I guess it was a kind of aquatic fun day yesterday. Went for a wog (walk/jog) out to Warming Hut, and encountered:
- At Chrissy field, near the busy beach area, a few guys were carrying these large sail-like things with a big inflated spine. It was like a single wing. They’re casually carrying this thing out to the water with one hand looped over the infalted spine, like it didn’t weight anything at all. then the guy hooks up a boogie-board/snowboard looking thing with feet straps, and manages to get out on the water. Embarking was fascinating to me – they have to basically lie on their back, with the wing acting like a kite up in the sky, until the right angle is achieved between their prone body and the kite, then shazamm, they fork upright and start cruising with intense speed across the bay. There wer eabout a dozen of these guys out there and two or three made it out to the Golden Gate Bridge, like specs on the skyline. With such majestic scenery, it’s kind of amazing that they’re out there with just a little inflated wing. They were going really fast. Seemed like they were going faster than a speedboat that was also out there.Kind of looks like this (without the sunset haha)
- Next, saw a crew of two-man crafts doing a kind of race, representing colleges. Just looked it up, it was some kind of qualifier for the Belvedere cup: from racing yachts SF .
Fun to watch, kind of awkward the boats gathering near the Marina, and the Wave Organ spit was full of people, kind of odd seeing a place that’s usually so vacant teeming. The race is slow too, but the fans were out and all the park benches were full. I watched the UC Irvine crew because they were going off the beaten path, just lining up for the start line, and observed one of those funny moments where the boom swivels around really fast and someone ducks like they saw it coming at the last moment. Ha ha ha. Glad I wasn’t in that boat. - The final amazing sight was tall ships firing cannons. Yep. It was amazing. I’m listening to my MP3 player on the leg back, and the cannons can be heard through Usher’s Confessions II, no quiet song. The Hawaiian Chieftan here:
There looked like they were right in front of the Tiburon quay, so I was looking at them across the expanse of the bay.
I’m sure it’s one of those days where tourists come to San Francisco and think it’s like this all the time. That happened to me in Seattle, we had come out of a really awful long boring grey winter, and my sister and her family visited on the first sunny weekend day. As they drove in people were parasailing, yachting, cycling, running, it was a regular festival. Thing that’s different about SF is that we don’t have long grey winters, we just had a few days of thunderstorms :)