More Breeze

photo gratuitously stolen from severne sails

When the local TV forecast says it's going to be windy, it's going to be windy. When they say all week that a certain day is going to be windy, then it's going to be really windy that day. Since about Wednesday, they've been saying today would be windy, and it was.

It's possible that I've reached a point of living in DC where it no longer frustrates me, or at least frustrates me a lot less, that sailing here sucks. In Newport, it's pretty easy to windsurf 100 days a year if you want to. It's windy and there's water everywhere. There's no direction it can blow from that you can't find a good launch for. In DC, it's a whole lot easier if it blows north or south, because then you can sail from the marina near Reagan. If it blows from west as it did today, you have to go to Kent Island or one of several spots on the river that will be good but probably not great. Today I went to Kim's Beach, which I believe is only referred to as Kim's Beach by windsurfers. It's near Mt. Vernon. The launch kind of sucks because it's really rocky and crowded with trees, either of which alone would be slightly challenging but together are a real pain in the nads.

Once you got out past the no wind zone along shore and through the weeds, it was all good. There was a section of flat water toward the inside that had unreliable but sometimes excellent breeze. Zones like this are really fun because you can just absolutely send it, speed wise, and then do a long carving turn as though you were snowboarding in deep soft powder. It's really easy to keep your speed the whole way through the turn, except when you are wearing the insanely slippery neoprene socks I was wearing today, which cause your footwork to be somewhat less sure.

Outside in the deep channel, the swell was pretty big. I pretty much suck at jumping on port tack (left foot forward), so it was nice that starboard tack (you guessed, right foot forward) was the jumping side today. The gusts made it a bit challenging as you sometimes went from being wicked overpowered to looking for juice within a couple of seconds. Nonetheless, it was easy to get pretty huge air which is pretty much what it's all about for me. Turns and air. All the tricks and crap I can do without.

Got home and my leg hurt so I bailed on riding.

I did a lot of running (well, for a guy who doesn't run a lot under any circumstances much less after he's broken his leg) last week, which I will keep up with this week. Running, lifting, and the step mill machine. I'm not feeling it on riding the trainer right now, so I won't for a while until it gets to be time that I've got no other choice.