BCU/Greenland Day 1 - Morning: "Getting to Knooow Yoooou...:

That would have been the perfect song to sing to Turner Wilson’s handmade skin-on-frame kayak as I ooched my way down off the back deck & into the not-an-inch-to-spare cockpit, then pulled up the lap foam to snug myself in. Pandabonium (who writes Pacific Islander, a blog that tends to leave me a little homesick for the tropics a lot, plus offers a fascinating look at life in Japan & occasional appearances from the too-darned-cute Momo the Wonder Dog...what's not to like?) left a comment on yesterday’s post that makes a perfect lead-in to today’s:

Having done all my kayaking in the tropics mostly with sit on top kayaks, I have to say that even reading about rolling (let alone with legs wedged in) scares the bejeezus out of me.

Well...yeah! What he’s saying is a good place to start 'cause it is so completely sensible. Rolling is one of the more totally counterintuitive things you can learn to do in a kayak, and the very first natural intuitive response that has to be quelled is the one that tells you that being upside-down underwater with the entire lower half of your body stuck inside a boat which you are attached to at the waist is a very bad thing. One of the usual first lessons in any beginning paddling course is going to be the “wet exit”, which is all about learning to get out of the boat calmly in case such a situation should accidentally arise – you tuck forward, you flip, you smack the boat a couple of times, you run your hands forward along the coaming of the cockpit, you find the grab loop that lets you pop the sprayskirt, you run your hands back along the coaming to make sure the skirt is loose, then you push yourself out and come up – the whole sequence can be done quite calmly in about 10 seconds, and I’ve seen a lot of people improve instantaneously after completing one of these successfully – one slightly perverse thing about kayaks is the tenser you are, the more likely you are to capsize, and when people are afraid to capsize, they automatically tense up – a couple of good wet exits eases the fear as the mind accepts that it’s not really that bad. That’s a fine first step, and there are plenty of paddlers who never get to rolling – as long as they’ve learned & practiced self & assisted rescues & know the limits at which they would have a hard time pulling that off, it’s not really a problem.

To learn to roll, though, you have to go past the point of just knowing that you can get out fine and on to the mindset that STAYING in your boat is actually DESIRABLE. That’s not always easy! Personally I only remember one time that I ever really freaked out after a capsize – this was maybe my first or second year of paddling; I was surfing in a little whitewater boat for the first time, I was being taught by Richard Chen See of Manhattan Kayak Company, who is a person in whom I have utter confidence, but I think it may have been my first ever unintentional wipeout & I landed leaning back instead of in the forward tuck I’d practiced. My instant reaction was to pop my sprayskirt by pushing it up with my knees. The thing was, at the same time as my knees were popping the sprayskirt, my brain was registering the fact that Richard was saying “Stay in the boat!”. Too late though. Boy did I feel sheepish.

Aside from that, I can’t remember any specific occasions when I’ve felt scared of being upside down (I did have to work through fears of dislocating my shoulder but that was a different matter, that was ‘cause I almost did once & it was really yucky – but being upside down I’m generally fine with). But I do have to admit that the combination of being wedged so tightly into this little Greenland cockpit, and knowing from my surprising 2nd experience in the Stealth that my usual rolling technique was just not going to work right brought on an unaccustomed visit of the heebie-jeebies!

Only thing to do was work through them gradually, the same as I’d done with the Stealth in Connecticut – start with a balance brace, and from that static float, work on edging the boat further and further over until I’d convinced that sorta spooked side of my brain that this really WAS ok & that the absolute worst thing that was going to happen was that my roll wasn’t going to be at its’ prettiest & Cheri was going to have to pick on me to do it better (which in fact not only isn’t bad, but is exactly what I expect when I pay good money for classes – if I took a class & the instructor didn’t have any constructive criticism for me, I’d feel gypped).

Two things made this second try at getting reconciled with the Greenland fit work MUCH better than my first one in the Stealth in the pool. The first was that this time I was expecting it – and the second was that this time I literally had all day. I’ve already mentioned how tension makes you more likely to capsize – it also makes you less likely to roll, and I think that part of why I remembered the Connecticut session as having a very high frustration quotient was because I only had so long in the Stealth and when I discovered that I was starting from square 1 instead of whatever square where you get to do elbow rolls and go “WOW!!!!” – well, I knew that tensing up was just going to screw things up even more, but I suddenly got very aware aware of the minutes trickling away & I know that that made me just tense enough to complicate matters even more.

