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Topics - PonoBill

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31
Random / Fumbalaya
« on: January 14, 2022, 09:16:23 PM »
Fumbalaya. Fake Jumbalaya. I made shrimp and sausage Jambalaya tonight with almost none of the required ingredients: Some kind of sissy keto chicken sausage from Costco, no peppers, no Okra, none of the required spices. Diane and I have become intolerant to garlic and onion (FUCK, really??? What's next? Air??). So within those narrow parameters, I managed to make kick-ass Jambalaya. How? Simple. it's all about the roux. Cook the roux until it's dark brown, like coffee, and everything else works. I did the shrimp separately, in a carbon steel pan so hot that the avocado oil was smoking hard. Blasted one side while I dumped hot paprika and red pepper flakes on the other side then flipped the shrimp, salt, pepper, and deglaze the pan with some decent chardonnay with the shrimp in place and dumped the whole mess into the Jambalaya. A mound of rice, a few scoops of Jambalaya, a splash of Tabasco, and a bit of flake salt (Josephson, of course, what, did you think I'm some kind of hick??). A nice glass of Chateau Magdalena and who the fuck cares about the missing Okra?
I'm going to get another glass and watch Bottle Shock. Diane and Twila are chipping by the pool at the target (it's a golf thing) and they're going to go do some putting. I'm envious. this will actually be better reheated. Jambalaya always is.

32
Random / Excellent Orthopedic care on Maui
« on: January 10, 2022, 11:36:13 PM »
I generally tell anyone with a medical problem on Maui that they need a plane ticket. My knee has been really shit lately, when I try to stand up on my SUP foilboard it collapses. It works a little better with a wing, but it's still a bit of a trick to get up. I don't want to get on a plane anytime soon, so I was open to considering local care.

Tomoko Okazaki told me about a PT clinic in Haiku that I'm going to give a try to, and today I went to a new walk-in orthopedic clinic in Pukalani called All Access Ortho Maui, which I assumed was going to be kind of weird. Who ever heard of a walk-in orthopedic doc? Usually, you have to get a referral to even see an Ortho.

My expectations were low.

Wrong. Remarkably good.

The young lady I assumed was the receptionist turned out to be an extremely competent X-ray tech. They do on-site X-ray with what looks to be state-of-the-art equipment. I didn't meet the doctor, but the PA was excellent. He confirmed what my knee doctor in Portland has been telling me--that I'm probably not a great candidate for a knee replacement at this time but he gave me a thorough exam, confirmed that the Haiku clinic would be a good idea, and recommended stretching and specific exercises. I've been dealing with this for ten years, and he told me quite a lot I didn't know about strengthening my knee.

He gave me a deep steroid shot with a lot less agony than most of the shots I've had over the years. My knee has felt good all day and I should be in a good place to work on strengthening it.

I had low expectations, and they were blown away. They took my insurance with no copay or other charge. Competent, very little waiting, excellent care, and fine results. If you need ortho care on Maui I'd certainly give them a try. Here's a link to the article that directed me there:
https://mauinow.com/2022/01/03/orthopedic-urgent-care-clinic-opens-in-upcountry-maui/

33
Foil SUP / El Cheapo Foil Drive
« on: December 23, 2021, 09:52:10 AM »
A little video of my cheapskate foil booster (and a basic ADHD demo). If anyone is interested I'll look up the company I bought the powered fin from, but they are fairly common.

https://youtu.be/XyEM_l-YeOY

34
Wingsurfing, Windfoiling, Wingfoiling, Wing SUP / Long swim
« on: December 22, 2021, 10:07:47 AM »
My board leash came disconnected yesterday when I was at Kanaha outside the reef. My board got away in a hurry. Swimming in an impact vest is painfully slow, so I couldn't catch it and soon it was out of sight in the swell. Of course, I still had the wing, so I got to practice self-rescue for quite a while, which is certainly a worthwhile skill to work on.

