Pono House

Here’s a bit of potentially exciting news for older athletes. A recent (relatively small, but what the heck) study indicates your overall athletic performance may be dramatically increased with a relatively inexpensive commercially available supplement. Any supplement containing the amino acid arginine and some other antioxidants to increase the effectiveness of the arginine may provide a boost of the anabolic threshold averaging 17%. Anabolic threshold is the point where lactic acid starts accumulating in your muscles and you start…
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Flying old combat planes has to be a serious gas. I’ve always wanted to be a pilot, but I’m the poster boy for ADD. When you’re as easily distracted as I am it just doesn’t seem like a good idea. The fascination remain though. Here’s an amazing interactive image that will let you zoom, pan, and rotate in every direction. It’s so detailed and sharp you can see a missing screw in the floorboards.



http://www.stclairphoto-imaging.com/360/P51-Mustang/P51_swf.html…
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Carles Carrera recently published an excellent article in his blog about measuring the paddle length that best suits you: http://www.carlescarrera.com/2010/04/definitive-guide-for-choosing-your-sup.html. Carles is a guy after my own heart, Stand Up Paddle Surfing fanatic and a motorcycle nut, with an engineering bent. He went about his analysis in a time honored fashion–he built a table of all the recommended methods of determining paddle length using his height as the standard.

I’m going to add some new information to the methods used to determine paddle length at the end of this article, as well as some tips on what to do when you cut your paddle too short, as many so people do.

Here’s a synopsis of the methods that yield the table:
Starboard: flip the paddle upside down, rest the handle on the ground, and where the paddle blade starts to spread from the paddle shaft it should be about eye level.

With the Starboard method this paddle shaft is already two inches too long.

Quickblade: add 8 inches to your overall height for surfing, and 9 inches more for racing/paddling.

Kialoa: add 6-8” for surfing and 10-12” for racing.

The blade of the Quickblade Elite pictured above is 16.5 inches long–so this paddle is about 16″ above my head. Much to long by either Kialoa or Quickblade recommendations.

Laird Hamilton: “Your paddle should be as tall as the reach above your head. If it’s too short you will be reaching forward – if it’s too big you will be reaching too far back. Tip: Raise your arms up as if you were doing a pull up and that should be the height of your paddle.”
David Kalama: recommends the same method as Laird Hamilton.

<img src="http://www.kenalu.com/ [...]

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Yesterday I did the Maui Canoe and Kayak Club race in the Stand Up Paddle Board division from Napiili Bay to Canoe Beach. Favorable wind and small bumps at first, followed by wind in our faces and swells from all directions for the last two miles. Ugh, what a grind. Finished third overall and second in the unlimited class, which was cool, but this isn’t a race report, this is about a paddling revelation.

I’ve been working hard on the Tahitian stroke that Dave Kalama taught me. Had a tune up session along with Jeremey Riggs a few days ago. Some of the challenges I’ve been having are:

• Reverting to my old “whatevertheheckitscalled” stroke when I get a little tired
• not engaging my shoulders and trunk
• applying power to the stroke for too long
• not reaching far enough.

What I discovered yesterday was that near total exhaustion makes me clean up my act. And my act was faster. Here’s what happened

About a mile from the finish I was kind of flailing. A OC-1 that had been slowly gaining on me went by. As they passed I decided to try a different stroke. I switched to the upper arm punching stroke that todd Bradley espouses. I got in about twenty strokes and my arms went to jelly. So I went back to the Tahitian stroke but decided to get more shoulder and torso twist into it–I simply didn’t have any arms left. With no arm strength remaining I couldn’t pull the paddle back very far, it was pretty much ALL shoulders and torso.

Since I was only using my shoulders and torso I needed to twist them further forward so I could get a full pull. I extended my reach and stacked my shoulders. Bam, Bam–short little strokes reaching way out, all done with the big muscles I had remaining. It was relatively effortless, and to my great surprise I gained on the canoe. I pulled in behind to draft, and continued on. In the draft the swells that were coming towards my board were flattened, I was able to maintain my cadence with les [...]

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One of the best things about being on a Stand Up Paddle board is the marine life you can see. It’s always a privilege, even just looking at a little school of fish, or a nice reef. But when you get sot see something big in the water–a shark, a whale, a turtle–it seems really special. And certainly one of the most exciting and wonderful animals to see are Dolphins (or more precisely, porpoises). All you have to do is look at their clear curiousity to understand how smart they are. Given how limited our understanding of intelligence is, I can’t help but think we might be looking at our intellectual equals or superiors.

