Irene - Over Easy.

7 days without riding makes one weak.  

30 days could make one outright crazy.

So I compromised.

Saturday morning.  Day 11.  Easy does it.  I probably wouldn't have tried it but for the super cushy Superfly. 

First stop - the beach.

OK, I admit I am starting to appreciate what all the early birds see in the dawn's early light.

Satellite Beach

7:30 (AM!!!)

8/27/11

Except for the obvious power and the occasional boom, the surf seemed almost subdued.  And mesmerizing. 

That five mile ride on Saturday wore me out, but it felt good.  So of course, I was compelled to do it again on Sunday.  Just a bit further. 

Whoops.  Too much.  Ache deep in the gut for the rest of the day.  

Note to self:  Stay vigilent.  Pay attention.   It's not even September yet.  Listen to the forecasters, but go with your gut. 

My gut is saying it's back to walking for a couple of days. 

And keeping an eye on the weather.

Good night Irene. A storm, a surgery, and a sea story.

What do you call a girl with a wooden leg? 

Ilene.

Ok then, so what do you call a Chinese girl with a wooden leg?

Hint - our latest hurricane... 

Satellite Beach

8pm  8/25/11

 Irene passing 200 miles offshore.

Oh, I shouldn't laugh, that's not nice. 

Haha - ouch. 

Karma.  Hurts. 

Especially if you had kidney surgery last week.

Looks like Irene is going to give us the brush off and go kiss some of the northern cousins instead.  

We call Pie Man and Scout, just in case they've been having too much fun in the Chesapeake to watch the weather.  Their cell phones were on, of course, and they have already found a mooring.  I laugh at myself, thinking even for a second that they might not be paying attention.  Of course they are. 

There are three kinds of sailors.  Smart, lucky, or dead.  

Planning ahead, thinking things through, being aware, can add a little layer of stress to cruising.  Much less stressful though, than dealing with the moment when all else has gone ka-blooy.


After hurting me sufficiently with his joke, Popeye pours coffee into a travel mug and leaves for work, promising to be back at 2 to take me to the doctor for the follow up.  One week and one day, and no news on the biopsy.  I get the feeling they are holding off to tell me in person.

After the 6 pronged assault to my abdomen, it hurts to laugh, or to sneeze.  Heck.  It hurts to breathe. 

Pain, hurricanes, sailing.  I check out my six new scars in the mirror, and suddenly notice all the old ones.  Long, artful incicions of years past, instead of these new raggedy holes.  Old, old scars, still there.  Just long forgotten.

Breathe in.  Breathe out.  Yes.  No matter the method, it is exactly the same sort of pain.  And, the same sort of prison created, keeping you from your freedom, dependent on others. I wait at home for 2 o'clock, while time runs back to a different day.

It is late summer in Vinalhaven.  I forget the year.  The breeze is light and capricious.  Corsair has been dragging anchor back and forth past a huge “Underwater Cable - Do Not Anchor” sign for two days, ever since my release from the Penobscot Bay Medical Center.

The Mate is characteristically unconcerned about dragging, and I am in no shape to argue.  I have a hard enough time just standing myself up in the cabin.

By the end of day two though, willing to risk rupture for a glimpse of daylight, I lurch my way up the ladder, and poke my head clear of the hatch. 

The scene (think technicolor!) is of the cockpit looking aft.  It is a brief moment, a still shot.  There is an unreal, movie set quality about it.  A sort of Indiana Jones comic moment. 

The Mate in the scene is fully absorbed in a posture of delight, pulling a mackerel on a handline up into the cockpit.  

Directly behind his head, on a spectacular background of ocean horizon, rises a huge bank of clouds, so black and so high, it might as well be a mountain range.  A mountain range moving right for us.

Spread east to west, horizon to horizon, it has already closed into the throat of the channel, ready to swallow us whole if we try for the exit.  

The calm before the storm.

It’s amazing the effort it takes to get someones attention when standing mid-ladder on a 35’ sloop with a 7 inch incision in your belly. 

Especially if they are preoccupied with yanking up a mackerel.  

An instant later the still shot jumps to a movie in fast forward. 

The mackerel splashed to freedom.  The Mate pelted for the bow.  After the effort of sounding the alarm, getting myself back down the ladder and out of the way was all I could manage. 

I feel a sickening drift backwards.  Anchor line being paid out. 

A handful of cockpit cushions and paraphernalia comes pelting down the hatch, followed by the Mate himself and the first hard spatter of rain.  

(Deal well with the moment sailor, for all else has gone ka-blooy.) 

The Mate stuffs me painfully into my wetsuit, not easy on either of us, but probably the most foresighted thing he has ever done, before or since.  We settle in by the ports to keep a bearing on the point, as Corsair jerks and slips her way gradually, incessently sternward, closer and closer to the rocks. 

50 feet.  

40... 

The Mate is on the second rung of the ladder with his hand on the latch when the bow snaps around and we fetch up hard into the wind.  

And there we stay, heaving into the spindrift, while David churns in from the Atlantic at 65 knots.   The anchor?  Dug in hard to the only good holding we'd found yet in Vinalhaven, the underwater cable. 

Irene, our hurricane of the present, demands attention, spattering rain across the dining room windows, like a vagrant knocking, then suddenly backing off to try a different door. 

We are back from the follow up at the surgeon's office.

The tumor wasn't cancer.  

It was a low-fat mass of blood and muscle, according to an Internet search using the 9 syllable word on the lab report. 

