Tuesday, July 14, 2009

A wonderful day

After work on Mondays, there is the Monday night slalom. It's a special treat when I get to bring Emmett as the other sailors enjoy seeing him too. Yesterday Emmett was riding a Techno 293 for the first time in a while (he usually rides Formula). Bryanna was with us so he was a little distracted. Bryanna was flying her kite and Emmett loved playing with her kite too. As Bryanna was screaming loudly, Bruce and I glared at Emmett and he said those three words that are virtually impossible for an older brother to get out of their mouths "I'm helping her". Bruce and I smiled at each other and said "Ya right". I told Emmett to stop helping Bryanna and get in the water. He ignored me and they had a great time playing with Bryanna's kite.

Last Monday, Bruce beat me in the first race. I've been training for the national championship and one of the hardest things to do in a slalom race is pass people. Most races I lead from start to finish and found myself never having to sail in bad air, bad wake or trying to pass people. So I've been giving the fleet a head start so I get better practice for Nationals. Last week I guess I gave a bit too much of a head start as I finished second twice. Now I don't want to take away anything from Bruce as it was a solid 5 buoy race (longer than our normal 3) and I was giving it everything I got and he beat me fair and square. This monday was payback time. It was lighter and I had my 12.5. I started with the fleet for a three buoy race. I still had good practice in bad air and bad wakes as I was lapping people. In the same time Bruce did three buoys, I did 12. So I lapped him three times. In the second race, I even lapped Kevin (who is a light wind master). I told him I should get points for first and second as technically I placed in both of those positions by lapping him :-)

Kev broke out his guitar and sang a special song about windsurfing on San Francisco Bay. The kids loved listening to it and I recorded it on my iPhone.

Bryanna lost a tooth earlier in the day so we went out to dinner and had ice cream for desert. Yum!

At home Emmett and I did some object oriented programming for the first time. Em totally got it. I was amazed. We were simply making a ball go from the left of the screen to the right and off to oblivian. Very simple program but you have to start somewhere. Emmett wanted to make the ball go faster and I asked him how to do that. He said "easy, just make dx bigger". Ok, I was very impressed that he knew that already. Em was very happy and proud of his first program. Me too.

Then I showed Emmett some 2D physics and Bryanna made a movie of. He said "That person sounds a lot like Bryanna". I giggled and said that the reason that sounds like Bryanna is that it IS Bryanna. It's very hard at this age for a sibling to complement another sibling but that's what he did.