A post about posts. Or "pilings" I guess.

Note:  This post has been sitting on the back drawing board, and as the previous post describes, life has gotten busier and I kind of forgot about it for a while, thus it's out of order. 

    As I've noted before, my brother Mark has gotten me in to kiteboarding.  The perfect site for the sport is one with onshore winds and relatively shallow, smooth water.  However, strong winds cause rough water, so having a sand bar or other obstacle to stop waves outside of a body of water creates a "slick" within.   

     A good example of this occurs on a small bay on the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia, and it has become a favored place for kiters.  However, there were several docks built in the bay fifty to seventy-five years ago and now only the old barnacle-encrusted posts or "pilings" remained.  These were just waiting to ensnare kite lines or kiteboards, and were a real hazard.

     My brother is an orthopedic surgeon who was in private practice for 28 years.  Good "orthopods" are mechanical engineers with a medical degree, having to understand force vectors, materials and how to translate ideas in to physical solutions.  Many orthopedic surgeons, including Mark, have extensive workshops and tools, and likewise, an orthopedic operating table is full of beautifully fashioned drills, chisels, hammers and other instruments, some even made by tool companies such as Black and Decker.

     So what does a good orthopedic surgeon do?  He comes up with an underwater chainsaw to get rid of these old posts standing in four to eight feet of water.

     It sounds like the setup for a crummy joke or a math word problem, but here goes:  One day an orthopedic surgeon, an ophthalmologist and an obstetrician-gynecologist get in a "john" boat and motor out in a bay.  They tie up to old pilings and in eight hours they use an underwater chain saw to cut down 25 of them and drag them to shore. 

 

 

     It takes all day, but then they go kiteboarding.

     Problem is, there's no punch line.  We laughed a lot, had a great time working on the old pilings and kited in some big winds until sunset, then hit a Subway in our COVID-19 masks and drove home sleepy but smiling.
     It's funny what turns out to be fun sometimes.  We hope that you can find something equally as unusual and gratifying in your (oodles of) spare time these days.
Dave