This time, though – this time, I had all day. So I didn’t rush. I let the other students go first and I gave myself the time to get to know this boat & gradually introduce the muscles of my legs & hips to this new approach to a familiar task.

Got the onside roll working, the side on which I’m more comfortable – not perfect, still a bit clumsy, but serviceable. On to the offside. That worked too – also clumsy, though. Mushy. Not good. Repeated it a few more times trying to figure out what was wrong – and would you believe that what gradually began to dawn on me was that I was not in the boat tightly enough? Each time I tried an offside roll, I was righting the boat – but I was also ever so slightly slipping loose from the seat that I’d started out feeling like I was squeezed into like an absolute cork in a bottle!

Cheri’s explanation for the Greenland fit, both last winter and as I was kvetching a bit as pulled up the lap foam at the beginning of this class, was that it actually negated the need to consciously hold yourself in your boat. I’d listened, but suddenly I actually GOT IT. I don’t know how many times I’ve given novice paddlers a spiel about how you don’t so much sit in a kayak as wear a kayak – well, the Greenland fit is just taking that to the ultimate extreme – and suddenly, just like I once had embraced the concept that staying in the boat and rolling was WAY better than coming out, I was now ready to commit to truly melding myself with this boat the way Cheri said I was supposed to.

I paddled back to the beach.

I got out.

I took off my booties and left ‘em on the shore. Wasn’t going to be able to do what I wanted to do with them on – had to be barefoot.

There was a crossbrace in Turner’s boat right where my feet wound up when I got in the boat. Cheri had said when I got into the boat that I could work with that in 2 ways – I could either rest my feet against it, or if my ankles were flexible enough I could point my toes & slide my feet on past it & hook onto it from the other side. At first, that seemed scary. Now that was EXACTLY what I wanted to do – and it worked. I was IN there, I was NOT coming out, and that was GOOD, that was MUCH better! YEAH!

I don’t know if Cheri had been watching this whole getting-acquainted dance I was doing with her boyfriend’s boat, but right about then, she released the student she’d been working with, turned to me & said “OK, let’s see a sweep roll”. The rest of the morning was just her fine-tuning some points that helped that and the rest of the layback rolls. Keeping the paddle on the breast bone – “hold the blade close to your heart” – that one I should have known, but again, that’s why I pay good money for classes, because when I go too long without someone watching me, I feel like I start getting sloppy. Keeping the torso flat to the water – another thing I know but evidently wasn’t doing. The third point, though, was a new one – really using the frontal abdominal muscles to raise myself to the back deck. Imagine doing a crunch, only with your upper spine & neck totally loose – that’s the general idea! That way my head really was the last thing out of the water – without that, I wasn’t raising it, but it was coming up a bit sooner in the process, and if you’ve ever done any rolling work at all you’ll know that you want that 20-pound weight on the end of your neck to stay down in the water until the last possible second (that probably the most counterintuitive piece of the whole counterintuitive process – your natural desire is to get your head up to breathe – overcoming that impulse is a make-or-break step for the novice roller). Before she gave me that point, I was using more back muscles – she likened it to the difference between sitting up from a prone position and PUSHING myself up. I think this may be particularly demanded by the narrower & lower-volume Greenland boats than a boat like my Romany, but I think this is going to be a really good general point for me to keep in mind – my basic roll is pretty good, but every now & then I’ll do one that just doesn’t feel too strong, feels like I’m pulling down on the paddle & that’s another no-no. People don’t always see what I’m talking about when I finish a not-so-hot roll ‘cause it’s a pretty subtle thing, not bad enough to make me blow the roll except for the very occasional really fluky offside (usually after a really tough run of stressful days at the office when I’m tense anyways & haven’t been getting enough exercise – that always messes with my paddling!) but I know exactly when I do it ‘cause it just feels weak. Concentrating on the lower abdominal muscles really lets the upper spine & neck relax in a way that takes ALL the pressure off the blade at the finish. Fantastic.

