Lunch With George!

July 18, 2002 - Ray's Pizza

Agenda

• Elements of Style
• Sailing
• Laser Printer
• Show and Tell

You never know what treasures are collecting dust on your bookshelf!

Sailing

YM Goosander Merganser

George brought some sailing magazines along, and one was particularly interesting. In a vintage copy of Classic Boat, there was a biographical article about a "young gaffer" (George tells me he's called this because he sails a boat which is gaffe-rigged) and his adventures in two classic wooden sailboats which he built/restored.

Ashley Butler got his first boat "Merganser" (which he also refers to as a "gaffer"), a 23' YM (Yachting Monthly) Goosander, as a gift when he was 13 from a widow whose husband had tried to build it from a kit and hadn't gotten very far. Young Ashley finished it, and at age 19 he was sailing it one day when he pulled into a boatyard and spotted the rotting hulk of Ziska, a 38' Morecambe Bay prawner, sitting under a tarp with a for sale sign. He traded Merganser for her even-up, and rebuilt her while living aboard. In October of 1999 she was fully restored, and 21-year-old Ashley and Ziska were on the cover of Classic Boat magazine. What a life for a young man!

Oh, more news from this week's lunch: George bought Persistence, the J/24 from Muskegon, MI. He is planning a marathon drive to get it and pull it home next weekend. I've been invited at tag along, but I already drive about 60 hours a week-- I don't really need to do it again!

[Yes, I know you already know about Persistence. You can still see the photo gallery, of course!]

Laser Printer

Their new Laser printer is a Samsung ML-1230. The List price is $199, but CompUSA was offering an in-store rebate of $20 and a mail-in rebate of $50 to bring the price down to $129. Fry's Electronics upped the ante by offering an in-store rebate of $50, which, along with the mail-in rebate, brought the total price down to $99. What a deal!

Show and Tell: Hornbeam

Spyderco "Bill Moran" Drop Point, model FB02

(you may remember we talked about it at

If you end up with more than one of these sticks, you can do what I've done. Take one and drill a hole in the end. Go to the hardware store and buy a screw in hook. (less than $2.00) Screw it in and you have one of the best tools I've seen for moving weeds and vines out of your way and picking up snakes. I don't kill snakes, preferring instead to move them. They're pretty benevolent creatures unless of course they happen to be striking at you, then you kill them. With that hornbeam staff, you've got a weapon that'll kill most anything when wielded with sufficient resolve.

He also showed me a baton (looks like a bong mahng-ee to me!) which he got after taking a course in using one (don't make George andry if he's holding a short stick-like object!) from a guy who was trained in the "Koga" method. checkout the web site!

Lastly, George showed off his new fixed-blade Spyderco knife, designed by Bill Moran. George says it is "hysterically" sharp-- he took out the blade, moved it over his wrist, and I watched it shear off the fine hairs there without bending them! Wow!