July 2016

Wind and Water

or how I took a left turn at Albuquerque on the way to the Gorge



"Wind and water," Marek said more than once. "The Gorge is all wind and water." When he'd found out that I was planning to spend a week in the Portland/Gorge area in early June, he was kind enough to reach out to me more than a few times with invitations, advice and encouragement. Marek, being smarter than me, doesn't spend all summer whining about the wind but actually spends time in a place where 3 meter sails and 70 liter boards are not only used but used frequently. As Marek predicted, I would find plenty of wind and water on my trip.

Back last fall, a good friend from college had come to Atlanta and met me for breakfast. We began talking and before I realized it, I'd been talked into climbing a really big hill. "It'll be fun," he said. "And, at our age we won't have that many more opportunities to do something like this." This hill is near another hill he'd climbed the previous summer with another close friend of mine. Together with some other friends, they decided it was so much fun, they'd do it again and wanted me to come along.