Finally, right before lunch, layback rolls tuned up & working to Cheri’s satisfaction (and mine too, yep!), she passed me on to Turner to start working on some forward finish stuff. Just the barest start – my layback rolls are solid, with just the odd occasional mushiness which I hope these pointers will help solve – front-deck finishes are much more elusive – I’ve done them, but they come & go with an emphasis on the “go”. So for the last 10 minutes or so before we broke for lunch, Turner just started working me into this less-familiar area with some basic assisted forward-recovering drills. Good way to finish the morning.

And speaking of finishing, that’s MORE than enough for one post and I must turn in – last session at Sarah Lawrence tomorrow, need to get to work a bit early to ensure leaving right at 5 – really want to get there early enough to have a little time to practice what I got before it all goes away again! No post tomorrow – well, don’t you need a break after this one anyways?

a few Florida pix

BTW I tried to put a picture up with my last post, but Blogger's photo posting was being uncooperative. I have put up a few pictures on Buzznet. Didn't actually do a lot of picture-taking 'cause I was too busy playing myself. I did buy a few from the event photographer.

The usual Buzznet navigation note applies - the little blue squares with 3 white dots are supposed to be an arrow, and will move you on to the next slide (or thumbnail page in the thumbnail section).

BCU/Greenland Week – Day 1, Tuesday, Feb. 21st - plus a little history,

the history being both of kayaks themselves and of my two-steps-forward one-step back efforts to get beyond the basic Greenland rolls. I started out with the intent of just talking about what I worked on the first morning but, er, it turned out to be impossible to even start to talk about that without talking about my earlier encounters with Cheri & a very different kind of boat than the ones I'm accustomed to. This is the nature of learning to paddle well, though - seems to me like everything I learn eventually becomes a step to learning something else, it's very hard to isolate steps, it's all been a flow - it doesn't always go as smoothly or as fast as I'd like it to, but even the most frustrating moments turn out to have been building blocks when I look back at them. OK 'nuff philosophical bs, on to the post...

After a good night's sleep, I was up at 7:30. Started the day by breaking in my new camp stove with some tea & hot cereal, and talking with Russell (one of the Sweetwater staff, all very nice folks) about a boat (he had a lot of boats & people to deal with & mine was one of a couple that somehow wasn’t around, but he worked everything out fine - as it turned out I didn't even need one of Sweetwater's boats that day), I joined the “Greenland Dream Team” in a morning yoga warmup & introductions. Cheri Perry, Dubside, Greg Stamer, Turner Wilson, and Freya Hoffmeister – it was actually this particular combination (especially Cheri & Dubside, both of whom I’d met & from whom I’d learned a lot before, and the others I’d heard nothing but good about), along with Nigel Foster for the Euro side, that got me down to Florida; I’d been trying all winter to figure out how to get up to the pool sessions in Connecticut where Cheri & Turner have been teaching – oddly enough, it was actually easier to get to Florida. Go figure.

After introductions, we sorted out who was doing what; originally there’d been things on the schedule like “Greenland Rolling” and “Greenland Skills” but how it really worked out was that everybody talked about what they knew and what they wanted to learn, and the instructors talked about what they could teach, and then we split off based on that. This change of plans was quite reflective of the differences in teaching styles between more formalized, syllabus-driven American Canoe Association and British Canoe Union type classes and the more unstructured approach favored by Greenland kayakers – I may go into that a bit more in some other post. Or maybe not, we'll see where this all goes. At any rate, as it worked out, in the morning, those of us who were a little more experienced at rolling (including Ross, the very nice spy from Kayak Wisconsin) went with Cheri, Turner & Dubside for work on our rolls, while those who were less experience rollers started the morning with Greg & Freya with work on the basic forward stroke.

This first session, for me, started out with simply getting my mind wrapped around the concept of how a Greenland boat fits, and how you use it. Greenland kayaks tend to be very svelte, trim, low-volume craft; there was quite a bit of discussion about Greenlandic kayak culture, along with the skills, and one point that was made was that a lot of the West Greenland kayaks were made strictly for hunting & there would actually be a support boat that followed the hunters – the umiak, rowed by the women (although steered by some old codger who couldn’t hunt anymore). That would be the boat that actually carry all the extra gear & tents & thermoses of hot cider & what have you. All that the kayak had to carry was a paddler and all of his hunting gear, all of which was carried on deck. That low-volume plan modified as it spread & was adapted by Europeans to more recreational uses; my Romany is not exactly a tub but next to one of these West Greenland slivers, it’s downright portly. When I sit in mine, my feet are on adjustable foot-braces; my knees are slightly raised & apart & comfortably flexed; the insides of my thighs hold onto the thigh braces that are built into the cockpit.

