Experimental Sailing Craft
A foiling cat with a kite sail…
Artemis 45 on her new foils today
Artemis with Golden Gate Bridge
This is a sailing winged catamaran… exciting day out on the water
Tag: America’s Cup San Francisco
Big Bad Boats
Rocket Science a mini-monster from the Cook Islands.
This is 50 feet, water ballasted, twin ruddered, carbon fibered, wickedly fast boat with a 13 foot draft!!!!
I stepped aboard a monster Sunday. The beast tethered to a dock. Sixty-five feet of ocean going, purpose built, go anywhere, under any conditions sailboat.
The beast had been born inNew Zealandto an American couple. For eight years this water ballasted ballistic sailing vessel was both a means to an end and an end in itself.
The design was conceived with a lengthy and sleek hard dodger. The stick was massive, the spreaders gargantuan, staysail could be hanked on, and the jib roller furled. Temporary lower backstays were ready in the event the staysail was deployed.
Oversized winches were aft, a weight compromising windlass on the bow (looked more than adequate for the job while small enough not to interfere with the boats sailing characteristics.) And I have to mention the spinnaker pole stowed vertically against the leading edge of the mast.
A mere man and woman, two people handled the task of sailing this unrelenting powerhouse. Losing control of a boat this size, flogging a sail, jamming a line, getting a sail down, hoisting one up, furling an unfurled sail, or having the guts to unfurl the thing was akin to going into a war zone voluntarily.
At the center on the starboard side below a diesel heater had been installed. There was a huge generator, a larger still auxiliary diesel. Forward in the V berth a queen sized bed. The boats interior was not Spartan, but its purpose was the point. Navigation, cooking, electronics, the heads, showers, rear stateroom, the interior lighting, portlights were all what you would expect of this one of fiberglass Titan.
I was imagining the able bodied seamen I’d want with me should I’d found myself heading out the Gate on an ebb in a blow. I’d pick a couple of old coots the balance would come broad shouldered, under forty and be either crazy or have guts, preferably both!
In 2003 I was down inFt.Lauderdale. Wandering the docks I stumbled upon a brokerage that specialized in selling sailboats of this size. They were all beasts. You looked at one and said I could take that boat right now to Europe, that other up the Northwest passage, still another toAntarctica. There were a few tender looking boats mixed among the toughie’s, and then there was this one I was aboard yesterday.
It is something special to be aboard something that resembles what you would use to get you through your worst nightmare. It is something like how you would travel to somewhere over a rainbow intent upon arriving back from a dream you would be wise not to make.
Is that a merry-go-round or Secretariat…
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What are you waiting for?
I Feel So Sorry for Billionaires
Banque Populaire is currently blasting south in the Atlantic towardCape Hornin an attempt to set a new non-stop circumnavigation record for a sailboat. The skipper is with Team Energy the French America’s Cup boat.
I don’t often deal with a realm that is described by numbers. The sailboat Banque Populaire is 131 feet in length has already set a 24 hour total distance sailed world record of 908 miles. The machine sails consistently at speeds of 36 to 40 knots plus!
I’ve taken a look on You Tube and the boat rocks, and it can also flip and in fact tripped and went head over heels on itself. The crew is aware that this is a dangerous game they are playing.
Speaking of ungraspable, mind boggling, hard to get your mind around numbers we have to discuss the Oracle Team and the great fortune of Larry Ellison. I get 33 billion off the Forbes website. So, if I were street performing and had someone give me one billion dollars in one dollar bills in my hat and I were able count each dollar in an average of one second it would take me 31 years, 259 days, 1 hour, 46 minutes and 40 seconds to finish counting my hat. Larry has 33 of these things called billions.
Sometimes I wonder about things while I’m in bed or on a hike. I wonder what it might be like to be a wealthy sailing fan and what it might be like to fund a program to defend the America’ Cup? I wonder if I would be bothered about how much it was going to cost to play the game. If I had 33 of these things called billion and figure the entire deal was going to run maybe 200 million, okay let’s say 500 million all in, every last penny… it would mean I’d still have about 16 years to count the rest of what was left of my first billion.
You have to almost feel something like empathy for someone like Larry Ellison. It can’t be easy checking on how much you have given how long it takes to get someone to count it and tell you. Probably why he spends his money distracting himself from this problem, probably the way to go is just get involved in something, get your mind off this problem, and enjoy yourself. I think last time I saw Larry, down inSan Diegohe was doing just that, enjoying himself.
