That could be my longest title ever. I've done posts that were shorter.
I'm kind of up past my bedtime here because I didn't want to leave that Guild-related crankiness sitting up on top when I had left something in the comments the other day that according to the Peconic Puffin should have been in a post. Thought I'd post it as requested!
It ended up in comments because I got asked what the word "Frogma" meant & this turned out to generate quite a bit of speculation, so since there was an actual story I told it. If you've been reading my drivel for a long time, you might know, as I told sort of a looooong version of the story as my Very First Post and tend to link back to that on my "bloggiversary". I missed that this year because...oh, let me go look...oh YEAH, because TQ and I had gone on the best snow paddle the day before & getting a trip report up for that blew all thoughts of bloggiversary out of my brain. Then there was that friendly fur seal, and Sita, and a visit to Nathan's in Coney Island & lion dancers & the Cold Water Workshop & an Irish music party, and then there was an inauguration I was really, really happy about, even though I don't think I ever posted about it, didn't have anything to say that hadn't been said better on a thousand other blogs. With that much good stuff, I just didn't bother doing the "Frogma Is Four" thing this year.
Speaking of things I missed because I had too much other stuff going on, there was one more pseudo-milestone I passed right after the day of our Boat Blogger Get-Together in February (time for another one yet, guys?). I'll get to the explanation in a minute, but first - hey!
My sitemeter hit count hit 100,000!
I say "pseudo-milestone" because I have been posting fairly regularly for 4 years now. There are 1,209 posts in this blog, very few of which are unpublished. Every time you publish, it generates a hit. Furthermore, I have been known to check in from other computers & I really don't feel like my own hits count. So hitting 100K doesn't really mean I've hit 100K. But it was fun to see the count go to 6 digits & I did note that although the IP address was one of those ones that don't give you the location, the referral was a Google search under somthing like "Crossing the Kill". That brought them in to a post I rather enjoyed seeing again myself, a trip report from February 07, when I got to go on a fantastic frostbite sail from Liberty Marina to Tottenville on the Rosemary Ruth - a day that was also notable for being the first time I met Tugster Will in person. There was a lot of traffic in & out of the Kill Van Kull that day & in the post, I mention how much I dislike crossing the Kill in a kayak (it feels way too much like a giant, slow-motion, real-world, first-person Frogger game, and you only get one frog). That's what the Google search that brought in the Hit That Was Not Really Hit Number 100,000 found.
Oh, speaking of the Kill, one more sidetrack before I get to the explanation (this post is going to be about twice as long as I planned but the Puffin wants a post and the Puffin shall have a post) - Bowsprite has a very nice post on A Day in the Kill Van Kull. Don't miss the earplugs, everybody loves the earplugs!
Awright, back to the comment - it was supposed to be the short version but it still came out pretty long. Oh well. Without Further Ado, here it is, the story of the name of this blog:
I'm on a kayaking email list that tends to get a bit contentious on safety issues, especially late in a long winter. One year, in January or so, a particularly good flame war erupted when a friend of mine mentioned that he and a friend of his were paddling out of x-and-such beach that weekend & asked if anybody wanted to join them. The Safety Squad went to town on the poor guy because he failed to do the full insurance-waiver type announcement of proper gear & hazards. If I'm remembering correctly, Miles was eventually accused of trying to lure innocent beginners to an ICY DOOM!!!! When really, he just wanted to see if anybody else wanted to go paddling. It was effin' cold, I think that was a year we had ice in the Hudson down here in the city, Miles was assuming that people would have the brains to look outside & realize that this was not flip-flop & t-shirts weather; furthermore, if anyone had wanted to go, there would probably have been a pre-trip email exchange during which ability & gear could've been discussed, and if somebody HAD just turned up at the beach with the wrong gear, Miles & his friend would not have let them go! The Safety Squad disagreed, though. I think that was the last time anybody tried to organize a winter paddle through that list - who wants to open themselves up to getting jumped all over that way?
And I sat there reading this thinking, "Wow, these folks are all so dogmatic...only they're kayakers, so it's more like...hey, it's FROGMA, there's a fun word!"
Sort of along the same lines as that silly joke about "My grandma ran over my dogma in her carma".
Anyways, I was curious to see if anybody else had come up with the Frogma variety, went on line, found an English folk band & a video game going by the same name. Think there's an artists' collective that uses it too. I actually didn't start blogging for a few years after that but when I started, I thought "Hey, I finally have a use for that word!"
No comments:
Post a Comment