I simply got the wing flying, moved my grip further back--which would get a little more challenging with a wing that doesn't have a boom or a fake boom in my case--and used the pull to drag myself through the water. That worked really well until I ran over the reef and got rumbled by a few waist-high waves. In the excitement, the wing flipped and I struggled a bit to flip it back while swimming. I could have stood on the reef, but long experience told me I didn't need to add coral cuts and vana spines to my troubles. I gave up and just kicked along for a while, but the current and wind was carrying me towards Ka'a.

I finally tried a few different approaches to flipping the wing and managed to do it by holding a wingtip down and pulling on the leash. I was prepared to hang on to the wing tightly if the leash parted. I also thought this would be a shitty time to pop the bladder and came up with a few strategies if that happened. Mostly arrayed around keeping as much air in the wing as I could. Fortunately, the wing finally flipped nicely and I continued my cruise in.

With the aid of the wing, I was able to not only make good speed towards the beach, but I was also able to hold my own against wind and current, aiming towards the lifeguard tower at the edge of kite beach. Several windsurfers checked on me to see if I was okay, I assured them I was and didn't need the lifeguards. One of them told me a winger had retrieved my board and put it on the beach. Whoever that was, thanks, and thanks to the windsurfers who checked on me.

This looks like a better way to self-rescue in many cases. I've done the spinnaker riding the leading edge thing before, but there are some refinements here that I haven't tried. I'm going to practice this next time I go out--which given the current rain in Maui, might be a while. https://youtu.be/V48ZQWRmZwY

When I was about 100 yards offshore I saw a lifeguard on a rescue board paddling out towards me. I thought about waving him off, but he said I should get on the nose of the rescue board and fly the wing to bring us both back to the beach. He apparently didn't realize he was dealing with a clumsy geezer with bad knees, and after flopping around a while I gave him the wing leash, handed him the wing, and crawled onto the back of the board. We made good time to the beach and Chris--the lifeguard--aimed for my board so I only had to walk a few yards to retrieve it.

I took a long walk of shame back to my truck, carrying my gear all the way. I could have stashed it and gone for the van, but it wasn't that far (probably less than half a mile) and everything was pretty sandy. I wanted to use the hose and shower at the entrance to kooks to wash everything off, including me. I stowed my gear and headed to Costco for a restocking expedition, probably the most dangerous thing I did all day. 

Thanks to everyone that helped me out. I'm confident I didn't NEED help, but it's certainly nice to have people care. It's always worthwhile to have something like this happen so you can test your reactions and ability to respond. If I couldn't manage this and/or worse situations I'd have no business wingfoiling anywhere but a kiddie pool.

But I can.

35
Wingsurfing, Windfoiling, Wingfoiling, Wing SUP / What makes a quiver?
« on: December 08, 2021, 11:02:53 AM »
In the windsurf world people had a lot of ideas about how big the steps should be in a quiver. For the basic kind of windsurfing I used to do--mow the lawn at the Hatchery, Dougs, Rowena, etc. in the Gorge, and add in a little surf at Kanaha, Euro, or break all my stuff at Ho'okipa--most people used some kind of percentage jumps. That had the benefit of being a bit bigger jumps at large sizes where a rough cut is suitable for light wind and then smaller increments at the nuclear wind end where size got very important.

It seems like wing manufacturers just do some random increments, like half meters. I find myself not able to make a reasoned choice of wing sizes. Going from 6 to five doesn't seem to accomplish much, and dropping to 4.2 often seems too far. In fact, I rarely use the 4.2. It's either 5.0 or 3.5 of if the wind is light it's 6.0

I'm thinking perhaps I can look at wing sizes the way I used to look at sail sizes.  I always wanted sails in my quiver to overlap a little at the top and bottom of their range. After a lot of fiddling and testing I settled on 20 percent as a reasonable number (each sail is 80 percent of the preceding sail). I haven't done any of that kind of testing for wings, but I suspect if I do it will be something similar. Twenty percent starting at 6Meters is  6, 4.8, 3.8, 3.1. 2.4.  I like the looks of that progression. A heavy guy like me could skip the 2.4 and have a well-spaced 4 wing quiver.