The first time I ever rolled Cheri’s boat – nicknamed “Stealth” because it’s gleaming black & angular – at the Greenland on the Hudson day in, what was it, May 2004 I guess, I was permitted to sit in it in a similar fashion. My knees were lower, but I was able to rest my feet on the bulkhead, basically the posture was the same & therefore there was no change in the basic mechanics of rolling. I was using the exact same set of muscles, applied in exactly the same way, but in a boat that rolls a LOT more easily than a Romany (which has a well-earned reputation as an easy-to-roll boat anyhow). It was phenomenal – Cheri started me with basic stuff & then gradually worked me through the gradations of hand rolls as far as an elbow roll (hand roll with the “outboard” hand clasped to the back of the head throughout the roll). Really incredible. But not really Greenland-style as far as boat fit!

The second time I got a lesson from Cheri was the following winter at the pool I haven’t been able to get to this year. My #1 Greenland mentor Jack Gilman gave me a ride up - I was so psyched to get to learn from Cheri again & also to get back into that fabulous boat. Turned out there was a catch, though. By then, she’d been to Greenland, and now there was a change to how she set a student up in the Stealth. The addition was a simple flat piece of closed-cell foam that went between the deck and the tops of the thighs – you’d get into the boat with the foam down around your knees, then you’d reach down, grab it, and pull it up on your lap to literally wedge yourself into the boat! This pressed your legs down flat with your knees together – which totally changed the basic mechanics that I’ve been using to right a kayak ever since I first learned how. With my legs more or less immobilized inside the boat, I felt nearly paralyzed – even a basic sweep roll felt mushy – the difference between this new situation & the dreamily effortless hand rolls I’d pulled off in the same boat was flat-out demoralizing. It was like being totally sure that you were heading off to take a test on a subject you were really good at, and expecting that you were going to breeze through & get an A+ only to find that you’d been studying English lit and the test was on astronomy. AGH! I spent an awful lot of the time Cheri wasn’t actively working with me simply laying out in a balance brace & gradually turning the boat further & further up on edge – just trying to figure out what muscles had to do what to roll the boat from this very different setup & feeling like a complete klutz the whole time. Can’t say I came anywhere close to figuring it all out that day – didn’t have long enough for my poor bewildered muscles to really “get it”. I guess I did learn a lot that day, just not what I’d thought I would be learning – but although that was over a year ago, I think what I learned then really carried over to now.

For starters, this time I was FULLY EXPECTING the adjustment period that I did need when Cheri had me get into Turner’s skin-on-frame and pull up that lap foam to lock myself in...

ok that's plenty for one post. To be continued.

Tuiliqs failing to dry

The first day was the only day where anyone actually got to put on dry paddling gear. We all hung things out but it was more to drip than to actually dry - dry just wasn't going to happen with the humidity was hovering in the high 90's up to 100% (fog). Here are the tuiliqs for the Greenland classes getting less wet.

Sweetwater Kayaks BCU/Greenland Week - Day 0

(General note - for the next few days I will be posting about my trip to Florida. I apologize in advance to non-kayak readers, I am quite likely to be giving extremely free rein to my inner kayak geek)


First night in Florida - Dubside demonstrates Greenlandic hypnotism techniques.

Day 0 – Monday, Feb. 20
This was primarily a getting there & setting up day, no boats, but plenty of fun once all the hassle of getting there was out of the way! I got to Tampa around 2, got the car, dropped by the Sweetwater Kayaks shop to buy a hood & camp stove fuel, then by a grocery store (a bewilderingly large one to one who’s accustomed to NYC’s more compact grocery stores!) for food for the week, then (after a little frustration with a crappy rent-a-car street map that was fine for sorting out what general direction I needed to go but quite sketchy on details – I was following the highway I needed to be following it in the direction in which I needed to be going but instead of being on it I was weaving back and forth under the underpasses until I finally stumbled across an onramp, as I’d figured I would if I just stuck to driving in the vicinity of the highway long enough) on to Ft. DeSoto to pick my campsite (found a nice one sort of set back from the common area where everyone congregated, but not so far back in the woods that I’d be having turf issues with the rattlesnakes the pre-symposium newsletter warned us about) & pitch camp.