Treated like cancer until proven otherwise, hence removed.

So.  Still here.  Still alive. 

But somehow, not feeling especially smart or lucky.

It still hurts to breathe, dammit.
 
Even sighs of relief.

Good night, Irene.

I'll see you in my dreams.

Dreamin' global. Ridin' local.

There's a full moon coming up this weekend. 

It's on the List again.  Ride around Lake Okeechobee.  It was on the list to go to Maine in August too.  Yet another oh-well.

Been saying oh-well to a lot of opportunities so far this month. 

Haven't been out of town once.  Didn't make it to the Jacksonville Xterra.  Or Tsali.  Haven't even been to Hogsmeade for a butterbeer.

Doesn't mean we've been totally idle.  Just operating within smaller parameters, that's all.

While Popeye rides the Palm Bay group hammerfest a couple times a week, I am on my own.  Nope.  I won't go into how goofy it seems to me that no one wants to ride any where but out in the full sun, on the road, in Florida, in August.  I'll just say that I don't get it.  I don't get it at all.

But on road or off, there's no escaping the fact that it is August. Any other time of year, riding alone includes the luxury of going whenever I happen to be ready.  August is a special case though, and the last couple Saturdays I have been determined to get out aeap (as early as possible).

Saturday. 7:30 AM.  Every possible ounce of Gatorade squeezed into the camelbak, full suspension locked out, tires stans'd and pumped to a street-ready 30 pounds...

Wow, early is nice.  

It's been a while since I have been on my own in the airport trails.  

The old trail is still there.  It just comes out behind a different fence.

Whoops.  Gotta take the road for a bit from here.

The Eau Gallie dam is still accessible, though.  I love this spot.  You'd never know you are right in the middle of a town.

No I didn't ride across.  I've seen people try.  Did you know that fat tires will pop a bike right back up to the surface after plunging off a dam into deep water?  Kind of like the sub in The Hunt for Red October.  Good to know, huh?  Just the same, Keene spd bike sandals make perfect waders.  

It is only after I'm across that I remember the second largest gator I ever saw.  Melbourne Tillman Canal.  Huge.  He was stretched out under some falling water, very much like this spot, jaws wide open, waiting for something edible to wash over.

Oh well, the foot wash felt pretty good - once the heart rate went back down.

Even if you can't leave town, at least you can pretty much make any local ride about water.

A1A south toward the inlet has half a dozen beach parks. In August, any ride farther than the mailbox is going to be a soaker anyway.  Might as well add a swim.

You just never know what you'll see along A1A...  How about Cap'n Jack Sparrow holding a for sale sign?   I was by there again yesterday.  He's still there.  Still for sale.  Go figure.

Once every few weeks, there's more rolling around this town than just bikes.  

How about those Molly Roger Roller Girls!  

Saturday night.  Roller derby at the Palm Bay Rec Center.  A little bit Nascar (left turn, left turn, left turn), and a whole lotta bumper car.  It's BYOB and BYOSC.  Seat cushion, that is. 

I did take one video that night just as the home team jammer went into the penalty box.  2 minutes of Dub City (West Palm) racking up points, the 109 to 40 scoreboard in the background.  (I didn't spare you on purpose, it just didn't upload.)  Then, the very next jam yielded a broken clavicle.  Unphotographed, of course.  At least by me. 

Our seats, high in the bleachers, are good ones, but we've decided to get there earlier next time.  The front row is where the action is.    

Speaking of suicide seating... 

Ever been hoisted up a mast in a bosun's chair?

Well, now Popeye has.

Pie Man and Scout are preparing Sunny Skies for departure.  Popeye replaces a deck light, while Pie Man stands by near the winch. 

Just a few more chores and ready to go.

Even catamarans only have so much room.  You just can't take everything along - even if you do have brand new folding Dahon's.  Once Popeye is back on deck, we are instructed on our next chore.  Helping to clear Pie-Man's bar fridge of it's last few beers. 

Somehow, this onerous task is only half completed, when Pie Man's new doo comes under discussion.  It is a #1, in preparation for a month or two of cruising.  Before you know it, the clippers are out.  For Popeye, it's a whole new take on washing the gray away.

I put in the video.  Then edited it back out.  If anyone really wants to see, let me know.  But seriously.  Don't ask.  Unless you have a weird sense of humor.  (And a poor sense of fashion.)  Some things just seem funnier in the moment, you know?

Yesterday's storms doused the temps and made a quick 25 miles out the front door feel refreshing, even in late afternoon.  If I'd been on my road bike it might have been a little sketchy on Tropical Trail in the blustery west wind, but on Killer it was a breeze.

Yes, it stormed before I got back.

No problem.  Killer traction.   

Four or five miles north of Mathers Bridge, up toward the Pineda, I see Sunny Skies under full sail, way out in the channel, heading north, wearing a "for sale" sign on each rail.  She is the only vessel out there. 

Well done, Pie Man and Scout.  An on-time departure.  Finally underway for a late summer cruise of the Chesapeake, and eventually the boat show in Annapolis.

I'd say good luck in selling Sunny Skies at the boat show.  

But they'd know I don't mean it.


Postscript:  Here's the link to Scout's cruising blog.  I haven't spent much time in the Chesapeake, so I'm really looking forward to hearing all about it.  If you aren't a boat person, remember they've taken those brand new Dahon's, so I expect to see a few rides in the travel report as well. 

http://www.sunnyskyadventures.com/sunnyskiesblog/