It was around ten o'clock, maybe even eleven, when Myfanwi informed that me we were going to Trapeze School. See, they have a a website where you can see videos of such luminaries as Tony Danza and Al Roker trapeezing- not at the same time, of course- that would be just too awesome for words- but still, good good stuff! Obviously, we had to learn to trapeze.

We spent Saturday training- doing chin-ups on the hand-bars in the subway cars, drinking carrot juice and riding the Cyclone at Coney Island (solely to get used to acceleration- we take a scientific approach to trapeezing)- the usual sort of preparation one does for acrobatics. Friday we went to go see Superchunk* at the Seaport, which naturally involved a lot of jumping up and down: this is also good preparation for Trapezing, I hear. Observant readers might notice me jumping up and down here, I'm the dude intermittently seen jumping up and down in front of those two stiffs who just kind of stand there. I don't know what it is with stiffs who just kind of stand there when Superchunk is playing, but there you have it. Those of you enamoured/disgusted by the long blond hair I got in the video will be distressed/relieved to learn that it is all gone now. See I don't mind sporting the Surfer Dude look, whatever, but it's a pretty fine line between Surfer Dude and Dirty Hippy Dude, and it's a line you don't want to cross. I simply have no intention of being Dirty Hippy Dude. Anyway if you're going trapezing, the last thing you want is a bunch of hair weighting you down. So Saturday morning I had the immigrant barber lady cut it all off (It took her a while to realize that I wanted it cut real short: "what!" she says, "he is not even drooonk!" to nobody in particular.) The Trapeze School is on top of a building on the west side of Manhattan, overlooking the Hudson, and even though rain had been forecast it was clear as a bell and so we had a beautiful view of the downtown skyline and the Jersey shore.

I don't like to think I'm scared of heights, as I've gone up the mast countless times. The mast is probably even taller than the trapeze platform, but of course it's completely normal and natural to climb a mast, and generally speaking you don't climb the mast with the sole intention of leaping off it like some bargain-basement Tarzan. Standing on the edge of the platform, with
your toes sticking over is nerve-wracking- you stand there, leaning with your center of gravity over the void while the Trapeze Lady holds your harness so you don't fall, and you reach out for the trapeze with your right hand. You take your left hand off the support and grab the bar with both hands, and there is no way that the Trapeze Lady, a mere slip of a girl, can possibly keep you from overbalancing and falling to your doom-- this is a simple matter of physics. This lasts for two or three seconds, a terrifying eternity.

"Readeeeee.... Hup!" and you jump.




*After the show we were hanging out with some of the dudes and dudettes that we had been jumping up and down with. One girl had come from Washington D.C. to see the show, one guy from Canada. I didn't think I was no slouch, coming from Ohio, but it turns out there was one dude came all the way from Norway to see Superchunk. He won, hands down.

My sister was all "yeah, he only ever comes to visit me when Superchunk is playing.. " Shamefully, this is entirely true. So, on the off chance that any Superchunks are reading this, let me ask you to play NYC more often. So I can see my sister more.

Or hell, just come to Columbus. Really, that'd be way more convenient for me.

Its always delightful to take off in a jet plane- the exhilarating acceleration- the rumbling bumbling run down the run-way, the last jolt as the tyres part company with the ground, the swaying motion as the nose of the jet points skyward. You look out the window and you realize that you must be hundreds of feet above the ground already. The city is spread out like a diorama beneath you, and it all looks too life-like to be real: the plane banks around and you can recognize the Horseshoe, the downtown buildings, and you try and pick out the street you live on. This is easily the most dangerous time of the entire flight, for if a wing were to fall off or something, we would all be goners, for sure. There is just no way you could survive a crash from such an altitude, and why they go through that nonsense with the seat-belts is beyond me. Nobody ever survived a plane crash because he was wearing seat-belts. What we need to do is climb up high enough so that if the plane crashes we won't hit anything. The plane moves so slowly in relation to the ground - even though surely we must be doing at least sixty, seventy mph by now- that there is no possible way we are going fast enough to remain airborne. I always get uneasy at take-off.

