind me but it turns out he was getting bored and took a couple right turns to get some extra hills in while he waited for Eric and I.  So I’ve been humbled on my sailboard, in the yoga studio and now on my bike – thanks Pat.      

On Monday night we had a knock on our back door and were surprised by our neighbors Sarah and Erin.  Sarah we had met a while back as she is a yoga instructor and occasionally subs for Nadia.  Now strangely Eric and I have been here for nearly two months and have not had a single visitor to our condo.  As soon as Doug, Kris and Pat show up our place is party central.  OK, not exactly party central, but they did show up with bag of groceries and made an awesome meal for us to welcome our friends to Maui.  I think they were expecting that with the five of us here we might provide some entertainment but were sadly disappointed as our eyelids became heavy right after dinner and they departed just as we rolled into our usual stories and windsurfing banter.    

On Wednesday we introduced Doug, Kris and Pat to yoga as they had not done it before but were complaining about aches and pains after so many long hours on the water.  Now I do yoga not to get better at yoga but to get better at everything else, like windsurfing and cycling.  In fact, our yoga practice has been instrumental in keeping us healthy through the first two months of our trip – knock on wood.  But I have been practicing several times a week for four months now and hoped to at least have made some progress.  I sometimes feel like I’ve taken steps backwards with my shoulders and hips feeling tighter than before I began.  Thus my progress can be measured by the few Sanskrit terms I’ve learned, equally useful to the Latin I studied in high school, and the fact that I do cut my toe nails more often than I used to so at least that’s something.  In any case, with the three rookies trying yoga, I was hoping that for once I might be the expert in the class…riiiight.  We decided to take it easy on the boys in their first yoga session and so rather than introduce them to Nadia, we went to the Paia Gym where our neighbor Sarah is now teaching some beginner classes.  It was kind of a comedy show at first and I’ve never seen a yoga instructor burst into laughter before which she did on several occasions but the boys did enjoy the benefits and made it back to the studio on Friday for more.  In fact, Sarah complemented Doug several times on his yoga form and flexibility and he did seem to be getting a lot of extra attention so I think we should thank Doug for the dinner we had prepared for us on Monday night – after all Doug is a good looking beagle. 

We have had non-stop huge wind since the boys arrived and have sailed more long and hard hours in the last ten days than we often do in two months back home.  Our bodies are showing it as well, as lots of Band-Aids are being applied, lots of Advil disappearing and Kris and Pat have come up with an unusual mix of duct tape and super glue to protect their hands and feet from blisters and reef damage.  Anything to stay out on the water.  We did have our instructor, Craig, come up on Wednesday and he spent an hour with Pat working on jibes who is now nailing them somewhat consistently and then worked with Douggy on wave riding and short board tacks.  With my jibes now starting to connect on both sides I worked with him on jumping and a little wave riding.  Craig did comment on how much my sailing has improved after I absolutely smoked a jibe on the inside coming in at what must have been twenty plus mph, flipping the sail and heading back out at equal speed.  It was nice to get more confirmation on my improvements and it was a great lesson as I now have a better understanding of how to hang in the air on my jumps, land them more smoothly and best of all sail away at speed.  I must say its getting sort of addicting to head out and go for bigger and bigger air.  All smiles on the water this week with the ripping winds, sailing with our friends, launching off the waves and cheering each other on.

We did have one incident this week that was a downer amongst our laughter and big windsurfing smiles.  Eric had a bizarre run in with some locals who were camping not far from our beach.  He was sailing a few hundred yards up wind from us when a young kid buzzed him very close up wind, something that is bad windsurfing etiquette and usually avoided.  Before Eric knew what was happening the kid buzzed him again so Eric followed him in to question why he was sailing so close when there is so much ocean out there for everyone.  Before he had a chance to question him another much larger man came out of nowhere, grabbed his rig and started screaming and threatening him.  Fortunately, after about fifteen minutes of this verbal assault, Eric was able to get his rig and sail back safely although looking as scared as I’ve ever seen him.  Most locals we’ve met have been quite friendly and welcoming but it turns out there are a few who do not like us Haoles (pronounced howlies), as they call us mainlanders, coming here to windsurf so we have been more careful to sail together since that incident.

Friday we picked up Mike, no not my brother again but another buddy of ours who has recently taken up windsurfing.  Mike has not been on the trip with us before and so has taken on ‘pledge’ status for his trial with the boys here in Maui.  If he makes it through this trial and catches the windsurfing bug even more, he may be welcomed back for next year’s trip wherever that might be.  In the mean time its nice to have a pledge out here to help carry our gear back and forth, keep the kitchen clean and look up questionable Scrabble words in the dictionary for us – of course we are open to other suggestions from our readers if just being here with the social lepers isn’t hazing enough.  Mike went off Saturday to work with Craig down at Kanaha and hopes to leave here nailing his water-starts and sailing comfortably in the harness and foot-straps so we hope to have some video of all that next week

Well, as always the annual trip is proving to be a great tradition with each year getting better than the year before.  It’s been especially enjoyable for me to finally be able to sail more with the group and show off some big air and jibes but all the boys have improved and the smiles are there right beside the Band-Aids to prove it.  Some great feedback from last week again so keep em coming. 

Last Week’s Best Comments:

Beth, Littleton, MA (just west of 495)

Apparently, we are not the only ones with our own web site.  This "comment is definitely worth a look at http://www.geocities.com/eafalk/Sarahweekly.html

Anonymous

“That's a good picture of the boyz…As for Jon getting compliments from Japanese men, you can take the man out of the South End, but you can't take the South End out of the man…Brian Logan [the winner of last week’s Scrabble contest] better have a Greek or Middle Eastern mother.  Otherwise he cheated.  No way he comes up with that word without looking it up.” – I have known Brian for many years and have no doubt that he cheated but I sent him the shirt anyway.

Tara, Boston, MA

“In the next issue please include some video footage of whooping, high fives and sound bites of intelligent discussion of "nuking" winds and "epic" sailing.” 

Francisco, Monteray, Mexico  (in response to Rusty’s comment from issue 6 about friends from MIT – also probably still enraged due to the U.S. drubbing of Mexico in the cupo de mundial)

“What is this?!.... You might be asking some of us to sponsor a flood of MIT
fellows to REALLY embarrass you... Just think about it... Shinya Ishizuka in
thongs (all types of them)…Hey remember some of us were accepted by mistake and remained cool throughout the program!” – Francisco, you were cool throughout the program and are welcome any time to visit here just as long as you admit who are the soccer champions of NAFTA

Brian, Charlotte, NC (Scrabble champ, chronic liar and cheater)

“You probably did not know this, but every year, me and five of my fraternity
brothers from St. Lawrence go on a trip together and hold our annual Scrabble tournament.  Last year, we went to Ibiza and spent 14 crazy days in our hotel suite battling day and night to determine the Scrabble grand champion.  We had some problems because our hotel was located over one of the local 24 hour discos that Ibiza has apparently become known for (who knew?). 

Our group only made it down to the disco twice during the 14 days; once to
ask the DJ to turn down the bass as the constant thumping was knocking our
tiles around the Scrabble board, and once to see if any of the club going ecstasy taking patrons could give us a ruling on whether Zeus was a proper name or a noun.  Maui was up for consideration for next years Scrabble tournament, but after pouring through the hijinx and marauding behavior that has been depicted in the J.E.W., we may have to settle on a more low key locale.”