This video is simply astonishing. In some ways it’s even more interesting to listen to the people talk about the “animals” and the “behavior” as if they were simply parroting a learned response. I have no idea how to make a ring like these dolphins do, and no idea how it could be manipulated like this. I don’t understand the physics.

Simply astonishing. Here’s some Beluga whales doing the same thing.

The YouTube comments are pathetic as usual. For some reason YouTube always seems to show people at [...]

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When you perform any exercise it makes sense to have your body operating at optimal levels, and hydration is clearly necessary to achieve optimal performance. But proper hydration is even more critical for Stand Up Paddle Surfing, because hydration has a profound effect on balance. Try this simple test. Next time you are thirsty, before you drink water balance on one leg, close your eyes, and count how many seconds you can remain balanced. Then drink as much water as you can comfortably hold, wait a few minutes, and repeat the test. You’ll find you can balance much longer.

Not a very scientific test, but it should bring home the message that hydration is important to balance. Dehydration slows muscle response and detunes the fine muscle control that is critical to maintaining balance. There are other reasons too–physical performance, both intensity and endurance, falls quickly as athletes become dehydrated. In the longer term, operating in a dehydrated state is bad for your immune system, hard on your kidneys, and bad for your heart and lungs.

Here’s the kicker–sedentary people don’t have a big problem with hydration. They generally get enough fluids: Roughly a gallon of fluids for men and three quarts of fluid for women per day. It’s the folks that are physically active that are frequently dehydrated to the point of substantially decreasing performance and compromising health. This has been well understood for a long time, most of the data still quoted in journals is from the 1960′s. In random weighings of people working out in gyms with water freely available, more than 40 percent were dehydrated 3 percent or more; for bicycle riders it was more than 60 percent, runners more than 70 percent. A dehydration level of three percent is serious. Here’s the standard dehydration scale:

0% — normal performance
1% — thirst occurs, heat regulation may be compromised, balance compromised
2% — dry mouth, worsening performance
3% — Heat regulation is compr [...]

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Apple’s iPhone is a great tool for anyone, but it has some features and available applications that make it particularly great for Stand Up Paddle Surfing. The phone I’m going to cover is the 3G version, which is handiest since it has built-in GPS capabilities. In fact the iPhone GPS is especially useful since it has special features that increase the accuracy, even when GPS satellites are obscured by weather conditions or terrain.

Unfortunately the iPhone is not waterproof, so you need a dry carrier of some sort. There are some fairly expensive and clumsy hard case versions, but the touch screen of the iPhone makes hard cases problematic. Thin clear drybags enable you to operate the phone right through the bag, and both talk and listen through the bag or via headphones.  My current favorite is the OverBoard case, which has a compact closure system and a built-in headset jack. The only drawback is that the back of the case is opaque so you can’t use the phone’s camera without taking it out of the case. Overboard makes a bag with a camera window on the back, but it doesn’t have a jack. Damn–they’re so close. Maybe they’ll do a mashup of the two cases. I sent them an email about it, but they responded (more or less correctly) that the iPhone camera is so lame that they think most people are more interested in an armband and flotation, which are hard to provide along with a camera window. What they are not considering is geocoding photos, which I find extremely useful. Even a fairly crappy picture becomes interesting when you automatically know EXACTLY where it was taken. Anyway, here’s overboard’s MP3 case, and it really is a very fine product:

As it is the iPhone is great for downwinders and distance paddling. It has a clock, a stopwatch to time your run, it’s a superb iPod player for your music, and if you or someone else gets into trouble or needs a li [...]

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A bit of business–Camelback(tm) is a trade name of the leader in hydration packs. We’re using the name genertically because most people refer to hydration packs as Camelbaks.

We’ll get to the Camelback part in a little bit, but first a little recap of current PFD requirements for SUP. If the U.S. Coast Guard has things their way, most SUP paddlers in the United States who paddle outside of the surf zone will be wearing a PFD and toting a whistle soon. I can’t say that’s a completely bad idea, though the current regulation is nonsensical. You can comply fully with the regulations by tying an inflatable PFD with a whistle attached to your board. No requirement for a leash. Then if you fall in and there is any wind at all, your board will quickly depart, leaving you without a floatation device of any kind. If the regulation were to be written in a sensible way it would require that you WEAR a PFD with a whistle attached unless you had a leash. If you had a leash, only a whistle would be required.

