Ladies love their new shoes. My wife Sally grabbed some brand new Pro Limit booties (the "Global Series") fresh from the windsurfing store and took them for their maiden stompage at Napeague last Sunday, as a gang of us (Lili, Wilson, Dana, Andy, Sally and I) made the most of an afternoon thermal. The wind was light (me on a borrowed 6.9…thank you Wilson!) but we were mostly planing , and after the session Sally couldn’t stop raving to me about her new booties. “I’m much more sensitive to the board than in my old booties, and I was able to make subtle adjustments for speed. Did you see me on the reach during the five seconds when I was keeping up with Dana?”
Dana, if you’ve never sailed
with her, is fast. To keep up with
her is to sail fast (and if you want to sail as fast as her, you’d best do it
from behind. If she sees you
matching her speed, she usually puts the hammer down and goes even faster. ) Sally attributes her taste of the
Sisterhood of Speed to sensitivity gained from her new booties. The next morning she was hounding
me about the wind forecast…when can she get back out there and rip?
(Sally's new booties, sans Sally, who was unavailable to model as of press time.)
I am not sure what it says about my virility, but I love new windsurfing shoes too. I just recently got a new pair of Superfreak split toes that replaced the previous pair which had worn through on the bottom, and I am now making most of my jibes and almost planing all the way through them. Must be the shoes!!
Posted by: Dennis | July 12, 2010 at 02:18 PM
Dennis, I remember a story about a famous racing harness called the Visual Ed. Apparently a manufacturer created a seat harness for women (the "Visuelle") with lots of straps to adjust every part to a ladies liking. The word was that smaller guy windsurfers started using the Visuelle to take advantage of all the tweaking options, so they came out with a guys version, which was just a larger model of the ladies. Hence "Visual Ed".
In any event, if it improves my windsurfing, I'll try it! (A little mascara never hurt anybody, did it?)
Posted by: Michael | July 12, 2010 at 04:21 PM