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Page 2 - Continued
To our guest testers, Mark Archer, who carries the cumbersome but accurate title of Instructional Editor, is worth his weight in his own long curly golden locks. I have no idea where his patience comes from. If you measure your own worth on this planet by how many lives you have improved, Mark can die content.
 He takes a frustrated, downtrodden sailor in the morning, imparts a few thoughtful technical words of wisdom at noon, and by evening the guy or gal is running around wanting to hug everyone. Because, that afternoon they finally succeeded in the execution of whatever move had been hammering them.
It's not only because Mark takes pride in his professionalism and cares about people, but-and this is the hardest thing to find in the world of windsurfing-because HE KNOWS WHAT HE'S TALKING ABOUT AND KNOWS HOW TO EXPLAIN IT. You can go through 10 instructors before you find one like that. I would say that we're lucky to have him, but it's mostly our guest testers who are lucky to have him. And the best part is: He comes free with the deal, here.
Unlike my own role in the test, which as the writer has a higher profile than I would like, Mark's role is in the trenches, and it may be the most important single element in our pursuit of accuracy and fairness. Mark keeps an eagle eye on the testers and their rigs, to ensure that any trouble they might be having in getting the equipment to work for them isn't because of a flaw in the tuning or their sailing technique. He's our quality control. "I' m the filter between you and our testers," he told me this morning. "Without a filter everything would be muck."
Tony Barbieri. What can you say about Tony? You can say he's a guy who knows himself and is comfortable with himself, and he sure ain't no wallflower. You can say that until last week he was known for his Mohawk haircut that dangled to his shoulders in the back, but now he's got a stylish crew cut, maybe a bit more suited to, ahem, a man of his stature. The other night he was making a salad in the kitchen, wearing a Windwing cap with many miles on it, and I told him (with kindness in my heart although he might not have picked up on that part) that now he looked like a redneck at some hunting camp somewhere.
As Tony reads this, he's already thinking: Yeah, well when are you going to tell them about my sailing? Right now. He runs Columbia Gorge Water Sports, a school and rental center at the Bingen Marina in the Gorge, in partnership with the innovative low-cost Bingen School Inn (cgoc@gorge.net). He's better known as Sargeant Loop. His latest sailing creation, his latest first among a career of many of them, is a move he calls the Cross Stance Loop, basically a combined loop and duck jibe that twists your legs into pretzels, as you sail away with your feet all crossed up--in the wrong straps, or something like that. (Well, not "you," nor anyone else for that matter, only Tony, as the move is so bold it hasn't been duplicated yet.) "If you miss it you bust a leg,'' he says casually but with his usual rapid-fire high-energy delivery of words. Then he rattles off the bones he's broken during his career as a competing pro. Well, sometimes he rattles off his achievements first.
There can be a fine line between someone (especially an athlete) who has an overbearing ego and one who simply believes in himself and expresses that belief, and often the latter can be misunderstood for the former. Tony believes in himself. Know that about him, and then you can appreciate him.
You'll meet more of the people here, including some of our guest testers, in the next Postcard from the Water's Edge.
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