Good luck Larry. I hope you don’t get burdened with anymore of these billions. It must at some point incapacitate a person. No wonder Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are giving their money away. It’s hard for us to imagine, but if you try you can begin to appreciate how good you have it compared to these poor guys.
BANKRUPT HEART THE SECOND NOVEL
“Hey, slick,” the homeless man said, “I know you?”
Ry stopped. “Maybe,”
“Yeah, I know you, you’re like me, don’t have a job.”
Ry pulled some cash out of his pocket.
“Oh, man, you keep it,” the homeless man said, “you need it, you get a job come look me up,”
“I got a job. I’m going to work in LA,”
“You can’t go to LA, you’re Ry Waters right, people fromSan Franciscocan’t go toLos Angelesand be happy, isn’t possible.”
“Sure we can. I can go toSouthern Californiaand be just happy as anywhere.”
“You don’t want to go down there and have those bastards get to you. They’ll just turn you into one of them,”
“Well, I appreciate your sage advice…”
“They can’t pay you enough, you won’t be happy enough, you got soul brother. How does a brother who’s got soul get happy in a place without one?”
Bankrupt Heart Copyright © 2011 by Dana Smith
The End is Near and Dear
Refurbishing a wooden sloop for the first time is an act of faith.
So, first off forget about having things go according to plan. It is like the rest of life things don’t usually go that way. Life goes its way and you try to ride the wave or get the hell out of the way. This is the Lee Iacocca maxim.
Working over a long time horizon is an odd experience. I like my work to be completed as soon as is possible. I don’t like things to take long.
The lessons we think we are learning are in fact seldom the same as the received wisdom the experience imparts upon our lives. In fact I am coming to terms with the fact that while I start out doing one thing I end up doing something else by the time the thing is finished.
I probably would not have been capable of writing a novel, and now two, had I not struggled from 2001 through 2007 with the restoration of Maestro. But, that would be too narrow, too scrawny an answer for what happened during those years to me as a person
Authoring novels is first of all about writing. But, it is also about understanding people. It is about soul, spirit, personality, behavior, youth, aging, the middle years, being single, having a job, falling in love, getting married, remaing single, your sexuality, friends, family, weather, where you live, what you do, and on and on… Narratives are constructed by events. Any event will do so long as the author has the passion to place the reader into the center of that moment and pull the curtain back on how that moment impacts the people who have been brought to life in the story.
So, whether we roam about in travel trailers performing a juggling show, or spend our best days laboring to restore a wooden sailboat, writers imagine patterns, we see into the fabric of reality the workings of human experience and from there we take a leap of faith, and build out that vision, that story that we see and then we serve that vision up to our readers.
And finally the circular firing squad of paradox aligns with boat restoration and authoring a novel. We won’t know until we’ve put everything we have into the thing whether it will float and hold water or will sink and vanish into the depths… Life is not just good, it is also an unpredictable pain in the…
As much as I might not always like living in a world where everything I try doesn’t succeed, every game I play I don’t always win, and everybody I ever loved never leaves, the truth and secret to a well lived life is to appreciate not how it turns out in the end, but what you can do to make the doing something worthy of being an end in itself. Here to my way of thinking is the trailhead to authenticity.
BANKRUPT HEART THE SECOND NOVEL
Tonight was a private after hours, members only affair, whiskey drank like sacrament. The men had gathered for this random ritual over the years. They cussed, drank, sucked on toothpicks, and blotted out whole stretches of time before dawn trading stories for laughs based on the cheap thrills and the numbskull miscalculations of others. Tonight was different. One of their own had taken a blow. They’d conjure up preferential sympathies. The men would ignore the hypocrisy.
You’ve Got to See it With Your Own Eyes
I went once for a look at the Race for the Pole at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Whatever it is I was supposed to see I saw. Whatever I expected the experience to be like turned out to be true.
The pig barn at the county fair stinks. The top fuel dragsters in Fremont smoked their slicks, shot flames out their exhaust pipes, and roared down the quarter-mile long asphalt raceway in the blink of an eye only to pop a parachute at the other end of the strip to bring them to a controlled halt.
Now comes this thing called the oldest trophy in sport, the America’s Cup. I thought the racing off Perth looked pretty darn exciting. I watched some of the racing from the comfort of a stool in a bar with a big screen. Nice….
