Tourism's carbon impact, some not-all-that-surprising skullduggery, and in the "You don’t get to say it’s gross until you try it" department...
When I was a kid I learned how to sail.
Well, sorta/kinda...
My introduction to wind-based locomotion was a Sunfish of sorts that was a prop for a photo shoot to advertise a cigarette company's product. The actual boat was carved foam and painted robin's egg blue. It was dinged up so deemed not worth taking back to the mainland and left next to a trash can on the beach in Avalon. Fact of the matter is it was never designed to go into the water but it did have a real Sunfish rig and bits so my dad dragged it home with the idea that we might enjoy learning to sail.
The ersatz Sunfish was just the ticket and we did learn to sail in a sorta/kinda way. No real lessons for us and left to our own devices we somehow survived a rather steep learning curve.
It was also the beginning of my ongoing (some might say endless) affair with the fixing and repair of boats and suchlike as the painted Styrofoam hull had zero protection from UV so was in a somewhat constant state of sun induced leprosy. So, wherever we sailed we were followed by a trail of Styrofoam beads in our wake. Well, at least till we discovered the wonderfulness of polyester resin and fiberglass.
To say that my introduction to polyester resin and fiberglass was a pivotal moment in my life would be something of an understatement.
Fast forward to the present day and I'll be the first to admit that I'm still learning how to sail, repair, and fix boats. It's an ongoing process. There's always something new to learn or a novel concept to grasp that makes messing around in boats an endlessly rewarding activity. Just yesterday, I read something that Reuel Parker wrote in a caption to a photo of his current build that left me so excited with the avenues in boat building it opened up that it kept me up for the better part of the night mulling over the awesome possibilities.
That said, I'm often confronted with folks who, apparently, know everything there is to know regarding sailing, designing, and building boats and I feel just a little bit sorry for them. How much less enjoyable it would be without those heady eureka moments and the simple satisfaction of working through problems to improve my abilities.
Knowing it all, for me at least, would be, for want of a better word, boring...
Listening to Smoke Season
So it goes...
Why Bikes?
1 week ago
