Trivial

[scrottie]

One of my Sacramento-San Joaquin river rescues was a red plastic, textured ball. This was light weight and more of a toy than any kind of serious sports ball. Given other recent finds, I do have to admit that I do tend to investigate red things. Most bits of plastic I just remove from the river and that's it. This I decided to throw in the Person-Over-Board bin at the club, which is full of sets of plastic laundry soap etc jugs, each pair tied together with a line, one half full of water, to simulate a person floating in the water needing rescue. Sometimes the club does this thing where we lob tennis balls in to each other's cockpits, or try to. If you land it in the cockpit, you sank them, and they're invited to try to sink you in turn. If you miss or they manage to defend, you have to go pick it up and try again. So sportsballs aren't completely out of place. A few days later, yesterday, we had an open house. Open houses always have a communal dinner and hang out afterward (I managed to jump on the new club J80, the only one in the fleet I hadn't been on yet, aside from the Senior-only dingies, and the Lasers). One person had a small child who found the ball and was happier than a pig in mud getting strangers to play with her with the ball. When they went to leave, I told them the story and suggested they take the ball. They did. I feel good about that.

In other news, California is throwing millions of dollars more at the Rio Vista lift bridge that they're already constantly working on at night and repainting every year. This is just one of dozens historic lift and bastile bridges out here. The contrast in bridge maintenance between NY and CA is stark. Apparently the bridge is getting an ADA complaint ramp so I don't have to carry the bike up and down stairs. And the new bridge decking will be polyester-concrete, and I'm sure riding by traffic I'll get some of that in my brain.

Comments

[threemeninaboat]

I love how ADA improves all our lives.