My first stop this month was to Black Point, Exuma, Bahamas. I had planned to race a model sailboat in the local regatta, but I just didn't have enough time (see July about the building of the boat). I was sort of sad, but sort of happy. At least I didn't have to get my butt kicked by the locals and take all that abuse :) Anyway, I went down with my tent a few days early, and then Katia and her brother arrived by private airplane (Yann did the flying). Here is a couple of shots I took of where we camped.
This, here,
is the inside of the only bar on the island, The Scorpio. It is a
totally Great Place.
The boat below is the kind they race in the non-modle-boat regatta. It is very cool, because what they do is....
Everyone
starts at anchor in the ocean, near the starting line. Then you
have to raise the sail, and take off. There are no trapezes, so
they have wooden planks that stick out, and the pepple hike out
on the planks to counter-balance the force of the wind. Everyone
is totally competitive, and there was lots of trash talking and
jive and arguing. Mucho fun to watch
Here is where the locals put on a beach party -- everything is free!
Ahh.... one of my favorite places in
the world.
A couple of weeks later, Katia and I went climbing at Smith's Rock. The place is *totally* gorgeous, and the climbing is fun, but hard. This picture gives you an idea....
This is Katia at the top
More pretty pictures....
The backlit
edge is the climb we did. Pretty long and very gorgeous. Luckily
you can hike back down.
Here is the view from Katia on the
route, Bunny Face. That is Monkey Face up behind me.
While at Smith's Rock, Katia and I broke up. It is sort of weird to talk about it here, but I guess if this is truely to be a journal.... Well, anyway, it was very sad, and, well, I found this comic. It doesn't exactly express what I want to say, but sometimes progress may not be all that good, I guess. Sorta sux, really.
A week later I took off on the annual houseboat waterskiing trip to Lake Trinity. There was, orginally, going to be 12 of us, but there were so many breakups, only 8 made it. Yep, 7 guys and 1 gal, Brenda, who held up admirably, considering the broken hearts and testosterone that was flying about.
Of course the best therapy is to shoot guns, so here is Hugh's Mom(tm), Charlene, firing away, and then a group photo.
Karl got
pretty, well, wasted, the first night, and could not remember
anyone's name the next day. So he was quickly nicknamed,
Fred-Karl, and then Papa Hugh, etc, showed up at the houseboat,
all wearing name tags that said, Fred-Hugh, Fred-Charlene, etc.
Here we are
waterballooning a random houseboat that passed by. This photo is
in mid-launch, as Allison (daughter of someone that was visiting
Papa Hugh and co) no longer has the launcher in hand, so the
balloon must be right behind me... accelerating.
We did get
some skiing in. Here is Dave
and Bryan
Allison made
the FOOLISH mistake of attacking Hugh, so they went for a little
walk....
Bryan was
working on his tan, as we all were, most energetically.
The sunsets
were amazing.
Here are the
members of the houseboat, minus Dave Allison, who was under the
weather. We did substitute a Virtual Dave, which Hugh is
hugging.... :-)
Here is a quick photo of the three kitties. Man, Burkina is growing fast!
