That was the weekend that was.

There went another weekend.

No trip report this time. Sadly, I suppose - no, but not really. I had been trying to drum up a joint sushi trip (that’s a paddling trip that involves landing at a ginormous Japanese supermarket & food court in Edgewater, NJ, and having sushi – or saimin, or musubi, or whatever looks the most onolicious when you get there – urban paddling is fun even if there ARE garbage barge piers here and there!) involving the people who store private boats and the Manhattan Kayak Company “Polar Paddle” clients. No, “I had been trying to drum up” is not quite right, it was more serendipitous than that – things are very weird between me & the MKC founder, so mostly I steer clear of mixing in with MKC stuff at all, just give ‘em money once a year to keep my boats there. Drumming up a joint trip is WAY outside what I would dream up on my own.

However, there’s now this funny circumstance where 2 of the rolling students from the class I was assistant instructor for in February happen to be clients of MKC, and I was telling them about a planned sushi trip a couple of weeks ago, and they were so envious because the polar paddles they’ve been doing all winter have been limited to the (as O. described it) the “Concorde-to-Downtown Boathouse Corridor” – there’s a retired Concorde on a barge at the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum at Pier 86, about a nautical mile north of pier 63, and then there’s the Downtown Boathouse at Pier 26, a little more than a mile south, and the polar paddles haven’t really gone outside of that. Well, I’ve been trying to pull off this sushi trip for a month now (we work around the tides, so you can only do it every other week) – and when they heard the last one had been abandoned in favor of the thoroughly enjoyable “Saturday boring paddle” I wrote about 2 weeks back, they put in a request with the Polar Paddle guide to please please please let the Polar Paddle this week be for sushi. And he seemed to be into that. Surest way to make things weird would’ve been for me to say “no, I don’t think we should because that could make things weird”. No, I was happy to go with circumstances this time.

Well – would’ve been fun. But a lot of my usual gang were out of town, and there was sort of yucky-looking marine forecast for Saturday (possible small-craft advisory, winds W at 15-20 gusting to 25, and snow) when I checked the NOAA weather site on Friday, and O & D had not hearing back from the polar paddle guide after he’d said he was checking some boat issues with the MKC partners. Add to that the fact that I was just utterly exhausted after an insanely busy and stressed-out week at work coupled with a lot of stress about the un-fun stuff I need to tell the swim guy, plus a stupid personal issue that I should just write off as a loss, already, but am having a hard time doing (please forgive moment's whimper - just not answering a personal plea is about the meanest response of all – there’s answers I would like to hear, and answers I wouldn’t like to hear – but no answer at all? Makes me feel like I’m just not considered worthy of acknowledgement - I know that I am even if he doesn’t think so, and that’s why I should let it go – working on it – sorry about the whining but hey, what are blogs for? Get it off my chest here instead of wasting any more time trying to get an answer out of a stone, y’know?) and I decided to just not do it this time.

Naturally NOAA had gotten it wrong & it was a stunningly gorgeous day. Breezy, yes, but “nothin’ but blue skies!” However, I think this time I was grateful to NOAA. Sometimes it’s good to have a quiet weekend to just catch up with yourself. I slept in. I read. I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a glass of milk for lunch (must take care of the inner child, yeah?), and then I cleaned and vacuumed and scrubbed, and then later I finally sat down and wrote my Letter to the Swim Guy. It wasn’t easy, but I think I said everything I needed to say. He is not going to like me very much after he gets it. I talk about basic safety requirements, and liability and potential lawsuits, more than I like to – but these are the things that I & a few others are really afraid he’s losing sight of in all the excitement. Anyways – I got it all down on paper and now I send it off. And then there’s another person that writes me off as a nasty negative naysayer, y’know? Oh well. Seems to be my job, sometimes. Somebody’s gotta do it, right? Personally I’d be perfectly thrilled if all of my concerns were completely groundless & he’s already working on all of it. Anyways, I’m not sending a totally unprecedented message to him – just one of a type he doesn’t like to hear. And I can understand that – the swims are great, I love ‘em, that’s why I’ve done as many as I have and it’s neat that they’re growing – but…

I seem to say “Oh well” in my blog posts a lot. Hm. Oh well…

Anyways, today’s main event was 2 hours of rolling practice in Stamford. Rolling practice is like yoga-in-a-boat for me, clears my mind of everything except me, the boat, the water & the paddle & how they all balance and turn together – great thing to do after a very rattlesome week. Came home afterwards to my nice clean apartment – took a long nap, then went for groceries & cooked up a big pot of homemade split-pea soup – even was domestic & nurturing enough that I moved all of my plants (hah, all 4 of ‘em, no green thumb here) into the kitchen to enjoy the humidity & fluorescent light as the soup simmered away for hours – the ti plants should particularly appreciate that, one has been thriving amazingly well for a Hawaiian plant in a Brooklyn apartment, but one’s been looking a little peaked.

And that was the weekend that was. Quiet, and restful, and productive in exactly the ways it needed to be, and unproductive ditto. God bless NOAA. Just what I needed, I think. Now I’m ready for whatever this week throws at me. Hm – let’s see – Monday I go watch JH open up the proverbial can of whupass at the Vintage NY Trivia Night at my local leftist-communist-anarchist coffee shop (ostensibly whoever of us river-rat pack show up play as a team, but JH is the one who knows everything there is to know about this city – it’s really fun to watch!) Tuesday is going to be interesting – I’ve been invited to participate in art – sounds pretty cool. She doesn't want anything fancy from me - just wants me to talk about weather on the Hudson. I think I can manage that! And work should be a little lower-key this week than it was last week. I’m really hoping that the worst piece of March is behind me now.

And there are daffodil leaves in the back courtyard, spring is coming, la la la!