The problem with regulations written by people with limited understanding of a sport is that they rarely make good sense, and so people tend to ignore them even if they partly rational. The regulations have to be enforced, rather than just being made clear. And the officers enforcing the regulation know that it’s poorly considered, so they enforce it sporadically if at all. I have been stopped by harbor patrol, coast guard and sheriffs numerous times, and except for one goofy occasion in Elkheart Lake, Wisconsin, I have never been cited, or even made to comply in any way. Just warned that the regulation exists–generally with a lot of sympathy from the officer regarding the silly regulation.

It doesn’t have to be that way. If you’re in the open ocean, or even a big lake or a wide river, and your board gets away from you, the situation can go bad fast. Even if you’re a fine swimmer the combination of cold water, exhaustion, swells or surf, and panic can turn a minor [...]

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As many regular readers know I’ve been working on GPS features for Ke Nalu. In my typical poster-boy-for-attention-deficit manner I have fertilized this already challenging project with a thick layer of new ideas and redesigns, Ke Nalu into a publishing empire (sort of).

First and foremost is an efficiency redesign. I spent some time analyzing what people read on Ke Nalu and relating that to what features “cost” in terms of load time. As a result I’m reworking how the front page works and making everything a lot cleaner. the Favorite Videos is moving inside the publication. It simply takes too much load time on the main page, Everything is going to be much cleaner and easier to read. I’m taking the suggestions of numerous people and increasing the font size for articles.

The big news though is that Ke Nalu is going to be joined by several sister publications that will share some content and contribute some content to each other. The first publication to be launched is Ke Nalu Downwind, (http://www.kdownwind.com) a publication focused on downwind, racing, expeditioning and cruising. Ke Nalu Downwind is under development now, and if you want to see what Ke Nalu will eventually look like, that’s the place to look. All the GPS technology and Reader publishing tools will show up there first, before they make their way to Ke Nalu.

There’s a lot of new technology being shoveled under that hood, and it changes hour to hour, but you might find the process interesting.

http://www.kenalu.com

Rudder or no Rudder

It’s immediately obvious when paddling behind a long board like the Penetrator that rudders are a necessary evil. Tap the rudder and the board slews a little sideways. That can’t be good. So the plan generally is to minimize use, at least in flatwater. In swells, the rudder is necessary on a really big board to keep the board under control. You generally can’t gather the board up and change it’s direction with the paddle once the board catches a swell–not enough leverage to counter the large forces being applied along the length of the board. The rudder is the key, and it doesn’t harm speed in any noticeable way because you’re accelerating like a scorched ape anyway. If you don’t use it you’ll be sideways and then swimming–hard to go fast when you’re under the water. The only other control strategy is running to the tail of the board both to increase your leverage and to get as much of the board out of the water as possible. Shorter board, less counter force–unless the wind is blowing from a unhelpful direction in which case the nose is now a sail

The other time you love your rudder is in offshore winds, or equally useful but not as emotionally charged, in onshore. On a downwinder or even just cruising, the wind is your friend except when it wants to send you to Tahiti. Again, you can actually gain speed with the rudder since you can paddle hard instead of trying to steer with your paddle strokes.

Rudder control systems
The best rudder control system for a SUP is yet to be made–all the ones we’ve tried have strengths and weaknesses.

Tillers: Some boards use a tiller–a long, usually flat bar that runs along the deck from the rudder to somewhere on the nose. Tillers are usually centered by a bungee cord or a springy batten. You turn by pushing the tiller sideways with your foot, and you can sometimes set a little rudder offset (to counter prevailing wind) by adjusting the centering device. Since the tiller is generally in the mid [...]

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George Herbert said that sometime in the 1600′s, still true today. Stand Up Paddle Surfing has plenty of detractors, none of whom have the slightest idea of what SUP really is.

For example, yesterday started off inauspiciously. The North Shore of Maui was due for a decent swell, so I rousted myself early. Ho’okipa was closed out and nasty looking when I passed it at about 6:00AM. A handful of hardy shortboarders were trying to punch out through the channel, but they weren’t getting very far. I rolled into Kanaha about 6:30, polished off my Everything Bagel and coffee from Paia’s wonderful coffee shop–Anthony’s–and got into the water. I have to admit I wasn’t enthusiastic. The sky was lead gray, the water felt cold and clammy, the waves looked messy. There was only three stand up surfers and one longboarder in the closeout waves. I paddled through the channel and decided to try the lefts into the channel because it looked like the best opportunity for a clean shoulder.

The problem with taking lefts into the channel is that the spot you need to line up on is the most likely place to get caught inside. Sure enough, just as I missed a punky head-high wave I turned back out and saw a double overhead face already starting to crumble. I dove into the face, went for a little leash ride. Paddled back out, caught a decent wave that petered out quickly when it hit the rip in the channel, got pounded again and decided to try the rights at the far west end. As I paddled out around the break a really big wave reared up far outsode. I paddled like mad for the horizon and barely squeaked over the lip. The four other surfers weren’t so lucky, and one SUP guy and the longboarder called it a day and headed for the beach.