My background is in entertainment, live entertainment, for audiences at festivals, street fairs, and such. My life has been dedicated to a low tech, high touch, get in close with an audience and make the interactivity of the experience the point of the matter. What I’m doing is not as important as what the mutual experience is doing for all of us.
So, from thirty rows up in the grandstands at turn four in Indianapolis I felt bonded to Roberto Guerrero’s pedal to the metal 200 miles per hour plus life threatening romp where he set a track record on that day back in 1992. They’ve intentionally depowered the vehicles and have walked the cars back from this mortal abyss. Still, I was there. I got it. Saw it with my own eyes.
The organizing concept of having the experience itself trump all else is a first principle in my book. The America’s Cup full sized high tech catamarans that will hit the San Francisco Bay next summer will be something to see. The real question, the real challenge for the America’s cup will be creating a venue that allows its fans the opportunity to be eye witnesses, to see it for themselves. Even with the race being held in the bay with fans lining the shores of Marin County, San Francisco, and Angel Island we might well remain mere distant witnesses.
One of my favorite forms of dance happens in the country and western honky tonks. It’s the two step. Get the girl of your dreams in your arms and you can pretty much count of things going your way. Squeeze that dream in a little tighter might even, turns out, you get lucky later that same night. And but for a price of a beer and the courage to ask a lady for a dance why a man can find more to life doing the two step than most anything else he might dream up doing. My recommendation to the America’s Cup committee is to get out of the city head on up to Placerville, Auburn, Sonora and get out on the floor and figure out how you can take that race you are planning and put it right into the arms of some desperate ready to go fans. If you can figure that one out they’ll love you with the whole of their heart for the rest of their lives. Good luck…
BANKRUPT HEART
He’d gotten up and gone to work frustrated with the rate at which he was able to accomplish anything. His frustrations had given way to ruminations. The miracle of this woman’s fine bottom— appreciated, with discretion, from a distance, in silence, out of respect— had fixed Ry’s mind upon the divine mystery of the force a woman’s anatomy could have over a man. It is a mighty force. His lower extremes became a chattering class. The power of her bottom had calved the main portion of Ry’s thinking into a boiling sea of urgency. Ry had lost his mate, and didn’t know how to go about finding someone just for sex. Ry lifted his eyes up and looked at her bottom from a distance. He wanted to confirm how big an impression it had made. It kind of made him feel like he didn’t know what to do. There he stood, a desperate man, caught in his coveralls. Where’s a man find someone he’s not in love with as a person, but who would allow him to have strong feelings toward her bottom?
Bankrupt Heart Copyright © 2011 by Dana Smith
THE SECOND NOVEL
Cast Your Fate to the Wind
PHOTOGRAPH BY SHELIA LAVERY
Must have been that some of the worlds greatest sailors listened to Vince Guaraldi’s hit song, Cast Your Fate to the Wind. I’m no expert. What do I know? I’m looking at the same thing everyone else is looking at. I see a mark on the water and imagine how I might get to that mark before the next guy. Evidently the worlds greatest sailors neglected to ask me how I’d do it. My first bit of advice. Do what Spithill does. If that doesn’t work take up golf and go after Tiger.
Skipper James Spithill sailing Oracle bested opposing skipper Yann Guichard of Team Energy of France this last Saturday. Spithill is a piece of work. Ellison I am sure figured after having Spithill cause so much trouble it might be best to hire the Australian rather than be run over by him.
Yann Guichard Energy TeamFrancelooks on paper, on water, and in photographs to be a worthy adversary to the ever voracious Spithill. In a race for romance I’d bet on Guichard, but even that might be a bit of a risk. Spithill I’m sure would find his way into the heart of the same woman faster than his French counterpart.
On Saturday Energy Team after rounding the first mark went to the next mark taking the north side of the course while Spithill went the other way to the south. For a while that looked fine, but then Guichard kept going and going and going. Guichard cast his fate to the wind. It was death on that side. There were neither wind shifts nor stronger winds. All the armchair sailors I was seated with agreed that the French skipper had lost the race as he remained stubbornly on this side of the race course.