Settled in & ready for the next few days, I joined a group watching Dubside give his first of many demos of Qajaasaarneq, Greenland rope gymnastics. That's really whoat's going on in the picture at the start of this post - the rope exercises are hypnotic to watch, but they were actually developed as a technique for staying in good shape over the long cold Greenland winters, and are also used as a learning tool to help prepare youngsters to learn how to roll. These exercises are one of the events at the annual Greenland kayaking championships.

I’ve watched him do this before, of course, but this time it became an open session as the other instructors started trying their hand at it – at the other events where I’ve watched ropes demos, it was either Dubside by himself, or Dubside and one or two of the other really serious Greenland people, but this time people who’d never tried it before were jumping up & trying things. It started with the instructors, who were all strong, physically confident people & keen to try this new game; Dubside would demonstrate one & make it look easy & graceful, then one of the BCU instructors would give it a shot, with varying degrees of success but always laughing; eventually the students started joining in too (although that happened more on the following days).

I waited until the crowd had thinned before trying a couple myself – ever since the first time I saw this done at the Hudson River Greenland Festival a couple of years ago, I been dying to give this a shot, although it does look a little scary as there’s no padding to fall on. One nice thing about watching the instructors “learning the ropes” (oh, dear, I am so, so, so sorry, I should have left that pun unwritten) on the ropes though was that I was able to zero in on a couple that were both described as simpler and clearly kept you horizontal on the ropes - I was very interested in not falling on my head before I’d even had a chance to get in a boat, but these ones I was confident that I would at least not hurt myself if I screwed ‘em up. I got a couple, I failed a couple, it was fascinating to finally TRY these things I’ve seen & see how it feels. I can’t speak to the higher-point ones but for the basic ones I tried, if you could get your body to the right position, gravity & the laws of physics did the rest of the work – very much like rolling a kayak, really - but it took a certain amount of strength & coordination to get your body to the right position. It’s funny, the ones I couldn’t get, I’m really not sure which of those two components I was missing, or if I was a little shy of what I needed in both.

Dinner was provided by Sweetwater; Jean & company made up some big tubs of ziti and salad. That was a nice surprise when I’d gone assuming that participants were on their own as far as feeding themselves, and in fact if I do this again next year I’ll lighten up on the dinner groceries ‘cause people were going out every night – I only actually cooked one dinner for myself in camp. The evening wrapped up with drinks around the fire (drinks like, um, hot cocoa, yeah, and grape juice, in keeping with the regulations of the youth camp that was used for BCU/Greenland week, naturally ;D). I decided to turn in pretty early; even though Nigel Foster himself told me that I couldn’t possibly go to bed yet because it wasn’t even one o’ clock yet, and even though it would have been so much fun to stay up & just listen to the instructors talk story (which, as I understand it, is maybe not HALF the fun of attending a symposium, but a solid chunk thereof), I was feeling like I’d had enough of a day. The next day’s classes were scheduled to start at 9:00 and I wanted to be awake for that! Fell asleep to the sounds of insects, laughter drifting from the campfire & the dripping of condensation falling from the palmettos.

Well that was FUN.

So here's one new trick I picked up in Florida. It was a fantastic four days, and I need to try to write as much down as I can before I forget what I did. Unpacking comes first, though, and there's not much to eat in this apartment, so I should go see what I can hunt down (at the grocery store, I mean!). Thought I'd just put up this one picture & say it was a wonderful, wonderful 4 days.

Gone Paddling.

Off to Florida for a week of soggy froggy amphibious fun! back next weekend, hopefully with a new trick or two to babble about!

Watching birds flying in a gale, and getting happy about sunlight and FLA!