36
Foil SUP / Mr. Handsome
« on: November 20, 2021, 09:53:41 PM »
This might be easier than I thought. I had a few phone calls with Dave Kalama to talk about a more stable foil surfboard, a sort of Mr. Fugly 2. Mr. Fugly was a foil board Dave built for me that was a stable as a dock--and almost as big. I gave it to a friend after I progressed enough to use a smaller board. Mr. Fugly wasn't really fucking ugly, but it sure stood out. People who didn't know me would yell: "Hey! that's Mr. Fugly, you must be Bill."


The infamous Mr. Fugly

Anyway, I've been struggling to get my foil surfing mojo back, and a bigger board seems like the answer--something bigger than my 5'10" X 31" wing/surf board or the 6'10"X31" many times repaired, heavy as concrete foil surf board I've been using. I planned to get Dave to build me a custom board to deal with my balance and knee issues, but it turns out Dave had a production 7'2" X 32" board that I've tried a couple of times and I really like it. It paddles well and fast, has lots of stability, I can move around on it and lurch to my feet without too many faceplants. I even like the footstraps and ventral fins that came with it. It's carbon, fairly light, built in the Kinetic factory in Vietnam. Has very slick fin boxes, and both tracks and a tuttle mount. It pivot turns nicely, which is surprising with the big fin ahead of my front foot. Of course, as soon as I picked it up from Dave the surf went away and the wind started picking up. But I expect there will be plenty of time to play with Mr. Handsome this winter.

So we put the custom board on hold, and this might be my permanent foil SUP board.





That's a lot o' liters, but I think I'm done with chasing smaller.


I added a simplified version of the geezer crutch--if I start flailing around as my knee gets tired I can grab this handle to help haul myself into a standing position. It works OK. Not great, but it will get better with some tuning.

37
Foil SUP / Geezercrutch
« on: November 16, 2021, 09:04:54 PM »
At first, I thought I was struggling to SUP foil because I've been wingfoiling so much that I've lost my surf mojo (what little I had). But over the past few days, it's become increasingly clear that my weak left knee and my declining balance are the real culprits. This morning in relatively glassy conditions it was taking me four of five tries to get to my feet. Most of the failed attempts ended in an ignominious faceplant. I got in touch with Dave Kalama this afternoon to talk about commissioning a REALLY stable SUP custom foil board, something along the lines of the famous "Mr. Fugly". My wife says a new version has to be named Mr. Handsome. We'll see. But I've been joking about needing a SUP foil board with a walker frame. I don't think I'm quite there yet, but in the meantime, I did this:

 https://youtu.be/v8jyysMFHYA

38
Random / Starship ready for orbit--with vacuum engines in place
« on: October 27, 2021, 09:42:21 AM »
Holy fukowitz, the pace of this development is completely astonishing. Beyond unreal, it seems completely impossible. At the same time the value of Spacex, and its Starlink system, is growing exponentially, fundamentally independent of the Starship effort, which must be more or less a massive drain on revenue and resources with payoff far in the future, though at this pace the future might not be that far off.

https://newatlas.com/space/raptor-vacuum-engine-starship-test-spacex/

39
SUP General / A surprisingly interesting "paddle system"
« on: October 13, 2021, 08:54:53 AM »
I've been missing SUP paddling, or more specifically, my body has been missing the workout. My triceps are deflating, my chest and abs are softening, Wing Foiling just isn't the same level of exercise. I plan to paddle a lot more in Maui this year, but I said that to myself about halfway through the summer, and still never got my board wet. I carried it around on the truck for a month or so, but I actually need to take it off the truck and stick it in the water.

Then I saw this thing. Most of the gimmick paddle systems I've seen are pretty silly. I try to be open-minded about them, I even briefly owned a Hobie with a mirage drive, but I haven't seen many useful approaches. But this thing actually looks pretty good. https://newatlas.com/outdoors/supski-stand-up-paddleboard/ I'd be a little more convinced of the usability if the guy in the video demonstrated even a basic idea of how to use a SUP with a regular paddle. He paddles like it's his first time on a board. And with 2 backers, only one of which shows up in the products claimed section, I'd have my doubts this thing will get funded. Which might be too bad, it's not a terrible idea and the execution looks OK.

