Beach
Web - April 2008
Today is Wednesday, 23 April - and - yes - MORE KITEBOARDING - (sorry to BORE you!)
It was awesome TERRIFIC - used my 5 meter (snow) kite -
smallest thing I own, hadn't used this kite in a year or two (it's not
been THIS WINDy in a VERY LONG TIME.) VERY VERY NICE,
though - did some jumping, going (very) fast (23 mph at 15:33
p.m.) - about an hour and 10 minutes actually kiting - about an hour
and a half in the water. Tried the 9 meter kite, first; it
was WAY too BIG. So then I rigged and went on the 5 meter
kite...
track log image(s): small image (6" wide) larger image_(12" wide)
on
these track-log images: the cyan (light blue) line is for Wednesday,
23rd;
the red
and orange lines are for Tuesday, 22nd...
Today is Tuesday, 22nd April - and the kiteboarding was good til the wind-dropped (at the sailing center (see picture below)).
track log image(s): small image_(6" wide) larger image_(12" wide)
Today is: Sunday, 20th April - yesterday was a great day Hang Gliding (at Florida Ridge) - good lift (at least part of the day)... -
as per usual: Flightlog.org has all my flights listed - click on the little glider icon to the left of the date
as per usual: my " dot Mac " web-gallery has a movie (about 3 minutes to watch)
as per usual: if you have "Google Earth" - you will benefit, greatly but you certainly don't HAVE to have it!
Kiteboarding - on Thursday, 17th at the Sailing Center:
I won't SAY it this time BUT - Thursday, 17th was PRETTY GOOD on the water at the Sailing Center...
first with a 13 square meter kite, then a 16 - a total of about 3
hours on the water - !!! - AND Ms._Ruth and Mr._John came by for a
visit, Ms._Ruth took some pictures - these are 'mostly' un-edited...
- Picture 1 - John and I conversing about inflation valves
- Picture 2 - pumping up the BIG 16 meter kite
- Picture 3 - walking out to the launch-area
Anyway - a VERY good day on the water - in very little wind ( approximately NE at approximately 10-15 knots).
YES
- (Sunday, 13th) even MORE kiteboarding - won't bore you this time with
the details,
HOWEVER, if you have "Google Earth" - then you can get this ( ...kml ) file and it shows you where I went.
- It (should) download into a browser window - it will appear as some 'text'.
- Click File => Save Page As - (it should already have a name); save it onto your desktop.
- Use your OS to take the '.xml' off the end of the name of the file, so it ends in '.kml'.
- Now, drag it onto your "Google Earth" window and drop it.
- It should display a 'track' on your Google Earth window, this is where I went.
- This track is 'about' 1.8 miles E <=> W and about 0.8 miles N <=> S.
YES - more kiteboarding today - more wind, smaller kite, different location, etc. etc. etc.
YES
- today is Friday (the 11th) and most people (like me) should be
WORKING for a living, but I decided that I would go kiteboarding -
which is WAY MORE FUN and I'd recently re-engineered my (large / long)
kiteboard control bar so I wanted to try it out
AND _ Ms. May said "There's not enough Wind" - and usually - you know - the wife is RIGHT. - but NOT THIS TIME...
it
were VERY VERY GOOD - with the 18 square meter (dual
leading-edge-bladder (very old, very unusual) kite and the big
board... not much wind but LOTs of fun!
the above track-log is 'about' 0.45 miles E-W and 'about' 0.70 miles N-S.
Kite is my 5-6 year old 18 Square Meter Gaastra Phoenix II, wind was 'about'
SE at about 12-15 mph - white caps were minimal and I could only go up-wind
when I was in a 'puff'. Witness the several runs / gybes at the extreme NW
corner of the track-log in this little tiny "bay". I thought I would NEVER
escape from that corner, but it was still fun! Max speed (according to the
Garmin GPS) was about 20-23 mph - average speed was more like 12-16 mph.
Breakfast Bread - this morning
(Wednesday, 9th)
- we had (shortly after getting
up) - fresh-bread, with some VERY TASTY things in it like:
-
Soy Flour
-
Oatmeal
-
Dried Sultanas (raisins)
-
etc. etc. etc.
it's great to have good bread,
even better when the breadmaker's fragerance wakes you up!
