So a number of things have been happening, these days.  We'll start with the more gruesome stuff, and then move on to the more lyrical stuff, I reckon. 

You know how things come in threes?  Well, here are the recent three:

-Guy I sailed under, and had a lot of mixed feelings about, but actually, a little too late, grew to like very much has passed.  Capt. Don Taub.  He forgot more about sailing and rigging and boat building than I will probably ever know.  I am chagrined to remember how much time I spent ignoring what he was trying to teach me.  He was who he was, all the time, and his passing is a great loss.  Requseiscat in pace, Don.  Happy sailing.

-A very nice Ppirate Llama I know narrowly missed getting dead, herself, as well recently.  I am not actually being melodramatic.  Luckily for us, she came out with only (only!) 33 staples around her forearm, but there are about ten "there-but-for-fortunes..." that would have ended up with her not around in various ways, which is chilling and frankly not okay.  The thing about all of this sailing shit is that people, for centuries, have died doing it.  And gotten real hurt.  All of that stuff about pirates having hooks is not just Peter Pan garbage.  They had 'em becuase sailing is dangerous.  And when you have so damn many friends out there that are doing this thing, you get nervous.  That's all.  You motherfuckers STAY ON THE GODDAMN BOAT, and that is a fuckiing order.  And you get better, lady.

-'Nother good friend of mine is sick in a way that the docs don't seem to know what is going on, and that, too, is unsettling.  Having grown up around doctors, and being, as I am, the progeny (or offspring, if you will) of one, I tend to think they are pretty infallible.  Turns out, not so much.  So this good friend of mine is in a lot of pain, with no cure in sight. 

So there are my three, lately.

And now, the lyrical stuff that I have been thinking about.

I have been biking to work, lately, which is a pretty thought-inspiring way to travel.  It is such a nice speed, you know.  "Faster than walking," as the song says, but open in a way that a car is not.  Passed a guy today on a really big, loud, chopped-up Harley.  Beautiful bike.  And I thought a little about how he and I are traveling very similarly, but his path is very loud, and mine is quieter, and sometimes you have to travel loud and sometimes it is better to go softly.  Both methods have their place, I think, it is just a matter of knowing how to use them and when they are each appropriate.  And the thing that really strikes me about biking is the smells.

I pass this big turf farm (who knew that southern Rhode Island had so many turf farms?), which looks like the biggest manicured lawn you have ever seen, just hectares of short-cropped, neatly mown grass.  They just spread out into the morning mist, and it smells so sweet I can understand why cows eat it.  I almost want to.  And there are these huge, great machines for watering it, that spread this lovely mist that makes it smell just wet and fresh and beautiful.

Then I plunge into the woods, which, in the morning, smell wet and woody.  There is that smell of humus all around, you know?  It has the mingled smell of decay and death and new life and trees and plants, and it is so calming and heady at the same time.  I can almost smell things growing in it, if you know what I mean.  I pass an Audubon reserve, which is this thick tangle of pine trees, alive and dead and in between, and it is really beautiful.  And the bike is slow enough that I can look around, and be startled by a chipmunk running away from me, and hear the birds above the rapid clickclickclickclickclickclick of my back sprocket as I coast, and just smell these woods.  They smell like the woods I used to hike in, when I did that, back in high school, and would wake up in the woods in the soft morning of the east coast mountains.  It's nice.

There is one killer hill right at the end of my ride that is hard, but I already notice it getting easier.  I think I am getting stronger, and that is a good feeling.  Now that I am not sailing, of course, I have been feeling a little like a slug, and this biking thing is helping me get past that.

As for the work, I continue to be not as good as I would wish, which is a new and hard thing for me, of course, but I am trying real hard to learn and improve, and the guy I am working for is being VERY patient with me and is really trying to teach me as I work, which is great.  And I am improving, slowly, of course, and am trying to just be open and learn.  Which is a little hard.  Well, it is actually very hard.  But I think (hope) that progress is being made.

Well, a lot of words.  Y'all stay safe and healthy.  Happy Trails.