40
Wingsurfing, Windfoiling, Wingfoiling, Wing SUP / The Crazy Eddie Problem
« on: October 11, 2021, 09:32:46 AM »
In the classic SciFi book, "A Mote In God's Eye" Jerry Pournelle writes about a character trait called (as I recall) the Crazy Eddie. He's the kind of person that in the middle of a trash removal problem where garbage is choking a city and causing health problems calls for a trash hauler's strike. No, I'm not writing about the governor of Texas, this is about a wingfoiler in Maui.

There's been a growing problem with wingfoilers in the harbor and increasing pressure from the Canoe Clubs, fishermen, and commercial users of the harbor to ban wingfoilers using the harbor. The number of wingfoilers in the harbor has grown shockingly, especially given that it's really a lousy place to wingfoil once you get past doing the walk of shame every time you hit the water.

In the middle of this brewing storm, a tourist wingfoiler did this (from a Facebook post):

There was an incident at Kahului Harbor, Maui today with a wing foiler who said he was from Hood River.  The wing foiler disobeyed the orders from a tugboat in the shipping channel and foiled around barges and between two tugs.  He refused to give way.  We spoke with this person and he was not apologetic or had ownership of doing anything wrong.   This was a total lack of respect and knowledge of the local environment and issues.  Some of you may be aware that the Maui Wing Foiling community is on VERY shaky ground with the canoe clubs and the Kahului Harbormaster at the moment.   
Please pass this information along to anyone thinking of coming to Maui.   We want you to enjoy world-class wind and waves but we also want you to obey the rules of the road so that we can keep enjoying wing foiling here.   And if anyone knows of a person who happens to currently be in Maui riding about a 5'0 Starboard with a blue F-One Strike wing - we would be grateful if you would let him know that he messed up.   Any help in identifying this person is appreciated too.

I could care less who this clown is, and I certainly hope he's not really from Hood River. I'm reposting this here to say--don't be a Crazy Eddie. I occasionally see some remarkably stupid close passes to the barges in the Columbia, which I mentally dismiss as a stupid tourist move but that's probably not true. I've never understood why anyone would do such a thing. A tugboat captain maneuvering a massive barge certainly shouldn't have to pay attention to someone on a water sports craft of any flavor. And no matter what idiotic sea lawyer nonsense someone might claim, they absolutely have the right of way, both in maritime law and by the laws of physics. If you wind up in their path they cannot and will not maneuver to avoid you. Far more important, it's a completely irresponsible thing to do and it can result in regulation or outright banning of this sport, as it almost did with windsurfing back when hordes of beginners choked Hood River. Don't do it here, and for damn sure, don't do it on Maui, though I certainly expect that won't be an issue for long. This Crazy Eddie has almost certainly nailed shut the harbor for anyone with a wing.

edit--I thought I was wrong about the name and changed it to Crazy Charlie. But I looked it up and found I was right in the first place--unusual. Maybe I'm not completely senile.

41
The Shape Shack / Deck pad
« on: October 05, 2021, 09:56:41 PM »
I'm putting together the deck pad for my new wind foil board. Mark Raaphorst just finished making the board. It's waiting for me in Maui. The deck will be matte black. I want to keep the board as light as possible, and I love the feel of thin cork pads anyway, so I'm going to use RSPRO Hexatraction cork for the pad. I fired up my laser cutter/engraver to do this...  The pad in the front moved while it was being lasered so I had to do it over. I'll also dye some of the pads black and figure out some kind of cool pattern. I told Diane I was going to do a "swoosh" of black or red. She said, "red will fade to pink and you should let me do the design". One of the perils of being married to a graphic designer. Fortunately, she likes the gecko.


