American Pie by Don Mclean - An explanation of the song!

Dock Nightmare with 60 Knot Winds

The End of My DJ Career

My love of music came early. My older sisters were really enjoying the Beatles, Beach Boys and Simon and Garfunkel in the mid 60's. By 1968 I was a big radio listener. I was all of 10 at the time. My Dad Harry also a big radio listener, got me into Sinatra. In high school, I discovered FM radio in Philly. I grew up in Delaware, about 30 miles away. I also had a bunch of albums by now. Going to college at UNLV, I discovered progressive rock. Yes, ELO, Emerson, Lake and Palmer were my go to's. I started recording music on cassettes and loved a good mix tape. Moving to the Bay Area in the early 80's brought a ton of concerts and the Dead into my life. I even worked with the manager of the Dead and booked their hotel rooms at the Hyatt when they played at Stanford Frost. I was part of a ultimate team at Stanford and I would spin the music at parties. Then I got into the event biz in the silicon valley and started playing at these gigs. My first official gig was at a corporate gig in Napa. That was 1991. In 1992, I started my own event company, Too Much Fun Club. I rented the equipment and played CD's. Finally in 1994, I purchased speakers and a mixer and off I went. I found this amazng club called The Palace in Sunnyvale. I started booking big parties there and got a taste of the big sound and equipment the pro's use. The bad news was I developed tinitus due to the fact I was in front of these huge speakers for my gigs at the club. Soon, the club asked me to become the house DJ and do the corporate and wedding events. That was a blast. I would end my gigs with People Make the World Go Round by the Stylistics. If I did not play it, the employees would rush the booth and request it. Due to that exposure and my gigs thru Too Much Fun, I was getting calls from all over the bay for some amazing gigs. Soon, I was doing 50 or so gigs a year. It was my calling to entertain thru music. The Too Much Fun Club was very busy and some weekends I would throw a huge picnic during the day, the rush off for a gig in the evening, It was a busy life, however I loved it. I guess I did some 700 gigs over the 30 years. My last gig was a wedding for some friends. I had not done any music for about 7 years. I was a wreck. I was nervous as my equipment was old and it seemed it would fail during the gig. I made it thru to the last 10 minutes when it gave up and died. I used to roll in and not think a thing about it, now I could hardly hang on. I told myself no more. I was putting too much pressure on myslf. I have been the DJ at my last few high school reunions. My 50th is coming up. I want to make this my last gig. I started working on the playlist about 17 months ago. I have a vast music library on my hard drives at home. Much of that music focuses on my high school years. That music was very special and my focus was 1968 to 1976. I pulled 1000 songs together in a single playlist. Then I picked 100 or so of the very best. I pulled together a background list, a dinner list and a dance mix. I put about 100 hours into the music lists. And another 100 hours thinking about it. Our reunion is only 4 hours long. I realized that its a shame that we only have four hours to share all this great music. So I came up with a plan. At the event, I will pass out a card with a QR code that will lead them to some 24 hours of music that they can take home with them. If I had told my classmates in 1976 that at our 50th reunion, I will hand you a piece of paper with a code on it and it will take you a file with 400 songs in it, you would have wondered if I was smoking too much hash?! I decided to record each playlist and present each as one file for each category. I then uploaded everything to the cloud and voila, I think my friends are going to love it. If you are interested in this era of music, I think you should take a listen here. Here is to the Class of 1976!

The Amazing Story of Drum and the Whitbread Race

DRUM: The most famous Maxi class racing yacht of her generation, was the vision of pop star Simon Le Bon of Duran Duran, who fulfilled a dream when he took up the challenge of sailing the 1985 Whitbread Round The World Race. Following her dramatic capsize in the 1985 Fastnet race after losing her keel, DRUM went on to finish a credible third overall. Here is the entire 1987 Documentary featuring the timeless song 'Grey Lady Of The Sea' penned by Le Bon for this feature. Enjoy!

Dismasted Boat Gets Rescue Mid Ocean

Windsurfing Changed My Life

I was living on a lagoon in Foster City in 1985 when a friend gave me a windsurf board and sail. It was a Bic and very much a beginer board. Perfect for me. I had been surfing for 15 years and now I needed to figure out how to harness the wind. I picked it up quickly and sailed the summer away. Soon I purchased a Klepper board and it was very fast and took me out on the bay and delta. 3rd Ave and Coyote Point became my new hangouts. I started a windsurfing club called Windpower that brought like minded folks together for weekend adventures. A few years later, I was sailing 60-80 days a summer on the bay. I loved the feeling of skipping across the bay at 20-25 knots. One very windy day, waves formed in the deep channel near the San Mateo Bridge. Riding them was a thrill! I kept sailing for over 20 years and had an epic last sail on a bay near Hatteras called Pamlico Sound in 2008. I rented a hot board and was ripping it up in 30 knots of wind. It was an epic way to end my windsurfing voyage. I miss the speed and exhilaration but I love sailing my 40' sailboat even more!

Bernoulli's Principle

In 1738, Daniel Bernoulli plublished his book: Hydrodynamica. The book explained his theory of fluid machanics. He showed that when a fluid speeds up, its pressure drops. He was using water and liquids in pipes as well as lots of math to prove his theory. I found this fun depiction of his principle: When most people think of a sail, they assume the wind blows from behind and pushes it, perpendicular to the cloth. This is incorrect. Instead, the wind flows parallel to the sail, across the surface. But that leads to a new question: if the sail isn’t pushed, where does the force come from? It turns out a sail is actually a wing that uses lift to pull you forward, not a scoop that catches the air. The same physics that keeps a jet airplane in the air is what moves the boat. Because a wing is curved, air has to travel a longer distance as it blows across the front of the sail than behind it. To go a longer distance in the same amount of time, the airspeed over the front of the wing has to go faster. Faster air has lower pressure, so it basically creates a partial vacuum pulling you forward. This is called lift, or Bernoulli’s principle. This is why you can sail upwind, and why the sail is always at an angle to the wind, never directly in front or behind. You manipulate this angle with the rudder and keel to determine your speed and direction. It’s actually a bit more complicated than that, but fundamentally, a sail pulls, it doesn’t push. Check this vid from some NASA scientists that goes even deeper into the subject, 250 years later.

El Nino may be the biggest and baddest yet!

If you have not heard, El Nino is coming this winter. The warming of equatorial waters affectionity called El Nino, happens in December or so. It affects weather all over the world with extremes of snow fall, drought, storms and much more. Currently, were seeing some of the warmest waters across all oceans. In some cases 3 degrees higher than normal. The warmer water creates more moisture in the atmosphere and on the west coast of the US (I live near SF), it will bring very strong storms from the Gulf of Alaska in the form of rain, wind and snow in the Sierras. It's going to be a wild winter. Currently, the winds on the SF Bay have been extremely high due to the warm water. Normally the winds are in the 25 knot range every day. This summer, the winds have been in the 30's most days. That's alot of wind and not very comfortable. We will see what happens. Time to buckle your seat belt and hold on!