I know nothing about these guys. I’m guessing to be the sailor that steers one of these machines you got to be pretty good. But mixed into these great helmsmen is an outlier. That’s Jimmy Spithill. I’m also guessing that Jimmy has got the rest of the helmsmen talking to themselves. He must be annoying. He must be witty. He must find his way under their skin. He’s probably nice to them while planting little seeds of doubt in the subtext of their comradeship. He probably smiles, keeps his cool, then heads out onto the course and bashes their brains in again and again.
If one sharp knife in your drawer is not enough, and you are billionaire Larry Ellison get a second sharp knife. His name is John Kostecki, Oracle’s tactician. Jimmy this is your brain when steering, and this is your mortal lock second mate confirming what you already know. “Nobody, do you hear me, nobody, beats Jimmy and Johnny, you understand?”
PHOTOGRAPH BY SHELIA LAVERY
Well almost nobody. There is still the inconvenient fact thatNew Zealand even after this past weekends races leads the series by one point!
Who is this that dares to get in Jimmy Spithills wake? Dean Barker is his name. He is older than Spithill. He is from New Zealand. Born in Takapuna. A native, racing for his country. Like Spithill he takes pleasure in vanquishing those who dare get in his way, There is a one point difference after this last week of racing in San Diego. That’s it, that’s all that separates Spithill from Barker.
I can hear Larry Ellison’s instructions to Spithill, “bring me his head….”
BANKRUPT HEART THE SECOND NOVEL
Finn looked at Ry’s face. He seemed more relaxed. The harbor oozed tranquility and coaxed an unhurried demeanor from the people who lived there. Seagulls sat resting on the metal boat shed roof, mallards explored afloat on the water, while crows hopped about the docks— there was always a chance something to eat would turn up. The harbor was juxtaposed next to the freeway where rush-hour traffic was headed north at a crawl, bumper to bumper. There was a treasured serenity as the boatyard emptied of the men and the women who had finished up their work for the day.
“You can stay aboard if you like. I’ve got to get going.” Finn said opening the icebox and inspecting its contents. “I’ve got beer on ice, there’s a steak I need to cook, it’s just going to go to waste; I’ve got vegetables, bread, cookies for dessert, you’d be set up— galley’s got everything.” He was smiling, trying to coax a ‘yes’ out of his friend.
Ry was quick to decline. “No. I don’t think so.”
Bankrupt Heart Copyright © 2011 by Dana Smith
The Happiness of Larry Ellison
Riding the passenger’s position aboard Oracle on Saturday as Spithill vanquished the French boat Energy there was an opportunity to view the heart and happiness of our billionaire entrepreneurAmerica’s Cup tycoon in full happiness while witnessing what he has wrought upon the world of racing.
It does my heart good to know a man who has everything simply wanted to ride around a race course from the catbird seat. Larry is human! He has feelings, passions, desire, and has the wherewithal to put his money where his heart is.
NFL, NBA, MLB…. You can’t sit on the field and observe the game. But, in yacht racing you can.
Larry’s got everything. If you had his options, if you could fly here, stay in that place there, aboard this yacht for the weekend, or in your home on the east coast right now, or the west coast tonight, among all these choices would you choose a ride aboard a catamaran? So, here it seems the truth comes out. The man who has everything has nothing if he can not choose to enjoy the simplest things…
While seated in the shadow of the Midway aircraft carrier museum on Saturday while enjoying the racing and speculating about the fickle hearted whim of wind shifts, tides and currents, of a good start, a lucky break, skill and experience with the armchair types I was seated with it was a good thing for us to witness a man of special means electing to enjoy the most essential pleasures.
BANKRUPT HEART THE SECOND NOVEL
“It isn’t hard to know. Plain as day, plain as this day. Life can be so simple; we can’t see it. Then, some do. Some make friends with themselves, make room in their heart, make it their home, then wherever you go, whatever you’re doing, you are always there, at home with yourself. That’s it really…”
Bankrupt Heart Copyright © 2011 by Dana Smith
You’re No Dennis Conner
“I know Dennis Conner. Dennis Conner is a friend of mine.” Said a patron at the tavern I bellied up to. His friend from Scotland older and more subdued knew Dennis too. The two men offered by way of beer induced barrier reduction their back of the envelope opinion on this current incarnation of sports oldest prize.
“Not going to work. It is going to ruin the sport. Ellison is ruining the prize.”
I’d spent the day just north of the historic Midway now in repose in San Diego and open for business as historic artifact to tour. Seated with feet dangling over the piers edge I chewed the racing fat with nomadic armchair sailing types from such distant ports as Santa Cruz, Austin, Seattle, Newport, Yorba Linda, and San Francisco.
