Worlds Collide - and it was fun!

OK, this is a bit out of order here, I wanted to get the more photo-heavy events (the sail on the 10th and of course City of Water day last weekend) up, but now I'm bouncing back to July 9th, when my paddling and music hobbies collided in a most delightful and totally surprising way. I spent the morning lazing about at home but in the afternoon, I got motivated to go for a paddle -- I was thinking of being a trip leader for City of Water Day and I wanted to test how my stamina is coming along, and I'd thought that I would do that by repeating the paddle I'd done when I paddled to Dead Horse Bay to see Hokule'a. That's a paddle that under ordinary circumstances I would've knocked off without really thinking twice, but that was my first paddle after my reconstruction surgery.

I'd gone on my own and I'd made a comment on the original post about that maybe not being the brightest thing I'd ever done, but the one good thing about going on my own was that I was absolutely free to paddle at whatever pace I wanted to. I paddled a reasonably good clip going out but then on the way home I kinda ran out of steam - got home under my own power but man, I craaaaawled the last couple of miles.

I figured that doing that again and seeing if I held up a little better would be a good test for whether I was ready to be a trip leader again.

But then I got to the club and a clubmate asked if I was there for the hoedown. Hoedown? OK, I'd seen a few emails with the topic "hoedown" but hadn't looked at them because I'd assumed they were about the annual square dance at the ACA camp at Lake Sebago, and I just don't get up to the lake that much these days.

So I walked out back and there was Megan Downes, one of my set dance instructors from back in the 90's when I was doing Irish music and dance at about the same level of intensity as I now paddle! Another old friend from Irish music was there too, along with a lovely trio of old-timey musicians, and other members of the City Stompers, NYC's premier Appalachian clogging group. One of my clubmates dances with them and I'd actually been meaning to surprise Megan by turning up at a class sometime, but this was even better, we both got to be surprised!

All plans for paddling were scratched and I had an absolutely great time dancing - it was all square dancing, with Megan teaching the moves and calling the sets. Sound like fun? Check out the schedule on the City Stompers page I just linked to, they're doing a number of similar events here and there for the NYC Parks Department. Tons of fun!

And as a bonus, I have now gone to 2 set dance classes with Megan, and it seems that my feet have not forgotten quite everything.

I didn't get to take many pictures because we had just enough dancers for 2 squares if everybody danced every dance, but here were the 2 I did get:

And here's a bit of video with Megan and Kathy (one of the Stompers) doing some clogging!