Of my passions in life two are distinctly different from the others.
Cycling and Sailing. To me, at the heart of both are the similarities that
tie the two together. Both represent clean, silent, forward motion.
You never see either naturally going backward.
I love bicycles. Something so simple as riding a bike
yet so very complex to those who wish to make it so.
I love the freedom and the silence of the road when it is just
you and your bike. The exhilaration of that downhill run or
crossing the line by barely the width of a wheel.
“It is by riding a bicycle that you learn
the contours of a country best, since
you have to sweat up the hills and coast
down them.” – Ernest Hemingway
“When the spirits are low,
when the day appears dark,
when work becomes monotonous,
when hope hardly seems worth having,
just mount a bicycle and go out for a spin down the road,
without thought on anything but the ride you are taking.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle
I love sailboats. I love boats. I love the physics of sailing.
I love the ocean.
The silent motion of moving with the wind.
The salt spray in the air.
The ability to lose oneself in the movement of nature,
going where the wind goes.
I love the freedom that sailboats represent,
the freedom that all boats represent. The ability
to go where no one is, or perhaps where no one has been.
“Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing
– absolutely nothing –
half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.”
– Kenneth Grahame“Wherever we want to go, we go.
That’s what a ship is, you know,
not just a keel and a hull, and
deck and sails, that’s what a ship
needs. But what a ship really is,
is freedom.” – Jack Sparrow
“Twenty years from now
you will be more disappointed by the things
you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.
So throw off the bowlines.
Sail away from the safe harbour.
Catch the trade winds in your sails.
Explore. Dream. Discover.”
-Mark Twain
“Not all those who wander are lost.”
– J.R.R. Tolkien
“It is not that life ashore is distasteful to me. But life at sea is better.”
-Sir Francis Drake