THEY KEEP LETTING US ON BOATS!

Despite the fact that Karen and I are both pencil-necked academics, we keep fooling the city of New York into giving us low-cost watercraft rides for which are puny bodies are relatively unprepared. To wit, we have recently started taking taking sailing lessons. Which is actually super fun! I would like to take a moment here to apologize to my mother, who all but begged me to go to sailing camp, every year, for most of my adoelcense. Sorry, mom, I should have done it! But I was scared I would look dumb in front of those cool sailing kids, so I didn't even try.

Anyway!




This was the view the other night after sailing. Our lessons are from 6 - 8 at night, so we always see a nice sunset.















This is a picture taken FROM our boat, of another boat. This boat you see here is slightly different than the boat we were on. Slightly better, Karen would say. More on that later.















Water and a boat. Honestly I have no idea what is going on here. Karen is sitting right next to me right now, but I don't feel like asking her. What is she going to say? I mean, it's water and a boat, am I right? I'm right.












OKAY BUT SO. Remember how I told you about Karen's crippling jealousy of this particular boat? WELL, as we were tying up after our lesson, the instructor whose boat it was helped our instructor tie up. He was barking out instructions to us, "pull the sail! Grab that!" as we were getting the boat ready to be put away. As we're almost done, he says, "How did you guys get here tonight? Did you drive?"

"Oh no," we say, "we have to take the bus home."

"Well, want a ride on my boat to Sheepshead Bay?" DID WE EVER! We ended up taking another hour sail with this guy, who was an amazing old sailor-type person, along with about 4 other students. His boat was so fast! I learned so much! We actually went somewhere! I held the tiller for a while, which was lots of fun. Anyway, this photo here is from Karen's seat, in the front, looking over the bow. That's the jib on the right. See, the lessons are working! "Tiller," "bow," "jib"!! I'm a regular. . . uh . . . sailing person? Sail dude? Whatever you call it, I'm one of those.






This is Karen, looking very lovely at sunset, at the helm of our regular lesson boat.

This is me, looking a bit haggard, but overall very dashing, also in our practice boat.