I took this picture looking down Houston Street looking west on Tuesday night. My official work day is 9 to 5, but I tend to more commonly leave at six or seven, so it's a wonderful thing when I start seeing LIGHT when I'm leaving after work. It says summer's on the way - and the tail-end of sunset at 6 is especially cheering! Winter did make an emphatic reappearance this weekend as another storm came through - I had hoped to get in one more two or three hour paddle in today, but by Friday morning the marine forecast for Saturday had completely deteriorated & was talking gale-force winds all day. If you're in the US, you may have read about this one even if you weren't in the area that got it (sounds like they got it in Wisconsin) as this one was definitely not as bizarrely well-mannered as our nice recordbreaking but non-lethal non-commute-disrupting snow storm was. This one actually came in on Friday morning - I'd left for work on a fairly balmy springy morning, and then sometime in midmorning, I decided to go up to the cafeteria for some coffee. I don't see any windows from my cubicle, so I never know exactly what's going on outside, but the minute I stepped into the open central stairwell of the building I knew something furious was going on outside - the stairwell is topped with a structure of translucent skylights, and you could hear the frames that hold them creaking in the wind battering against them, and there are also 2 square windose that look out on the terrace that's open in the summer - there are a couple of trees in containers out there & their branches were lashing. The company cafeteria is actually a great place for watching a storm - not as good as my old east-facing window on the 96th floor of the World Trade Center (I'll never forget watching the ice riding the tides in and out of the East River, or seeing summer thunderstorms sweep by and head off flashing into Brooklyn), but still quite respectable; it's called "The Greenhouse" and it's actually a structure that was added to the roof when the company had the HQ redone after striking it rich with a certain boy wizard. The eating area the highly-paid architect gave us is all high windows looking out on the rooftop terrace; the building is about the same height as the surrounding offices; you can't quite see the river but you can see the full sweep of the sky.


Friday was post-close, so it was a quiet day of tying up loose ends before vacation, so I was able to take a storm-watching break - I was actually going back down the stairs when in one of the windows, I spotted a seagull fighting to work its' way into the the wind & had to go back up to see how the bird did. I find it so fascinating to watch birds fly in stormy conditions, maybe because the way a bird handles strong winds looks incredibly like how a paddler deals with a strong current, only of course they are better at it than the best kayaker in the world (and swallows are like the whitewater paddlers of the bird world, I watched at Pier 63 on a windy day - it had found a corner behind the building that must've been the avian equivalent of a surfable hole and this guy was in there looping back and forth looking like it was just flat-out having fun). In this case, it seemed like most of the gulls were trying to avoid flying straight into the wind, mostly traveling in directions where they were taking the wind from forward of ninety degrees (I'm tempted to use the sailing terms & say they were reaching - your various reaches are fast & pleasant points of sail, and they were zipping by like lightning) - the one that caught my eye was one of the exceptions to that rule - it was trying to head into the wind; it was barely able to make progress, and seemed to gain ground only through quick, controlled sideslips. After a little time, a lot of effort, and not much gained ground, the gull apparently decided that Weehawken was perhaps a better destination than Hoboken, and fell off & went zipping away on a much more comfortable-looking course.

Winds kept up today & I ended up spending a quiet day at home (I'm sort of glad all my plans fell through because I found that I just wanted to sleep all day - think the week's bout with the flu & accompanying asthma plus a rough week at work wore me out more than I was wanting to admit to myself (the asthma is especially tiring, adding even a little extra work to that fundamental non-optional work of getting oxygen gets to be wearying, and earlier in the flu the extra effort was substantial - never quite got to emergency-room bad but much worse & I would've been thinking about it). Tomorrow I go into the city to get my gear out of my boat and (this could be fun) then I have to go buy a tent! Whee! Yep, after all the hemming and hawing, the weather made the call for me, Lyn was going to bring her tent to the paddle that didn't happen today & I just decided that it would simplify this & any future camping possibilities if I just went ahead & got one. I'll only consider this a bad decision if somehow it never ends up getting used again.

Have to say, weather in St. Pete's looks miiiighty nice - could rain on the symposium, but it looks like the BCU/greenland week crew are in for partly sunny, high 70's all week! I'll still be packing my drysuit as the water's in the 60's, but even so, I'm really happy to be heading down there!

Valentine for My Romany -

Well, I lied a little bit in yesterday's statistics - I did give myself a sick day from teaching at Sarah Lawrence this week. I hadn't heard back from the other instructors last night and I did take all my gear today just in case me not being there was going to cause a big problem, but as it was everybody was just fine with me taking the night off, and I did so with relief. I enjoy going up & teaching so much, but as I said in a comment on yesterday, pool nights are a guarantee that I'm going to work very hard, get very cold, eat very badly and get to bed very late. So I skipped that & am aiming for an early bedtime.