42
Random / "In other news, distraction boy gets distracted.."
« on: September 19, 2021, 07:51:37 PM »
So I got this three days ago,


so of course two days ago I did this:



No big surprise to people who know me, but some folks are going a little nuts. It's actually quite rational. It's a 1990 BMW R100GS with the Paris-Dakar stuff added. A nice bike, I paid a bit too much for it, but I've wanted one for decades. These airheads have a few well-known problems, specifically an output shaft issue: the factory decided they no longer needed a circlip to keep the shaft tight against the output bearing. They were wrong and it eventually hoses the transmission. The driveshaft also tends to come apart after 20K to 100K miles. So I'm fixing those issues and updating some things to give me a good 50K miles of riding before anything major pukes.

43
The standard Gorge wind returned yesterday after a week of punky junk. Last week there were a few bright moments, but it was hardly what anyone who lives here would call good. I spent most of the day at my shop, working on my new Boosted Foilboard, but the big rollup doors started rattling about noon and got serious about it at 1:00, so I headed to the event center to get wet.

I didn't expect too much, so I was quite delighted to see a river full of whitecaps and some clearly nutty stuff up at the hatchery. I got my board and foil carried down to the bank, but wound up talking to FLkiter who was here last week with the Axis crew for the AWSI show. Nice guy, very capable, and interesting to talk with. He offered to let me borrow his 999 wing, which was tempting, but I planned to do a lot of upwind/downwind runs, so I stuck with my own toys.

I finally got in the water about 2:00 with a 4.2 Strike and the 980/390 foil combination. Easy money in the brisk wind. Not what I'd call nuking, since I didn't have to break out the 2.8 or even the 3.5, but some solid gusts, and the swells up at the upper hatchery were respectable and super fun.
I made most of my switchfoot jibes, so that was good.

I did a couple of long upwind/downwind runs but I started getting cold (big sissy) and hungry--I hadn't eaten anything but a Macintosh apple all day. So I bailed to head home to warm up and eat.

FLkiter was still there--no, I don't remember his actual name--and we wound up talking again. Turns out he wasn't in any hurry to leave, he just had enough of our "cold" water.  I should have borrowed that 999, though I wouldn't like to have scratched it up, which is always a possibility with the highly variable water level in this hydro dam-controlled lake we call a river. If they need more electricity from Bonneville Dam I'm likely to hit gravel coming in. Somehow another half hour passed, but at least I was wearing dry clothes.

I'm looking forward to getting a 999. I meant to see if I could grab the one I scratched instead of Axis shipping me a fresh victim, but I didn't get back to the event center before Axis had struck camp. Evan Mavridoglou, if you're reading this, please substitute the scratched one in my shipment of new toys. It will fit in fine with the rest of my beaten-up gear.

44
Random / WTF!?!
« on: August 30, 2021, 07:57:41 AM »
Holy crap look at this. Remember when the starship was a goofy-looking silo with one engine doing little hops. What was that? A few months ago? How the hell does Spacex DO this stuff? What kind of a sense of urgency enables this?

That launch ring alone should take years to build. Never mind the gantry. And they're going to try to land that booster. Damn.




45
Windfoiling, Windsurf Foiling / Zen Downwind???
« on: August 15, 2021, 09:15:14 AM »
I saw something during the Gorge Paddle Challenge down-wing foil race that I don't understand at all. The leader, one of the spencer kids, either Jeff or Finn, went by going straight downwind with his wing drawing like he was doing a beam reach. He was leaning back into the pull and visibly sheeting in with sort of a slow pump.

I was on more or less the same line with my wing almost flagged out, going fast for me, which is about half as fast as he was going. If I'd been going as fast as he was my wing would have been hanging down or even backwinded. HTF did he DO that?

No, I wasn't dueling with him for the lead, I wasn't racing. I rode upwind to the hatchery to follow the racers in and see how this stuff should be done. Instead, I just have a big old puzzle. Does he have some deal with the gods of wind? Is this some kind of apparent wind thing that I don't understand at all? Zen?? Is a motor involved?

The next four places were doing sort of the same thing, though not as fast, then came everyone else, doing more or less what I was--as broad a reach as they could to keep their wing flying, and riding the bumps for speed. I asked Livio about it (he finished fifth) but I didn't really understand what he told me.

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