SLE Sports

I like to keep things IRL out of SL. I can't think of one person who would click onto SLE SPORTS to see what I was making for dinner, or something.... well, maybe my husband, but Charlie Don't Surf in this case.

I mention this because I want to explain a few things about why this week's column is the way it is. I live in Massachusetts, on Cape Cod. Cape Cod sticks out into the ocean like a middle finger aimed at England, and is pretty much where the Gulf Stream Current turns away from the USA. You'd think that this would mean great warmth, or even great relative warmth... but No.

Now, someone from Alaska would laugh at a Cape Cod winter. I laugh at their summers, so we're even. Someone from North Dakota may say that "Cape Cod doesn't get cold, now Fargo... THATS cold." If you think I moved here from France to care what someone from North Dakota thinks, enjoy your superior winters.

The very simple point I'm trying to make here is that I'm quite tired of winter, snow, north winds, hockey gear in my car, boots, warming up the car for 20 minutes, and all that other stuff that goes with November thru April. I need an escape, which is where SL comes in.

God wasn't messing around when he made places like Jamaica. While I am not worthy to psychoanalyze a deity, you can kind of see what he had in mind when you think of Creationism in this manner. He had made all the other stuff when he realized that Mankind needed somewhere to chill... or, when dealing with Massachusetts residents, de-chill. You can almost tell that he just cobbled it together at the last second and wedged it in Somewhere Warm. He was right to do so.

Now, Monday morning is a bad time to fly off to the Bahamas for some broiling. That'd involve yanking the kids out of school, getting my husband fired from his job, leaving my IRL newspaper column in the hands of my nanny (it's been done before)... eventually, you sort of just resign yourself to a few more months of cold. The last time my tummy or upper thighs saw direct sunlight was pre-Halloween.

While SL won't raise your body temperature, it can do a little psych-ops with your late-winter blues. My personal favorite thing to do IRL is to go sailing. You can really do a lot worse than ship off to one of the Islands on a nice boat that is, to someone like myself who actually doesn't do any the sailing, essentially a Mobile Tanning Platform. If you're not seasick and don't enjoy sailing, you probably complain during sex, too.

Wondering if I could find that vibe on SL. I ended up exactly 30 miles from my IRL home. It turns out that there just happens to be a Nantucket on Second Life, and that they have a Yacht Club. I go to Nantucket all the time in real life, so I'm a good judge of how things should be there.

The Grey Lady is considerably smaller in the virtual world than it is in real life (as is the Atlantic Ocean...you can sail from Nantucket to Mystic, CT in 15 seconds, for instance), but that is offset by the fact that it exists in the first place. Instantly reverting to my teenage methodology upon arriving at Nantucket, I immediately put on a bikini and set out to find a cute guy with a boat.

The good thing about islands is that it generally doesn't take you too long to get to the water, and I found the Nantucket Yacht Club with the quickness. From there, I had to just use the radar and the mouselook to locate my prey. As you might imagine, many sailors are more than happy to have a comely young reporter ride along in their vessel, and I was getting tours in no time. The hardbody is one of the few benefits of those days where I go from Cheerleader training to Wrestler training, and I use it to my advantage whenever I can.

I'd tell you all about how cool it is to pilot the different types of yachts around New England's legendary coastal regions, but I never actually drove the boat. If this were Jaws, I would have been Brody. Besides, I was busy using this time that my date for the afternoon was actually sailing the boat with to think about several things. They are listed in no particular order below.

- Nantucket, to my sorrow, doesn't seem to have any available real estate. One of my three goals on SL is to own a lighthouse on Nantucket. The lighthouse is surprisingly cheap (2900L or so, in the one place I saw selling them), but the land is a SOB.

- Following the same train of thought, it may indeed be possible to buy my own boat and moor it off of Nantucket. I have my eye on a Coast Guard cutter that is advertised as being the largest vessel on SL. It's only 5900L... but if I told you where I found them for sale, I wouldn't be the only kid on my block with a Coast Guard cutter, now would I?

- Every time I moved, I fell out of the boat. The only way back in was to take flight and perform a carrier-type landing.

- There are several kinds of yachts, ranging from little itty-bitty ones to big ones that you expected to see Captain Ahab (a Nantucket resident, and maybe only Bill Belichick keeps him from being THE greatest Nantucket resident ever) piloting.

- I got a ride from a guy named Yuu, and I called his vessel a "Yuu Boat."

- The actual races are held in open ocean, thus eliminating a Cannonball Run-style dash from island to island. There is a Second Life Sailing Federation, which exists to lay down the law to ensure that this sort of thing doesn't happen.

- There really should be a way to put cannon on these vessels. While sailing alone is a good game, passengers should be able to fire at other competitors. It'd be a whole new sport, sort of competitive piracy... but I could sell it.

- For now, visit the Second Life Sailing Federation at www.slsailing.org. They can hook you up with what you really need to know.