Well, this blogging thing apparently takes a bit of conscious effort to become a habit It’s been an eventful couple of weeks, and I haven’t even gotten around to mentioning the Grand Canyon trip, much less posting photos…

But one thing at a time. We had a surprise visit a couple of weeks ago, from some former neighbors, Chip and Diane. They’re a young couple who weren’t really happy living in a big old house with a big yard to take care of, so they bought a sailboat and moved to Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. It was a lot of fun catching up with what they’ve been doing, and meeting their new daughter, Summer, who is about a year old:

I have to say, I was a bit skeptical about their plans to live on a 30-or-so-foot sailboat in Baltimore - neither of them had ever sailed before, so living on a sailboat seemed a bit of, let’s say, an unexpected choice However, they seem very happy and were on their way to Florida in the Intracoastal Waterway. This is Diane’s first time spending extended time traveling on the boat, although Chip had taken the boat up to Maine with a friend, and they spent the summer there.

It would be interesting if they happened to meet up with my mother and her husband Leo, who are also on their way south on the Intracoastal for the winter.

Here’s my entry for PhotoFriday’s challenge for this week: Burn

This was taken when we were sailing last Friday, 9/23, on the Elizabeth River between Portsmouth and Norfolk. It was a beautiful night, even though we apparently couldn’t figure out what the race course was supposed to be. Oh well, better luck tomorrow

Update 10/1: re: the race course last week, we were right and all the rest of the boats were wrong! So the race was scrubbed and not counted. Geez. That’s a lesson to go with your gut.

We crewed on our friends Laura and Steve’s boat, the Laura J, in a race called the Barnacle Regatta on the Elizabeth River on Aug. 12, and again last night. This photo is from the start of the race on Aug. 12:

Some related links:

• Portsmouth Boat Club
• Barnacle Regatta
• Race Results

We made sixth place last night out of 10 boats that finished the race; 18 started it - I don’t know what happened to the others. Maybe they got couldn’t figure out the course :-/

… what people are thinking. With Hurricane Katrina bearing down, a family goes boating off of Florida’s Gulf Coast, and now - surprise - they’re missing. If I don’t sound sympathetic, it’s because many people in my family have been sailors for at least 30 years. My Uncle George sailed around the world; my mom and her husband, and my Aunt Betty and Uncle Ray sail (each couple in their own boat, of course) up and down the Intracoastal Waterway from Virginia to Florida almost every year; they generally wait till hurricane season is over to go, but during the summer they’re constantly sailing the Chesapeake Bay.

Someone asked my mom once what they do when a hurricane is coming. “We get out of the way,” she said. They certainly don’t go sailing for pleasure in its path!

I do hope they’re all okay. But people really need to understand that boats are *dangerous* and you need to learn about good seamanship as well as about how the boat works.

Dan and I went skydiving on my birthday in June. We showed the DVD of our adventure to some friends Saturday night, some of whom want to go with us next time. However, Paul’s wife Terry doesn’t want him to go before their two children are grown

To ease her mind, here are some stats that I’m sure most people don’t know about: In 2002, the U.S. Parachute Association had 33,664 members (this is a PDF file), who completed a combined total of 2,151,228 jumps.

That year, “Only 1,275 USPA members reported having injuries requiring medical attention,” according to the USPA, and there were 33 fatalities.

So, skydiving is really much safer than driving, but since most of us drive every day, and most have never gone skydiving, it seems more dangerous than it really is.

Also, several people in the room are science teachers, so they’re thinking more about the physics of the thing than I am I can’t wait to go again.