Post by ibex on Feb 16, 2009 0:55:50 GMT -5
Lots of days in life pass by without fanfare or record of their departure; with little to denote them as special in this short event we call "life."
Today was not one of them.
One of the highlights of celebrating my 31st birthday today was getting to go iceboarding on the ice shelf at the S end of Cayuga Lake. Amanda and I rolled into the Stewart Park parking lot and met Wing as we were unloading our gear. The plan was to share our (solitary) ice board while the other person hung out and watched, but to our complete joy, Wing loaned us a second board and we had brought 2 rigs, so we headed out on into the 10mph NW wind armed with two full sets of gear.
We started with some gybe drills, and we both quickly progressed to both of us doing (literally) dozens of gybes and feeling in control of the maneuver. This was particularly noteworthy for Amanda, as our last trip iceboarding together garnered her some time in the ER, a concussion, and a CT scan. Today was a new day though, and she seemed relaxed and centered as we focused on getting this technical milestone safely behind us.
The ice was grudgingly cooperative to our pursuits, and ranged between "pretty decent" in places and "nasty" in others with varying intensity of ripples in the surface caused by the repeated freeze/thaw/breakup/shift/re-freeze cycle that dominates winter on a 1 mile long ice shelf on a 40 mile long body of water. The winter-time forces of wind and waves produced a perfect analogue to the fickle conditions that they create in the warmer months.
As has been reinforced for me *so* many times, the best part of sailing is the people you meet and learn from along the way, and today was no exception. The outing started with Wing saving our bacon by loaning us some key pieces of gear we were missing, but it ended with Steve (former Portland OR/Hood River sailor/kiter) helping us with technique that really was awesome. He was instrumental in refining some of the finer points of the footwork involved in a carving gybe and his careful coaching helped crystallize the maneuver and bring my success rate well above 80%.
That's not to say that the other 20% wasn't humbling either... After only one brief inattentive moment during a gybe, I experienced my first ice-catapult and it wasn't pretty. In the half-second between uncertain control and certain loss thereof I launched forward and slammed my knee into the mast, and chest into the boom with such force that I was certain I had broken my boom. To my great surprise, a little motrin was all that was required to "fix" the damage caused by the affair.
Possibly the highlight of the event came after siphoning Steve's well of knowledge on gybing, I got up the nerve to ask, "so do you know how to heli-tack?" "yeah" "can you teach me?"
For those that don't know what this is, a 15 second video is worth a thousand words, go check out:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFOhFLvb1xw
What followed was probably the greatest technical gain I've ever made in 30 minutes of holding onto a sail. I was simply giddy with excitement to add this awesome trick to my quiver. It felt really good to feel like so many small pieces of this incredible sport were starting to come together for me.
In a lot of ways, my 7 short months of windsurfing have been an outlet to re-define and re-shape pieces of my life that haven't really... 'worked' in a lot of ways for me. It has been the stage on which many vignettes have played out... I have watched with joy at the acquisition of some of the best friends I have known in my life. With profound sadness I have seen rock and ice climbing (my passions for 15 years) slowly drift off to the darkness of stage left. I have witnessed the birth of a new passion (windsurfing) that is an endless puzzle to unravel and unlock. It is in this time that I also watched the slow-motion train wreck of my relationship with my wife painfully coming apart. The best part though, is that on _this_ stage, all of the screenplays I watched were in color, even when so many of those days felt black and white.
There isn't much else to say to end the trip report for such a great day, other than to say that I feel like I am just starting to crack the shutters on a part of my life that had been in the shadow for a really long time. I have to say, the daylight has never felt so good.
Shawn
PS A special thanks go out to Amanda, Wing, Steve, Mary, Suan, and Alex. It would not have been the same day without you.
Today was not one of them.
One of the highlights of celebrating my 31st birthday today was getting to go iceboarding on the ice shelf at the S end of Cayuga Lake. Amanda and I rolled into the Stewart Park parking lot and met Wing as we were unloading our gear. The plan was to share our (solitary) ice board while the other person hung out and watched, but to our complete joy, Wing loaned us a second board and we had brought 2 rigs, so we headed out on into the 10mph NW wind armed with two full sets of gear.
We started with some gybe drills, and we both quickly progressed to both of us doing (literally) dozens of gybes and feeling in control of the maneuver. This was particularly noteworthy for Amanda, as our last trip iceboarding together garnered her some time in the ER, a concussion, and a CT scan. Today was a new day though, and she seemed relaxed and centered as we focused on getting this technical milestone safely behind us.
The ice was grudgingly cooperative to our pursuits, and ranged between "pretty decent" in places and "nasty" in others with varying intensity of ripples in the surface caused by the repeated freeze/thaw/breakup/shift/re-freeze cycle that dominates winter on a 1 mile long ice shelf on a 40 mile long body of water. The winter-time forces of wind and waves produced a perfect analogue to the fickle conditions that they create in the warmer months.
As has been reinforced for me *so* many times, the best part of sailing is the people you meet and learn from along the way, and today was no exception. The outing started with Wing saving our bacon by loaning us some key pieces of gear we were missing, but it ended with Steve (former Portland OR/Hood River sailor/kiter) helping us with technique that really was awesome. He was instrumental in refining some of the finer points of the footwork involved in a carving gybe and his careful coaching helped crystallize the maneuver and bring my success rate well above 80%.
That's not to say that the other 20% wasn't humbling either... After only one brief inattentive moment during a gybe, I experienced my first ice-catapult and it wasn't pretty. In the half-second between uncertain control and certain loss thereof I launched forward and slammed my knee into the mast, and chest into the boom with such force that I was certain I had broken my boom. To my great surprise, a little motrin was all that was required to "fix" the damage caused by the affair.
Possibly the highlight of the event came after siphoning Steve's well of knowledge on gybing, I got up the nerve to ask, "so do you know how to heli-tack?" "yeah" "can you teach me?"
For those that don't know what this is, a 15 second video is worth a thousand words, go check out:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFOhFLvb1xw
What followed was probably the greatest technical gain I've ever made in 30 minutes of holding onto a sail. I was simply giddy with excitement to add this awesome trick to my quiver. It felt really good to feel like so many small pieces of this incredible sport were starting to come together for me.
In a lot of ways, my 7 short months of windsurfing have been an outlet to re-define and re-shape pieces of my life that haven't really... 'worked' in a lot of ways for me. It has been the stage on which many vignettes have played out... I have watched with joy at the acquisition of some of the best friends I have known in my life. With profound sadness I have seen rock and ice climbing (my passions for 15 years) slowly drift off to the darkness of stage left. I have witnessed the birth of a new passion (windsurfing) that is an endless puzzle to unravel and unlock. It is in this time that I also watched the slow-motion train wreck of my relationship with my wife painfully coming apart. The best part though, is that on _this_ stage, all of the screenplays I watched were in color, even when so many of those days felt black and white.
There isn't much else to say to end the trip report for such a great day, other than to say that I feel like I am just starting to crack the shutters on a part of my life that had been in the shadow for a really long time. I have to say, the daylight has never felt so good.
Shawn
PS A special thanks go out to Amanda, Wing, Steve, Mary, Suan, and Alex. It would not have been the same day without you.