Delivering A Baby

By Martin D. Trees

The next issue of American Windsurfer (issue 8/1) is being compiled and produced in its entirety right here on the beach in Maui. Editor John Chao has nurtured this magazine through seven years of changing winds and has come up with the goods time and time again. This time the goods will be, to borrow a title from a popular grocery store here, "Maui Grown."

Producing a magazine of this complexity in form and content is no small feat in even the best-equipped office. But delivering this particular baby, without the usual support structure, is like being present at a breach birth. However, we are confident that come press-time we’ll get it all turned around the right way.

Film scanners, CD burners and a whole host of Apple computers and notebooks are being brought together before our very eyes to create a one-of-a-kind remote publishing office. In an atmosphere of world class windsurfing and together with the latest 2001 equipment the 8/1 issue is destined to be a truly inspired magazine.

At the time of our arrival in Maui the 7/5 issue of AW has been available for only two weeks. Most of us gathered here haven’t even seen it yet, having been plucked from our permanent addresses where subscriptions are sent. The growing anticipation of the Feedback / Festival, for which we’re all gathered, the new magazine issue being produced here and the one we have yet to see is palpable. The event is clearly a living thing in itself and it has a strong heart.

John has his hands and practically his whole head inside a Mac G4 computer trying to massage life into the heart of the beast—it seems reluctant to respond. One by one the gathered group offer opinions: "Maybe there are too many SCSI cards installed," "Is it turned on?" "Maybe it should be turned off."—(we have not been gathered together for our talents with computers! except, that is, for webmaster Bill Bowles). I know the frustrations experienced at this point where technology that should be simple refuses to be so. I choose not to make any comment. Besides I feel guilty that I’m writing this on a PC notebook and not a Mac.

One of the team, displaying his knowledge of computers, mentions a serial port and then a parallel port and finally it is a comment about the universal port which changes everything. Simply introducing a word like universal to a group of windsurfers has the effect of instantly changing the direction of the conversation. As the group drifts off into the world of windsurfing techno-speak I see that John, his head still within the innards of the G4, seems content to deliver his baby his way. Just like he’s been doing for the last seven years.