The past year or so we’ve been pretty successful using Facebook to market the catamaran Mon Tiki. But using Facebook to reach our audience means I’m actually spending a little time each day logged into Facebook as an ordinary user, so I can get a better sense of how the people we are trying to reach are experiencing Facebook, and then try to guess at the best way to use Facebook to reach them. Facebook is a strange place.
At any rate, the other night the below ad was in my timeline. Long-time readers of my writing will recognize that many of the themes I’ve rolled around are encapsulated in this simple, powerful PSA:
Decorated USCG Rescue Swimmer Mario Vittone once said that other than fisherman-falls-down-breaks-arm things, there wasn’t single call he went on that couldn’t have been prevented before the boat left the dock. Good luck has a similar dynamic to bad luck, but it’s less studied.
Is why I wear a seatbelt, and I wear full gear when I ride. The first car wreck when I was 16 drove that lesson home. The motorcycle wreck at 20, and the second car wreck at 32 were just karmic booster shots.Report
Way, way back in the day, when I lived in a small Iowa town, the local magistrate sentenced teenagers convicted of serious speeding or reckless driving to spend evenings at the mortuary until they made a run to pick up the body(ies) at a fatal car crash. I still have a vivid recollection of a friend’s older brother describing how he puked his guts out when the mortician said, “Pick up that arm over there and put it in this bag” and he saw the detached arm.Report
How bad was the recent storm by y’all? They’ve talked a lot about Nantucket and the south shore of Massachusetts nationally, but not as much about Long Island (except that Matt Lauer couldn’t get to work one day).Report
There’s more snow than there are men and equipment to move it. A fellow came to plow my uncle’s driveway and he told me he hadn’t slept but 4 hours in the three days since the storm. Equipment is breaking and the men working what’s left have a dazed look.
That said, it wasn’t that bad. No wide spread power outages and only one storm related death on the whole island that I’ve heard of. So it’s just a huge amount of digging out in an areas that doesn’t have the men or machines to get the job done.Report
This video illustrates why when issues of vehicular speeding arise, I get all law-and-ordery on everyone.
Dude’s boy was in the back.Report
Unlike cars, sailboats travel very slowly. When Mon Tiki is really boogying she’s not going any faster than a fit grandma on a bicycle. When I sailed the mighty sloop INTEMPERANCE to the Caribbean and back we did so at an average speed of a brisk walk. None the less, there are risks, one of which is falling overboard. What I would tell my crew was this:
“If you fall off this boat you are just as dead as if you fell off a high cliff. Yes, on the way down you feel like you’re still alive, but your not, you’re dead. You’re just as dead as if your head had been severed by the executioner’s ax, but your eye’s could still see the crowd jeering at you.”
Chances to alter the course of history is all around us, and often in very obvious, sensible ways. But you have to be paying attention.Report
If you fall off this boat you are just as dead as if you fell off a high cliff.
Why? Can’t you just pull him back aboard?Report
Clearly you are unfamiliar with Captain David “No Take-Backsies” Ryan’s methods. It’s the Law of the Sea.Report
Aaaaaarrrrr, the Sea Goddess takes what’s hers — and if ye know what’s good fer ye, you’ll let her have it.Report
Some years back my friend Bob, whom I’ve written about here at The League, was knocked off a boat he was crewing on in the TransPac race (That’s California to Hawaii).
He went overboard in broad daylight, in docile conditions, with several people who saw him go over, on a boat that was fully crewed by professional and semi-professional sailboat racers.
Even still, he was in the water for 45 minutes before they managed to get the boat turned around, find him, and get him back on board.Report