i'll bet this ends up on your *blog*!

you betcha!

the captain invited us and some of his and our friends to go out for a nice relaxing pleasure sail on his boat on the fourth, and then come back to his place after for a bbq.

by 7/3, everyone but me, hops, and tom petty had backed down, so it was just the 4 of us on the boat.

okay, just the three of us.

the weather was initially foggy but cleared up quickly and became the perfect weather for sailing. the mood was far more relaxed than a race, we didn't get exceptionally wet, and nobody got hit by the boom. we sailed from berkeley to angel island, where we got off, had lunch, and hiked around the island. we sailed back to berkeley in time to miss all the hubbub that was amassing at the marina, which is just what we wanted.

the hike featured a date-appropriate discussion of idealized governments and why we can't seem to manage to get one, plus beer and a crab sangwich.

on the way back to the captain's residence, he remarked that things were going fantastically well and there was not even much traffic. i would have thought a sailor would know not to tempt fate by saying such things. the traffic remained mild but halfway through the barbecue the gas ran out, and being the 4th, and past 8pm, there was no place to go for more. the "barbecue" finished in the oven and on the stove, and we had a great time ridiculing the captain for the rest of the evening (and i'm not even done with it yet).

all in all, a swell way to spend a 4th.

on angel island we saw a guy carrying what looked like a coon skin cap, and when he asked us to take his picture, i asked whether he was going to wear his hat for the shot. it turned out to be a fuzzy shield for a mic, he's a sfx recording engineer or something and the dead cat thing filtered out the copious wind of angel island. also, there was a lizard.