Weekend in
Jacksonville... (4,5,6 April,
2008)...
We went to Jacksonville, late, on Friday the 4th - and a
great weekend
- Ms._May was judging a regatta at the Florida Yacht Club.
Mr. Bill did some visiting (with Mom) and some driving around and so-on
and so-forth!... We had dinnera at Ma Ma Fus (Chinese
quick-food! (and
a competitor to the (we think) GREAT Pei
Wei we have in Stuart) - we did some sightseeing and drove
back to
Stuard on Sunday afternoon, 5 hours in the RAIN!...
anyway - here's some pictures of our weekend in J'ville:
ALSO - had a chance to try-out the 'video-chat'
functionality of my new
Apple Mac Book
Air - and
it's pretty awesome stuff - with Leopard
operating system and the new features of iChat
(Apple's Chat software)...
One of the other things I did was (no pictures) finally
(FINALLY)
figured out why my Garmin
GPS
would not show me the 'maps' that it had stored? - UGH UGH
figured out that the maps 'chip' (a Micro SD storage card (128
Megabytes)) was not being 'read' by the chip-reader / socket (because
of corrosion!!!). SO - after cleaning, and
re-loading the
card (with Maps (from a CD via a piece of software that is "PC-Only"
and studying the manual (both ...pdf online as well as the
paper
manual) figured out I'm only using about 1/2 the card's space, and it
is reading now - so I'm very happy about that... Very handy
to
have maps again - as one drives from point A to point B (to C, D, E, F,
G, and so-on!!!)
Boardsailing
BOARDSAILING
definitely NOT BORED Sailing! - yes - today (Thursday, 3
April)
was good - Monday (31 March) was a 'bit' better... But Mr. Bill got a
chance to show-off his kiting skills today for a fellow boardsailor who
broke a mast, today... AND in the process discovered a tiny
little beach where maybe he can launch his kite / board tomorrow if
there's wind - the same place where we've been going to go BoardSailing
- has a little beach - with some luck and some 'prior planning' I can
go kiteboarding, while Ms. May goes boardsailing - an ideal solution!...
so - we'll try that tomorrow (Friday - 4th) and see how it
goes...
Oh Oh OH
OH OH - someone said I
should publish some web-links to various places:
-
My / our .Mac
web-gallery where you will find a number of still-picture -
albums
as well as a few movies / movie-clips from / of various and sundry
subjects.
-
Ms._May has her
own blog-site
now where she publishes some things about reading, art, life,
etc...
-
The Amateur Radio Relay
League -
home of the amateur radio operator here in the USA.
-
AND - the "Ham Test
Online"
- where you can study on-line and take 'practice tests' on-line for the
3 levels of Amateur Radio License.
-
AND - the organization that monitors, licenses, controls the
hang-gliding community - the US Hang Gliding and Paragliding
Association (USHGA).
more Hang Gliding stuff:
-
you can find (all of) Mr.
Bill's flight(s) all listed here...
-
- If you click the glider icon to
the left of
the 2008-03-28 ( (Friday, March 28th) flight - you'll get
flight data (my best yet!)
-
- IF
YOU HAVE Google Earth - you
can click on 'Tracklog in Google Earth format' ( link-text in blue ) -
and
it will open a 3D tracklog overlain on Google Earth and you can
'rotate' and change the aziumuth of the view - very slick - 3D Google
Earth stuff
-
- ALSO
if you don't have Google Earth you can click on the "Tracklog on Google
Map" - and this only requires your web-browser... (the little 'S'
marker means 'Start', the little "L" marker means "Landing")
- IF
you don't have Google Earth - then you can scroll
to the bottom of the page and click on 'Tracklog statistics" and get
some graphs that are pretty easy to read and understand...
Some computer-things: ' Navicat
' - an EXCELLENT piece of software that 'manages' your MySQL
environment. - This software was written and is marketed from Hong Kong
No
set of links would be "Complete" without a link to the Apple Computer
web-site.
IF you
want access to
'old-web-site(s)' - here's the link: Archived
Web Pages (this is where you'll find Mr. Bill's
most recent
Hang Gliding flight which was 'record breaking'!
last
updated: 18:06 p.m. - Wednesday, 23 April,
2008; revID: 1s