These are boomer men. Nearing the abyss of retirement they fend off the day of their uselessness by finding one way or another to remain in the game. But, a boomer man needs a good foil and lining the dock is a wide assortment of women. They won’t let on how much they know while the men can’t help revealing how little they do. This is the real fun. We don’t need to know who won or who lost. We just want to learn the truth by way of a thousand tangled fallacies. It is good for blood pressure.
As spectacle Friday worked better than Thursday or what I saw of Wednesday’s races. The French and American boats fight it out today for first place. Those of us on the edge of thePacific Ocean yesterday witness to the sports most technologically advanced racing machines vanquish their competitors with the brutal vengeance of such earlier masters of the match racing art as the esteemed Mr. Conner.
We bickered among ourselves over the start. Who had the advantage and who screwed up, each of us knew nothing while making up our opinion from whole clothe of pure speculation. And this is the thing. God knows how much it costs, but yesterday for the cost of some time and gas money I was permitted for free to appreciate a few fateful moments between boats on water. Because of the history of the cup we suppose significance, and there must have been something to that. But, in fact it came down to watching two boats and ten sailors see who can best the other. I’ve never had so much knowing so little and having it turn out that I would enjoy myself so much.
BANKRUPT HEART THE SECOND NOVEL
Dawn was pristine. The air crisp, clean, the sky empty, the sea was true, chasmal…blue. No chop on the water; no cloud in the sky. Limantour Beach was alone, still, breathless. Not another soul had set foot here this morning, but for Ry and Finn. It was the first day, the New Year. They walked barefoot in the sand at the surf’s edge, acquainting their thoughts to the booze-soaked resolutions they’d taken the night before. The least waves arrived. The Pacific was in repose between storms. The surf’s soundtrack was a languid slow curling muffled splashing that reverberated up and down the beach.
Bankrupt Heart Copyright © 2011 by Dana Smith
San Diego for AC 45’s Flaming the Fans Passions
HarborIslandwas where the northernmost buoys for theAmerica’s Cup 45’s would be making their turn in Race 3. The buoys consist of two power boats that take their positions on the race course and then hold that position not by anchor but under power. They did fine.
The start took place a mile south of where I sat. First leg was a half mile race to the west, the speed of the boats was apparent from this angle. They were across the harbor waters in a matter of tens of seconds, they returned back to the position they started from and then headed toward theHarborIslandbuoy where I waited. This leg was upwind in 12 knots. Most boats were scattered across the course. A small clump of boats were closer. This is a fleet of 8 boats.
I was at the upwind buoy. The boats moving up into the wind are not as quick as going either to the side or down wind. The Korean team shot off in the wrong direction at the mark and it took the crew a minute and hundreds and hundreds of meters to regain control of their boat and get it pointed in the right direction and resume racing. They never stopped racing, but by turning the boat in the other direction it allowed them at least to continue to race toward the next mark rather than away from it.
Now a few comments from this fearless spectator(Charles forgive me). I’d recommend the buoys be set closer to the shore. The National Football League has done a great job of turning football into the ultimate video sport, but for sailing to have any chance of seizing the imaginations of fans they need to allow fans the best possible view. The radical race boats need to be recklessly raced as close to their fans as is possible.
Now a few comments from this fearless spectator(Charles forgive me). I’d recommend the buoys be set closer to the shore. The National Football League has done a great job of turning football into the ultimate video sport, but for sailing to have any chance of seizing the imaginations of fans they need to allow fans the best possible view. The radical race boats need to be recklessly raced as close to their fans as is possible.
I was at Indianapolis with a seat at turn four where the race cars that survive that turn rocket out of that corner down the straight away past pit row before plunging past the starting line and then again into turn number one where they vanished until magically reappearing in less than thirty seconds at turn three and back into my view from my seat at turn four. I think we are on the right track. The elements are being assembled.
Bottom line is that we need to bigger boats, more wind, and the courage to place the marks where these boats are going to make their turns sited closer to the spectators. The mark today could have been closer to shore. My recipe for success includes: monster boats, nasty wind, and buoys set irresponsibly close to the people. When seated at turn four inIndianapolisI thought if something happened I might be killed if a car went out of control. TheSan FranciscoBayon a windy day is the brickyard of sailing. I realize this is a bit much, but remember a major league batter if hit by a fast ball can be killed, and so perhaps this is what is needed for success, not that we need anyone to be hurt, quite contrary we just want everyone to feel as if they could be hurt. We want spectators to be frightened.
