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I wasn’t planning to race sail boats competitively this summer.

Last summer with two hockey teams, wakeboarding, biking and sailing, life was just too hectic. I vowed not to do it again. Needless to say I couldn’t say no to either hockey team, still own a wakeboard boat, bought two bikes and one night decided to fill in one night on a J24. Turns out no one on the J24 had raced J24s before and some had no sailing experience. They originally were just out for a good time but after a few good races the skipper got competitive. With some experience I was a welcome addition to the crew. So first came a new set of sails and next he brought out Paul, an expert to coach us. Paul is currently a North Sails consultant and previously designed keels for ten years for America’s Cup boats. Racing with him the last two Tuesdays has been amazing. I know now the mechanics of trimming jib and spin on a J24. My execution has also gotten much better. And tonight, with Paul on the helm (since our skipper was out of town), it was incredible to set beside him and listen to him explain everything that was going on around the race course. Of course, the stream of information was never ending and quite overwhelming. And so while I’ve been sailing quite awhile, I realize it will be many many years before I begin to fully understand just how the game is won.

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Last weekend we went on our first epic ride. We thought we’d take it easy and do a 2 hour ride, 1400 feet of elevation at Taneum Ridge. Unfortunately we were misinformed and the ride was in fact 6 hours with 4300 feet of elevation. Berhnard has photos and maps of it online to prove it. It turned out there were many signs this was going to be the ride from hell. For instance, three people ran out of both water and food, we didn’t see any other mountain bikers, only motocross riders, like an Escher drawing there was no downhill, the entire ride was up, etc.

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After seeing the great documentary, Who killed the electric Car? I was dismayed to read this, Smithsonian Kills the Electric Car:

After revoking and destroying their EV1s, General Motors gave a handful of them to museums as historical pieces. Now, the only fully intact EV1 on display has been removed from view at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., to make room for a robotic VW Touareg designed by Stanford University, what the Washington Post called a “high-tech SUV.”

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NY Times, U.S. Hybrids Get More Miles Per Congress :

Come next year, then, the government will pay you to buy a Silverado hybrid (which gets about 16 miles per gallon) or a Ford Escape Hybrid (which gets about 26, according to Consumer Reports), but not a Prius (44) or a nonhybrid Corolla (29).

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Last week I saw two great documentaries.

The first, Black Gold I first heard of this film while at Sundance, but unfortunately missed the opportunity to see it. It is about fair trade coffee with a focus on those in developing nations who farm it. While the film was definitely well done, and was even more powerful because the ’star’ of the documentary was present at the screening to answer questions, I felt the film did not answer enough questions. For instance, they blame recent WTO decisions for the fall in the market price of coffee but fail to elaborate on what the decision was. They also talk a lot about WTO reform but beyond saying deals are done behind close doors and briefly mentioning milk subsidies they don’t talk about the specific reform they are looking for. I also left feeling that they didn’t address some of the basic supply-demand issues behind the low prices. Yes, prices are low, but why? Clearly there is a lot of supply, but for such low prices there must also be a glut of supply. Why is that? Why don’t farmers grow other crops? Is there a high cost of switching? What did these farmers grow before Starbucks?

I don’t want to discourage anyone from seeing this film. It really is good and raises not just a lot of questions about coffee (which I don’t consume) but about commodities in general (sugar, diamonds,…). It also raises some good questions about the business of refining commodities and points out the inequities in the supply chain.

The second, Who killed the electric car? was very well done and I left convinced that my current car will be the last 100% gasoline car I drive. I don’t know what else to say but go watch this movie when it comes to your city.

Next up on my to watch list is Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth.

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A friend at work recently joined the Island Sailing Club in Kirkland. For $120/month he’s able to take the boats out pretty much whenever he wants. And he said the best way to join is to find a member who wants to sell you the rest of their contract so that you don’t have to worry about the setup fee or committing for 12 months.

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Last night I took my new toy, an Ellsworth Moment, out for its first ride on Tiger Mountain (1100 vertical feet climb over 3 miles, then 8 miles of riding down and back around), the most popular local biking spot, and boy did I have fun. I can’t actually remember when I had so much fun on a bike before. The Moment had no problems climbing (and it of course helped that I’m in great shape) and rolled over everything in it’s way without a hiccup (as compared to a ride I did a week weeks ago on the Blizzard where I got pretty frustrated with my lack of performance).

It was just an absolute pleasure to ride, I couldn’t stop smiling all throughout the ride yesterday. In fact, I was so excited I organized another ride to Tiger tonight. Though of course, now that it’s the next day, I’m feeling pretty tired.

But of course, it’s sad to hang up my old 1999 Blizzard.

It’s too soon to part with it so I’ll hang it on the wall and maybe consider selling it next spring.

And a big thanks to my friend JF at Gords for recommending and selling me such a sweet ride!

Update: I forgot to note that if you check out their 2006 Catalog you’ll see they hand build the bikes here in Washingston State at an environmentally friendly facility featuring solar panels, non-forest building materials and geothermal heating. Very cool.

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CNET has a great article on Microsoft vs. Google: Who’s greener?

I’m pretty proud to be working at a company that cares this much about the environment and minimizing our impact. While I see the Priuses driving around all the time and have a free bus pass, I didn’t realize we did so much! However, I’d still like to see more employees turning their lights off when they leave for the day and I’d love for the cafeterias to start introducing organic and fair trade options.

I’m sure many people don’t care much about this sort of thing, but as consumers seem to be more aware of where their goods are coming from and looking for LEED homes, green employers will also raise on their list of priorities.

Update: I checked with our HR Benefits team and we actually do not get a discount on the Prius…

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