Polar bear pix!

Oof, crazy week here (that post yesterday about calling Kokatat? I did that just before I left the office, amazing how it gets to be 7:00 before you realize it). Well, I seem to have a moment to breathe here, have handed off the things I needed to hand off & can now get back to making sure the bills get paid. But I thought I'd just do a quick post here as part of my lunch break - going along with the "amphibious fun on New Year's Day" theme I started with my Sunday trip report.

First off, forgot to mention it but Mr. Sea Level is back after a blog-rethinking-retooling break (these things are supposed to be fun & his was starting to feel like work)! Yeah! He went out to Coney Island on New Year's Day & is starting to post some fun pictures taken during his field studies of Ursus maritimus brooklynensis. Now he just went as an observer, but Harry and Tim and a few other folks from the Downtown Boathouse pulled together a trip and participated. Yup, you thought I was weird to think it was fun to roll my kayak in the Hudson on New Year's Day...well at least I was wearing clothes! Tim started it last year when he was paddling about shirtless in a show of solidarity - well, that wasn't enough for one big drunk polar bear, and Tim ended up rolling. This year...they meant to do it! Harry joined Tim in the topless rollers club, and Tim said that Harry, although reluctant at first, turned out in the end to be the Kayak King of the Polar Bears, while he, Tim, had had plenty within about ten minutes. It's all in the body type - Harry's a big bearlike guy, Tim's the lean & wiry type (we're talking like .001% body fat) & that lets that cold cold water suck out the heat from his core a lot faster (there's a good lesson there about cold-water paddling, how different body types will handle cold, and how important it is to be aware of how your own body is going to respond & make allowances for that - sorry, can't resist the minilecture...). Anyways, it sounds like they had a blast, and Harry has now posted some pictures on Harry's Hudson Photo-Blog with a kayak-bear's-eye perspective!