BANKRUPT HEART THE SECOND NOVEL
“Rocket ships, you like rocket ships? I like rocket ships. I like blast offs. I like meeting someone new, launching a new relationship from the launch pad. I like the climb; I love the being out of mind. I love going to outer space, but I don’t like orbiting. I don’t like someone circling around and around my life, and I do not do the coming back to earth part.”
“None of us does. You think I’m enjoying my crash landing?”
“You had a long term relationship. Don’t ask me why, because I don’t understand why two people would waste their time. There never is a happy ending.”
“You are a force,” Ry admitted to Kristine. He tried to get to her, “happy endings are rare, not impossible, but this isn’t about the odds of you having a good relationship, it’s about you giving yourself the chance to have a life. The woman I was talking to out on the deck was alive; the woman sitting in this car is alive; the feelings you have inside you for that man down in that marina are alive.”
“Yes, I am alive. And you are alive. And that part of life I have trouble with, the part called coming back to earth, it hurts too much watching, when the man you care about comes back down, when his head isn’t in the clouds anymore, when he gets his feet back on the ground before you do. I don’t want to be there when Finn decides I might not be so special anymore.”
Bankrupt Heart Copyright © 2011 by Dana Smith
Life as Transition
My beginnings as an entertainer started in 1974 with the Royal Lichtenstein Quarter-Ring Sidewalk Circus. I am on the left and Nick Weber the shows creator is on the right. After a year long national tour with the circus I struck out on my own. Sold my motorcycle and bought my 1967 Ford pickup and packed my first show into the back of that truck and set out on a six year non-stop tour.
I learned to go north and south with the weather. I learned to live out of my pickup truck, how to get book dates for the show, where to park and sleep, find showers, make telephone calls, cook of a tailgate, fix the truck when something broke, and to pursue with passion my vision of what my life should be.
I’ve had many partners. Steve Aveson, Nick Weber and Mari Dempsey were my first. Sunshine and then Lacey were next. Learning to solo perform required learning to be totally self-sufficient when out on the road. Touring alone is a different experience. It is an art. Solitude as defined in those days was of a flavor changed by the interconnectivity of now. Without cell phones and electronic mail my chances of having someone contact me rested entirely on the US Postal Service and a
telephone answering service I arranged for back in California. I would check for messages with the service and then set up and pay a small fortune in coins to contact future clients, friends and family.
I fell in love with sailing the day I got off the road and set up shop in San Francisco where I would street perform off and on over the next 31 years. Sailing like shows provided me with the sacred bond I had made to keep in my life a place
where I slept that moved. My 1967 Ford was always ready and from 1976 when I first purchased the truck until about 1997 when I finally junked the rig I put some half million touring miles on this baby. The Chevrolet Suburban 4X4 was
next. Put about two hundred thousand on this rig. Next came my Dodge Cummins diesel dually. And at present I roll with a 2007 Toyota Tacoma 4 cylinder 5 speed stick, twenty-seven miles to the gallon rig.
My life is a story of wanderlust. My life is also a story about being a traveling showman. Then, the writing, always the words, and my plays, poems, songs and lyrics, correspondence, magazine articles, and finally the development and completion of my first two novels. Of course imagine if you will with me the million of random incidences, both large and small, occurrences that last a moment and other events that have stretched out over the decades. Children, marriages,
homes purchased, boats I’ve owned, dunderheaded choices made in haste in the moment only to cost me precious spiritual energy tens of years later, and all the while some part of some of what I didn’t do right whittling away at the
purity of the best parts of who I was until accounted for. This is to say that nobodies perfect and I express and honor my flaws and speak up with some candor for trying to address those now.
So, this short narrative explains in capsule form where my experience comes from. It explains what work I’ve done and where and where I haven’t lived. At present I am planted firmly in the hills of the East Bay near San Francisco.
Waiting in the garage my trusted Toyota and nearby in Emeryville our trusted sailboat. I am less urgent at the moment about going out on the road or heading out to sea, but the day will arrive when I’ll want that and seek out the opportunity to go, ride the wind across prairie or sea, and find out what else I can know about this world we live in.