Labor Day Weekend Photo Op 1 - Norwalk Islands, CT

Quick lunchtime post before I get too far behind here! Click here to go straight to a Norwalk flickr album!

September always gets very stressful at work but at least I'm going into the deadlines with a wonderful holiday weekend behind me. This post is about Day 1 of the weekend. The forecast for the Labor Day weekend hadn't looked so hot, with Tropical Storm Hermine headed our way the predictions were for Saturday to be OK, with Sunday and Monday being total wash-outs. Oh, btw, the tugboat race I always love attending was postponed to October 9th, if you're somebody who usually leaves town for the holiday but always thought that sounded like fun, this is your lucky year! Not mine on that front, TQ and I have some excellent vacation plans around then, but it's always great fun, you can buy tickets for the spectator boat or see it from the pier for free, I seriously can't recommend it enough. Here was a very entertaining moment from last year, when my friend Mandy and I went on the Circle Line spectator boat, which got challenged by the Susan Miller from Miller's Landing during the bow-to-bow pushing contest. That was a blast. Tugboat won, of course. 

Anyways, I'd planned to do that but honestly wasn't entirely disappointed to have that day freed up - I've been enjoying summer with a vengeance this year after my fall winter and spring of medical woes, but I had it in the back of my mind that I could actually use a good rainy weekend for a guilt-free day of chillling at home - a little cooking, a little cleaning, a lot of lazing about with a book on the Evil Futon of Nap, oh yes, heavenly. Saturday looked nice though, so I signed up for the mostly-annual (we didn't do it last year, I think there was some renovation work or something going on, but other years we have) Sebago Canoe Club day trip to the Norwalk Islands, where we are hosted quite splendidly by the Norwalk Yacht Club.  

I always love paddling this area - TQ was living in the vicinity when we started dating, and a lot of our dates involved paddling out here, sometimes with camping (I loved that), and then there were also a lot of weekend dates when he had to work but I would come up and go for a paddle on my own and then meet him afterwards. Unfortunately he's still working weekends so couldn't join me on this return to our old stompin' grounds, but I still enjoyed it. 

The weather did end up doing a bit of a switcheroo - Sunday and Monday ended up being breezy, but rather lovely as Hermine went offshore, while Saturday ended up being the grayest day of the weekend (and also breezy). It was quite choppy too with an east wind blowing across the sound. We didn't paddle as far as we usually do, I think the planned "long paddle" was originally supposed to be about 12 miles and we ended up only doing about 8. I was pretty happy though, I actually haven't had much of a chance to see if my speed and endurance have improved (ok, the fireworks paddle was good, but the one time I specifically set out to do a paddle that would really let me compare my current condition with the shape I was in earlier in the summer was the time I got to the club to find that an old friend from my Irish dancing days was calling a square dance out behind the clubhouse) but there were some fast paddlers on this trip and I was able to keep up with them, plus I was able to take pictures and then catch up again, unlike one paddle earlier in the summer where I let everyone pass to take pictures and then went to catch up only to find that my high gear was gone. That was jarring! Definitely getting better now. 

And I got to wear my yacht club dress to an actual yacht club. Stumbled across this while shopping for slacks for the office not too long ago, unfortunately completely struck out on slacks and will have to try again (ugh, shopping is not my favorite thing) but this was on sale and I liked it and the last time I got invited to a wedding I had this stressful and in the end rather expensive scramble to find a dress, so I figured I would grab this one and maybe spare myself a similar scramble for something to wear to some theoretical future summer shindig. As I was handing over my credit card, though, I was seriously wondering whether I would ever actually wear it. So when I was getting ready to go to the yacht club I thought "Hey, why not wear my yacht club dress at the yacht club?"

 

And I did. This was an unusual enough occurence that a clubmate suggested a photo should be taken, so we did that. Ahoy! Oh, ps, I did NOT use this as an excuse to not help load and unload my boat. Those might have been the more entertaining pictures!