By Mary Wolbach Lopert

Last summer I wrote a series of articles about a few of my athletic misadventures. This is an update.

As the old saying goes, I've got some good news and some bad news. The good news is I had a modicum of success in skiing this year by successfully negotiating the mini-me of moguls, which weren't too big or too deep but were just right. So, while basking in this Goldilocks-like glow, I decided to finally learn how to sail a real wind surfer.

The bad news is that even if you fork over $80 for professional lessons, plus gazunta more dollars by taking the family to Hawaii where the wind is steady and the water is warm, the outcome can still be less than zero.

I blame the whole thing on our friends Kent and Diane, because they said if you're going to try wind surfing you ought to go to a good place. Of course, we didn't go just to wind surf. We swam, snorkeled and even tried something called "snuba."

Snuba, which combines snorkeling and scuba diving, is a fun-filled, money-parting adventure where tourists rent a wet suit, fins and diving mask, take a 10 minute lesson and jump into the water. There you are given a mouthpiece that is attached to a pump and a very long hose that allows you to breathe while diving down 25 feet to look at tropical fish. Of course, we were told that the deep down tropical fish were very different than the tame ones that followed the surface paddlers.

Bravely I donned my gear, put my face in the water, went down four inches, caught a nasty case of claustrophobia and resurfaced. My hair didn't even get wet.

OK, so I'm not Jacques Cousteau. But wind surfing was going to be different, because we were taking professional lessons that would last longer than 10 minutes.

On the appointed day, our merry troupe marched to the beach, handed over more green stuff and waited to be enlightened.

Kent and Diane had done this before, so after a brief refresher, they took their boards and went on their way. As I watched them sail out, it struck me that we were indeed in the ideal place: a beautiful Polynesian cove, with a steady wind, shallow beach and clear, turquoise water. I even thought I heard ukuleles playing a strange mixture of Don Ho's "Tiny Bubbles" and Elvis' "Blue Hawaii."

The instruction went well. We were told how to get on the board, pull up the mast, and turn around. We were advised to always fall off backwards, away from the mast. All of this was completed in 15 minutes.

I couldn't duplicate Ted Turner's Captain Outrageous act, but I felt pretty darn good as I zipped out into the cove. There was one troubling thing. As I flew by Kent I noticed that there were red slices on his chest which resembled multiple games of tic tac toe. As our boards passed, he warned, "Don't fall on the coral."

I am proud to say that I didn't. I steered my little craft away from the sharp stuff and when I did fall, it was always backwards.

The trick to wind surfing is to always keep your back to the wind. This is no easy feat while taking baby steps around the mast as I tried to come about.

More often than not, I would find myself a quarter mile down the beach where I would jump off the board to walk back to our safe harbor. Each time I did this I would see another one of our party bearing the bright scarlet reminders of don't fall on the coral.

Eventually, we were told that our time was up. But having just mastered the hang of things, I decided to sail out one more time. As I zipped out, my mind wandered through all the old seafaring lore I knew. There was the stoicism of Spencer Tracy in "The Old Man And The Sea," the bravery of Dana Andrews in "Two Years Before Mast," the sacrificial Christ-figure of "Billy Budd" and of course Popeye. Unfortunately, sinking like a lead weight álà the "Titanic" would have been more appropriate.

As I made my final dance around the mast, the wind did a hard about, smacked me on my backside and pushed me forward, right into the mast and sail.

Once again, I was dead in the water in a tangle of loose mast, lines and legs. Worse yet, while I was able to break my fall into the sail with my hands, my left leg had done a tango with the mast and board so that it was neatly sandwiched between the two. The result was a wrenched knee and matching gouges in my ankle and shin.

While I have never wanted to be a damsel in distress, I once again found myself being rescued. With a wrenched knee, the only way I could scoot onto the rescuer's board was to wiggle up, inchworm style, by the stern so that my upper half was on the board while the lower half acted as extra drag.

With each push of the wind my triumphant feeling diminished. Gone was the exhilaration of conquering the mini-me moguls. With each limping step up the beach, the joys experienced just minutes ago evaporated. And as the hydrogen peroxide on my gashes bubbled away, it extinguished the superiority I had shown as I blew raspberries at my friends who had impaled themselves on the coral.

My mother always warned me that pride cometh before the fall, and I suppose she was right. But the good news is that I am still willing to try new things. And the bad news? I have the scars to prove it.