Part åtte

This is my cousin, Dag, who is really fun to hang out with because he's lived in Sagesund his whole life and can tell you so much about the people and history of the region. He took me sailing up the coast a ways to the municipality of Risør. He's going to the annual wooden boat show there. I've been to it before, it's awesome, but this year I wanted to visit the family gravesite.And this is his friend George, who, by the way, is cool as hell. Both of these guys are. George is a mechanical engineer who worked for Shell Oil in Syria. Four weeks on, four weeks off. Anyway, it wasn't very windy that day, so we didn't actually sail, we just cruised with the motor at about five knots. The upside of this is that we could drink beers, munch Cheez Doodles, and chew the fat.

George talked about his time in Syria; the strong loyalty of Arabs once they trust and respect you, the politics of the region, and how things will most likely never be solved there. Dag talked about the island of Sandøya, which we passed on the way to Risør. You see, Sandøya--with a population of 250-- is one of the few islands with no bridges leading to it, yet has a curiously large number of redheaded folk living there. Ummm, yeah. To quote George: "When you're in Sandøya, and you see a ginger hair, you begin to wonder...". Well put, my man.

I know this photo is a bit blurry but check out that kid cold chillin' on the mast. Like what both Dag and George said... its a good life.



Taking this four hour tour left me with a new found desire to learn how to sail. As we were talking along the way, I had the strong urge to pick up a length of rope and start learning how to tie knots. Did you know about the six motions a boat can make? These motions are based on an X-Y-Z axis. Yeah, yeah, and there's two motions for each axis and the... hold on a minute, look at me chatter on here. See what I mean? I wanna learn this stuff! Like this! And ooh, this! And all of these too!