Man is it windy here today. Its been blowing half a gale from the SE all night and all morning. In the little valley where I live the wind doesn't blow constantly, instead it seems to swril around and blow from every direction at once. It'll be almost dead clam one minute then you'll hear a big gust rolling up the valley like a sunami; then it'll blow like ... a really blowy thing, for 30 seconds or maybe a minute, then its gone as quick as it came.
Last night the gusts were so loud that they would wake me up before they hit the house. Just the strange wooshing sound, as the gusts pushed through the treelined valley towards my humble abode, was enough to rouse me. I'd wake just in time to hear the roof creak and moan as it clung to the house, waiting for the gust to pass. The windows were rattling. The front door was creaking. Theres a huge tree at the back of my house that is a 'self-purning' variety. Every time we get winds like this it sheds heaps of smaller, weaker branches. Some of them aren't so small. At least they don't sound small when they hit the corrugated iron roof in the middle of the night.
This morning there was little damage. The trellis against one side of my garden shed had been 'rearranged' by mother nature and a small tree over the back fence had been blown down. I picked up heaps of branches and debris from the lawn. I took Kaycee (my dog) for a walk up the valley and saw at least 5 other trees down in just a few kilometres.
 
If this wind was coming from any other direction but the south-east, I'd be grabbing my kites and kite buggy and heading for the sand flats or a beach. Now, I don't know if this is possible but the SE wind SUCKS! (I know, I know... that would make it a nor-wester, haha). At any of my usual kite flying sites it just makes for a blustery, bumpy wind thats dragging you sideways, out of control, downwind one second, and is gone the next letting your kites just drop like leaves from the sky. Last time I tried to kite buggy in a SE wind I lasted about 20 minutes, got my ass kicked all over the beach, and gave up in disgust. I lost my car keys that day too, which further tainted the experience.
Kayaking is out of the question today too, I'd get blown to Australia. Dam, I'm running out of excuses not to catch up on some work. Oh.. I know. A new beta version of CounterStrike is out. That should fill in a few hours of my Saturday...
Heres a few more pics from our walk this morning...
   
1:10:40 PM 
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We've done it! We've paddled right around Pepin Island in one trip. Its not that far but you have to get the tides just right. We left on the high tide as there is not usually much water in the esturay where we started today. Actually it was just before high tide becuase we had to wait to 10-15 minutes at the esturay mouth for the tide to change direction. We weren't to keen on padling against the still incoming tide through that narrow gap when we could wait a while and have it push us out! 
