I took up the sport of windsurfing quite by accident. A friend of my brother by the name of Tad Archer happened to show up at my folks' place at the lake one day with an archaic board half the size of Iowa. Shortly thereafter he commenced to sailing around our cove with enough grace and aplomb as to cause my dear mother to remark from her haven upon the dock, "Oh, what a marvelous toy."

In the words of Frank McCourt, "Toy my arse."

My brothers and I spent the next three days rapidly departing the surface of said board in a variety of contorted postures. By Monday our backs were so sore from uphauling the sail out of the water we could hardly bend over to rub our aching feet. For reasons unfathomable to anyone of sound mind our response to our inability to operate this tortuous device in the manner so easily demonstrated was to purchase the infernal thing from it's owner who just happened to offer it for sale.

Looking back it is clear that young Mr. Archer was a much brighter man than we had suspected.

He left the lake less one aging windsurfer and $225 richer. We left it worn out and half drowned -- in possession of a piece of equipment we had little idea of how to control.

Thanks to Tad, I would later have many successful and thrilling windsurfing adventures. The first involved almost being run over by a barge on the Columbia River in Oregon, which I won't detail here so that my mother doesn't faint onto her keyboard. It was shortly after this trip that I visited a place known as "The Canadian Hole" on the Outer Banks of North Carolina -- so named for the Canadian "Boardheads" that drive 18 hours to avail themselves of the near constant gale force winds in this area. My friend Tom Cunningham somehow convinced me that this was a place that we just HAD to go sail.

The "dudes" hanging out at "The Hole" are some of the best windsurfers in the world. As I rigged my sail that day I had this feeling I was a bit out of my league.

"You sure we're up for this?" I queried.

"Piece of cake," said Cunningham with an impish grin. I had seen that grin before and it scared me.

The wind was blowing a steady 28-30 mph and gusting in the 40s. The smallest sail I had was suited for about half that. Oh well, I thought, I'll be a little overpowered. I'll just have to hold on a little tighter. Besides, it'll give me more speed if I can lock in the harness quick enough.

The lesson here might be that anytime you feel the need to justify the use of a marginal piece of equipment for a particular job, you may want to pack it up and go home.

I finished my preparations and took my board to the water's edge. After a couple of embarrassing miscues, I managed to get moving with my feet locked in the straps and my harness connected. I maneuvered the board and sail into position to better catch the wind and the next thing I knew I was singing across the top of that water about three times as fast as I ever had before.

One thing was very clear: we were not on Smith Mountain Lake anymore. The sheer speed was intoxicating and for a brief moment I understood exactly why some of these guys give up everything else in the world and sleep in their board bags. But there remained one very important question -- and it kept repeating itself as I wrestled to control the board.

"How am I going to stop?"

Thank God some poor Canadian wasn't in my path. I had figured out how to travel near the speed of light but steering was another matter entirely. The reality of the situation is that I was holding on for dear life. I suppose I could have just fallen off the board, but my pride wouldn't allow me to choose that sensible option. After several unsuccessful efforts at tacking around into the wind I decide to do a half jibe in the opposite direction. In theory this would spill the wind out of the sail and lower me into the water so that I could regroup for what was already a half mile trip back to shore.

I began to make the turn and let the sail out but failed to unhook my harness in time. It was at this unfortunate moment that the full force of what must have been a 40 mph gust hit the sail. It flung me out over the water like a rag doll. This VERY BRIEF moment of exhilaration came abruptly to an end when the harness hook around my waist caught snugly in the boom line, bringing me down and into the sail at about the same speed as the wind.

Cartoon characters do not change direction as fast as I did that day, and Dick Butkus never hit anyone harder than I hit that sail. I shot through it head first, skimming over the water and coming to a rest about 15 feet from the board.

I bobbed woozily in the choppy water. "That's not how they do it in the video," I thought.

It took me about 30 minutes to get going again, but thanks to the gaping hole in the sail the board was a great deal more manageable on the way back to shore. The Canadians were laughing and joking in French when I arrived, so I yelled to my partner a line I remembered from "The Bridge Over The River Kwai," which we had been forced to read in a college French class. My hope was that they would think I could understand what they were saying, which I of course could not.

"La locamotif deraillait parfois avec la jonction a la terre!"

Which roughly translates: "The locomotive derailed where the land met the bridge."

Come to think of it, that was kind of what happened out there.

The Canadians laughed even harder, so I pretended to laugh with them, all the while muttering epitaphs under my breath having to do with the price of Louisiana and the brilliance of the Maginot Line. It didn't matter they weren't French. They were speaking it.

A short time later I packed up what was left of my sail and my pride and we headed back to the safety of Roanoke. Just down the road I passed Jockey's Ridge where the Wright Brothers took mans first powered flight.

Upon hearing news of the flight a New York newspaper publisher is reported to have said that, "if God had meant man to fly he would have given him wings."

Amen, brother. Amen.