Irrigation Camp

I recently spent an absolutely lovely weekend in Nebraska with the fam. I had the pleasure of bringing my friend Maria with me. Maria is from a city, so we had to break her into the farm life.

We started with a tour of how cows are milked.

Maria bottle fed a calf.

Then we held baby pigs (my favorite).

Home clothes were required for this visit. We also introduced Maria to the Nebraska delights of Runza and Valentino's. Good stuff.

Yesterday, one of my VS housemates was in DC. We thought it would be a brilliant idea to rent a tandem bike and traverse the Mount Vernon trail, all 36 miles of it. Having never ridden a tandem bike before, I had the mistaken belief that we would hop on like any regular bike and away we would go.

This was not the case. Getting started on a tandem bike with two people who do not know what they are doing is NOT easy. I seriously thought we would have to turn right around and take the bike back. It was one big wobble-fest. And not just "ooh i feel a little uncomfortable by how much we're wobbling". It was like three feet of severe swaying before we tipped completely over. Three feet might be generous. But we eventually learned how to communicate, figured out a rhythm, and ended up having a very pleasant ride. It's an absolutely gorgeous trail. And once you can figure it out, tandem biking is very, very enjoyable. I rode as stoker for most of the trip, or the person who sits in the back. After about 5 miles of clenching furiously at handlebars that do not move, I finally relaxed and let go. We decided that if we ever did it again, I would take a book or newspaper to read during the ride. Tandem bikes do have the nickname "divorce maker", which I now understand. It really does take a lot of communication and give and take to make it work. And I could see how people could get really mad and frustrated if they weren't working together. If you ever try it, be sure to take someone along to laugh at your first attempts, because it is a truly humbling experience for someone who thinks they know how to ride a bike. 

Jib Ho!

On Saturday I had the awesome opportunity to crew on one of my coworker's sailboats in a regatta (a regatta is boat race for those of you who are not nautically minded). I have never been on a sailboat before, and had no idea what I was getting into. It was awesome. 

We were sailing a Cal 25, named Cal Tip'n. This is a picture of her, but not when I was sailing her. I had seen pictures of the boat beforehand, and to be honest, thought it was a fairly small boat. And while it is relatively small, I was amazed at the amount of work it takes to race her. The ideal crew size is 5 people - which totally surprised me. I didn't even think 5 people would fit on the boat. But boats are amazing like that - always bigger than they look from the outside.

My job was to man the main sail. This requires the least skill, as you can probably already guess. One of the things that surprised me the most was the extreme angle at which we were tipped a lot of the time. All of the crew jumps to one side after trimming the sails to prevent falling overboard but also to become "rail meat". This means you're not doing anything but sitting and distributing your weight in the most advantageous way.

This is not the same type of boat we were sailing, but it gives a pretty clear idea of how tipped the boat will be, as well as some good rail meat.




Also exciting is when you deploy the spinnaker. Our race was a winward/leeward race. This means that we went both directions in the wind (that is probably not what it means at all, but that's how I took it). So when we were sailing downwind, we would lower the Jib (the front sail), and raise the spinnaker. Neither of the below was our spinnaker, but it gives you an idea of what they look like. The fun thing about spinnakers is that most of them are really colorful. So when all the boats rounded the buoy to being the downwind part of the course and raised their spinnakers, it looked really, really cool.

Also surprising (although it probably shouldn't have been): it is HARD to pull a sail against the wind. It's like running with a parachute. I really thought my guns would be up to the task, but I definitely found it challenging. Lesson learned.