I caught a few waves, but they closed out almost immediately and turned into foam rides. I finally decided I wanted sun, easy paddling and knee-high surf. Sop I loaded up and went to the west side. I put in at Launiopoko, paddled west and ran into Randy [...]

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Bob (Stoneaxe) remixed my SIC Animoto video. I like the results a lot. More active and upbeat. Shows that in Animoto, as in other things, less is more.

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You may wonder why there have been fewer articles in Ke Nalu recently, and why it’s taking so long to get the SUP surfing and SUP distance e-books done. it’s not just that I’ve been spending all my time getting the crap scared out of me in Maliko Gulch. I’ve been working on a set of new technical features for Ke nalu, mostly minor improvements like a better email newsletter platform, and pagination of articles to support both easier reading and mobile phones (did you know that Ke Nalu has full iPhone support?). But the BIG improvement is going to be full GPS support, including geotagged pictures and text.

Very soon you’ll be able to plug your GPS into your computer, go to Ke Nalu and create an instant article that uploads your GPS tracks from your GPS, and displays them on your choice of maps, including Google Earth. You can write blocks of text that link to specfic pointers you can drop onto the track, and add individual photographs to your track tags, or if you have a set of photographs uploaded to Flikr that were taken along the journey you can grab them and they will be automagically connected to the right spot–or at least pretty darned close.

If you don’t have a GPS and you’d like to show where you surf or do downwinders and build a similar article you can just enter the coordinates and we’ll make you a map, or you can go to Goggle Earth, draw a map, then save the KML file and upload it to Ke Nalu.

All of this is a lot of work, and not only am I a one man band, but I’m also a fairly lousy programmer, so it’s taking a while. But here’s a preview. The functionality is still scattered all over my development sites, but here’s how the display works:

Garmin TCX file split from history [deltazoom=2; gpxspeedchart=show; gpxspeedchartheight=200; gpzcheckpointinterval=5; gpxcheckpointtable=show ]

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So maybe you’re getting tire of hearing about Maliko runs, I think this is the last one I’ll write up for awhile. But this one was kind of special, and perhaps a little stupid. I called the usual suspects and no one seemed to want to go. Just about as i was about to give up, I got an email from Scott, saying he had managed to buy an F14 without waiting month for it, and he wanted to go for a run. This one would be his third.

So here we are, two newbies–Run 6 and Run 3. Off on our own, and the wind was howling. I don’t mean that figuratively, it was blowing so hard that the rack on my jeep was making a mournful howling sound as i pulled into the harbor parking lot, the traditional shuttle meeting spot. There was no one there. Usually there’s a selection for trucks with canoe racks on them–return shuttles for canoe downwinders, and perhaps a few obvious SUP shuttles. This time the parking lot was empty. Bad sign.

We decided to exit at Kite Beach instead of the Harbor, partly because we were getting kind of a late start (we met at 2:30), partly because the wind was swinging somewhat offshore in the harbor and it would be a slog for the last half mile, and partly because neither of us had tried a kite beach landing before. So we dropped off Scott’s truck at Kite beach and continued to Maliko.

No one was at Maliko either. the surf crashing on the rocks at the gulch exit looked hideous–it was filling the exit with foam and spray. We paddled out a good distance, turned left and committed to the run. ZOOM–I immediately caught a runner that took me what felt like a mile. As I angled in the swell to run outwards from the beach i saw why my ride was so powerful–the swell I was in was substantially over my head. I felt like I was down in a valley. Kinda cool, kinda NOT.

When that swell finally passed i realized I was huffing and puffing–i must not have been breathing. I looked ahead and inwards and saw Scott in pretty close to Ho’okipa. “Hmmm, pretty aggre [...]

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I hope readers don’t mind these totally off topic videos. I don’t go scouting youtube for this stuff, but I get a lot of email correspondence from fellow nutcases, and it seems lately that whacked videos, especially as related to race cars or doing extreme extreme (uberextreme?) stuff makes up a large portion. So, this isn’t about standup paddle surfing, or distance racing on SUP boards. Instead it’s about a couple of geeky guys playing around with a smartphone controlled toy car, and a result that exceeds the wildest expectations that the most fevered mind could imagine.

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I NEVER say that. Never. But OMG. Watch this video and tremble.

wingsuit base jumping from Ali on Vimeo.

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