We gain altitude: the individual houses and cars blur and become indistinct and then disappear altogether. The regular checkerboards of the inner suburbs give way to the curvilinear streets and cul-de-sacs of Pickerington and all the outlying subdivisions, and you begin to notice the major roads assume the larger pattern of section lines. We rise, and the scale imperceptibly shifts and now the roads are no longer roads at all but elements of the vast grid of township, range and section lines, overlaid upon an irregular geometry of fields and shining snaking rivers, impossibly flat, impossibly vast, which stretches half a continent. The plane is no longer flying above anything near so dangerous as the surface of the Earth (certain death to fall upon from any great height) in fact we're not even flying at all: we are drifting serenely and detachedly above an abstract quiltwork of mist. We are only going at a walking pace now, and if you could open the window I bet you could almost reach the ground from here. A cloud drifts below us, solid enough to walk on. It is now safe to walk about the cabin.

We were late taking off, of course, but even so the sun sets remarkably fast when you're flying away from it. I'm not sure exactly what ground our flight plan passed over- possibly Zanesville? Crooksville? Scranton PA? Bleak places all I'm sure, and scattered in between all the appalachian burghs and hamlets, all the dreary nowheresvilles in the middle of nowhere that no-one ever wants to go to. With darkness falling all over the hills and hollows of eastern Ohio they glitter like handfuls of spilt diamonds. I'm flying to NYC to see my sister.

It was Myfanwi and I on Old Alt, while David, assisted by Steve, sailed his lovely Alberg 30 Full Measure. The Alberg 30, as one might suspect, was designed by Karl Alberg- also the author of most of the Cape Dory designs- so our two boats were more or less cousins. This was the day to have an Alberg-designed boat, as the wind was blowing twenty five knots and more, and six-foot waves were crashing over the break-wall.

"You're absolutely crazy!" says Roseanne. Dave and Roseanne hardly ever take their boat out, but when they do, they sail to the Bahamas and are gone for six months. You'd have thought six foot waves would be nothing to her. "Wear your life preservers!"

"Where're you going?" says Dave. "Vermilion and back?" He gauges the shockingly forceful gusts. "Huh. See you in an hour".

So! Out past the breakwater, with the breakers crashing and exploding into spray all around us, until the reefed main and staysail caught the wind, and we heeled over and began to seriously MOVE. I'm not much of a lad for rolley-coasters, but I if I were I bet they'd be something like this. We caromed off the short Lake Erie chop, and packets of water flew aft scrubbing all the birdshit off the deck, and cannoned off the bows like fireworks. We gained a knot surfing down the back of each wave, only to lose a knot as we crashed into the next one.

Old Alt had chosen a different course than Full Measure, making a little more north out of the harbour- the wind was dead west- and pointed a little higher, so we could fetch Vermilion without tacking. David, pointing a little lower, was moving faster through the water, but he was making far too much south- clearly he would have to tack- and we would eat him for lunch. In fact although he was pulling away from us, he wasn't making any more west than we were- only more south. Clearly, we had him!

By and by though, around Beaver Park, the wind started to shift... we were forced south... we would have to end up tacking too! This was horrible! What's more, the wind was diminishing, and we were underpowered trying to bash through the leftover waves... Out came the reef! Let fly the genny! It was no good- we were only managing two or three knots, and that to the southwest. To our horror, we saw Full Measure (well far to the south of us by now) turn and slant up across the wind towards Vermilion! Evidently the wind had shifted enough that David could slide straight to the finish line, and judging by his speed the wind must not yet have faded over by land. This was sickening. He was going to beat us by at least an hour.

With all sails flying we made our tack and stood northwards, dejectedly, making a good five knots, but five knots in a direction ninety degrees from our destination. It was delightful sailing- the lake had already lain down quite a bit- but it was all as ashes to us. By the time we had sailed a few miles north we couldn't even see David. He had already turned up the Vermilion River.

After two or three more tacks, and at least an hour and a half or two after David, we finally reached the river. Bar the odd french fry, David and Steve were about finished with lunch.

I glumly waited for the inevitable reproaches and mockery, so richly deserved after our dismal performance. I mean, it wasn't a formal "race", but to be so shockingly out-sailed....

Steve: "So, you sailed the whole way?"

Us: "Yeah..."

Steve: "Ah. Well, we weren't getting anywhere by the time we got to Beaver Park, so we fired up the engine and motor-sailed in."