Grosse Pointe is strange

The past few days I've been biking around Grosse Pointe, getting my bearings and seeing what this place has to offer (nothing interesting... I've biked 50 miles since Monday.) Grosse Pointe is a suburb just outside the city limits of Detroit. I may have mentioned the rich suburbs where cops drive corvettes. Grosse Pointe isn't that bad, but boy is it a weird place. 

Tuesday we were supposed to race, but the weather was bad and there wasn't enough crew. I decided to go to the bar and try to make some friends. I came to realize that people my age can't afford to live here. So I hungout with the rich, washed up, ex-frat president Tom, known to friends as Gondo. Tom was a little drunk when I rolled up and, after hearing my story, bought me a drink (and a shot and another drink.) 

Gondo taught me some valuable life lessons. Like "Don't spit infront of women" and "The shortest distance between two people is a sense of humor." A lady walked in and asked us if we wanted to go get some food, obviously I wanted to keep the train rolling and went. So I got another drink there and Gondo also paid for my dinner. I think we're dating at this point (but he was making out with his lady friend so we're through now.) After he had a duet with another lady in the restaurant, he and his lady friend took off and the night was through. 

The next day I decided to bike around Belle Isle, a park on an island in the middle of the Detroit river. We went there a lot as kids, so it was fun to see some old places. 

I knew it was going to rain later, but I ended up chatting with this old man outside the aquarium for a bit. That turned out to be a bad idea. On the ride home I saw a thunderstorm coming, I mean like, green sky behind a serious wall-looking cloud. I pedaled my heart out but it caught up to me. And where else, but two-or-so miles outside Grosse Pointe (in other words, the hood.) So I go into this Soul Food joint and ask them if I can bring my bike inside. They were confused but let me anyway. This place had inch thick plexiglass enclosing the entire area behind the counter. I waited out the worst of it and walked my poor bike back in the rain. 

Thursday night is casual race night at the yacht club. Yacht clubs are exactly what you might expect. I felt a little out of place without Sperry's and a Polo shirt. This goes for all boats except my uncle's. 

My Uncle Tim is the current commodore of Bayview Yacht Club. He's been slowly tearing down the militaristic rituals that previous commodores, who think everything should be run like the navy, have set before him. Not to say that he wants the club to burn, but to bring the focus back to sailing as opposed to general pretentiousness. In a tradition that had been looked over the past couple years, he got the fleet blessed by a local priest, and to make it nondenominational he asked for a second guy to make everyone feel welcome. His extra guy just happened to be from Africa and couldn't speak much English. So obviously I've decided to stop dressing nice and go strait punk. I'm working on patching up a vest and I'm already getting double takes in GP. 

Originally I wanted to learn to sail as a means to get around the world and racing wasn't really that interesting to me. It took one casual race to change that. There was screaming and swearing and cranking winches like a MF. I now understand the term "talks like a sailor." 

My favorite task on a boat is skirting the sail. When you're sailing upwind and the sails are parallel with the boat, the front sail gets caught on the lifelines and you have to pull it inside. Going upwind the boat is heeling (leaning) super hard and the sails are on the low side. So running up there is scary and awesome. Needless to say I'm absolutely addicted.