Farewell, SeaLevel NYC

Just a quick post as I head out the door - this is gonna be One Of Those Weeks at work, although I AM hoping to sneak outta here on Thursday to go see Cheri & Turner's Fabulous Adventures in Greenland slideshow (yes, that was a reminder!) -

But I did want to ask people to go say something nice to Mr. Sea Level.

Derrick wrote the other day about how the kayak blog scene has absolutely burgeoned in the last year or two. It really is amazing - actually it makes me a little sad, because there are so many interesting blogs out there, and it would be such fun to keep up with all of them (including YOU, if you happen to be one of them), but there are only so many hours in a day, and at this point it would be a multi-hour endeavour each day to keep up!

Such a change from when I started this blog 2 years ago. One of the first things I did after setting this up was to do a little internet surfing trying to find like-minded bloggers.

After a little searching, I found Derrick and Wenley - and at the time, that was all I could find!

But gradually, more and more kayak bloggers began to surface - and one day I discovered one right here in New York City. Well written, interesting observations, good photography, and a set of local links that put my little set over on the right to absolute shame (particularly since I never remember to update - cripes, I think my tide predictions still links to 2005...). Eventually we met in person during the 2006 Yonkers pool sessions, where he was a pleasure to have as a student (actually I was wishing I had him there last Wednesday to demonstrate relaxing & letting the water hold you to a tense student). He ended up moving his boat to Pier 63, where he joined some of the summertime paddles out of the barge (at some point coining the name "The Rustbucket"). As a fellow Brooklyn resident, when the barge shut down, he joined in the Flight to Canarsie (thank you once again to Sebago's 2006 commodore, who made the actual boat move happen in time when we were all scrambling desperately to get out before the Trust locked down the barge).

After the move, I didn't hear from him for a long time. He doesn't have a drysuit & has had some stuff going on in his personal life that is of the type that you simply have to find time to deal with - something had to give way, and so he decided not to try to continue paddling through the winter, and also let the blog go dormant.

Sometimes when I know people are really busy, I don't pester them, figure they'll resurface when they have time to breathe - but I did keep checking in on the blog.

Finally emailed him to say howzit the other day - as I'd expected, he'd been busy, but I think he'll start showing up at Sebago once the water warms up & the days get longer.

SeaLevelNYC, though, may be at an end...

I don't know if my hey-how-are-you email made him decide that it was time to let the kayak-blogosphere know what was going on, but a day or so after that, his first post since last fall finally appeared. He's not necessarily going to stop blogging - but as a cyclist, he's got a wider view of this concept of "human-powered" than some of us do, and he'd been talking for a while about a major redo, and it sounds like he's decided it's time for a break & then to move on to something new, something with more space for a wider range of topics.

Well, whatever it is, and whenever it begins, it should be excellent.

Anyways...the point of all of this is I wanted to encourage anyone who's enjoyed SeaLevelNYC to hele on over there & bid him farewell, for now.