Before I turn in though I thought I'd just put up something over here that I did yesterday as a quick post for a Buzznet "assignment" - the guys who run that site have come up with a fun noncompetitive game where they'll throw out a theme & then see what folks come up with based on that theme. Yesterday being St. V's, the assignment was a simple "What do you love"? Me being me, and the assignment specifically allowing any variety of "love" you wanted to, I naturally couldn't resist the following paean to my own "perfect partner" (sure hope they can see the wink I just winked a-way over yonder there in Kuching) - and at some level, all the other boats that have been a part of my life, too, I guess. Had a little fun with this one, got a little mushy - hey, it was St. Valentine's Day, why not? Enough preamble though:

I Love My Kayak!

I think that to a person who loves boats, a boat, especially and particularly one's own boat, but also any boat with which one has gotten anything of a history, is more than just a boat.

It's all the places you've been in the boat, and all the places you dream of going in the boat -

It's all the things you've learned in the boat, and all the friends you've made because of the boat (er, and possibly some you've lost track of because of the boat, wince - love sometimes means taking the bad with the good, though, right?)

It's all the time you've spent fixing the boat, cleaning the boat, hauling the boat around, wishing you could be out in the boat instead of wherever you are, talking to your boaty friends about the boat, trying to explain to your nonboaty friends about the boat...I could go on all night.

Even the littlest boat has room in the hatches for a rich, rare cargo of memories and dreams - all that's needed is a person to put them there.

I know, I know, Jack Sparrow said it better with that business about
"...what the Black Pearl really is... is freedom.". Heck, if I had handsomely-paid professional screenwriters coming up with my dialogue I might be able to compete with that, but considering the only person writing for me is a sort of junior-level finance analyst who's had the flu for the last three days, my version's not TOO bad, is it?

Statistics & Questions

Number of days until I leave for Florida: 5
Number of days of worth of work to be done before departure were I to work at a comfortable pace: probably about 7
Number of days in which I will do that work: 5
Number of days I've had the flu: 3
Highest temperature achieved over last 3 days: 101.5 (fahrenheit) - unfortunately that was yesterday after I'd already gone to work & it didn't occur to me to go home until I finished this one very time-consuming report
Time at which I finished said time-consuming report: close to 8 pm
Hours of sleep achieved over the last 3 days: nowhere near enough...
Number of sick days I plan to take this week: NONE.

Numbers always add up to something - in this case numbers add up to no time to come up with a real post...so instead, since I just meme'd several totally innocent bystanders, I'm going to go the turnabout-is-fair-play route, throw myself on your tender (or not so tender) mercies, and ask you all to help me answer the burning question -


What kind of pirate am I? You decide!

You can also view a breakdown of results or put one of these on your own page!
Brought to you by Rum and Monkey

(and if the answer is a tired, sniffly, stressed-out pirate who spends way too much time in a cubicle, I swear by the bulkheads of my Romany that I will hunt you down & sneeze on you no matter how much water I have to cross to do it...well, unless it's going to take more vacation days than I have left...sigh...I mean ARRRR...no, I mean sigh.)

ARRRRR!

A few more Brooklyn blizzard photos -

In the end I couldn't resist going out for a walk around the block, even feeling lousy - just to see how it was out there.

Blizzard,Brooklyn

Blizzard in Brooklyn

Here's the view out my living room window today.

I've been happy with our nice warm winter but I was secretly (well, not really secretly) hoping for maybe one good snowstorm, preferably over a weekend. My sister & I, as kids growing up in Hawaii, used to think that snow must be the most wonderful thing, and I think we were particularly vocal about that around Christmastime when we'd be stringing up plastic icicles & snowflakes as outside the sun was shining & the bougainvillea, plumeria, hibiscus & bird-of-paradise plants bloomed away in the backyard. My mom, who grew up in New Jersey, would always tell us that snow WAS really neat when it first fell, and was pretty, but then after a while it would get walked on, and snowplowed, and generally turn to a not-so-pretty mushy gray.

Having seen a little more snow in both of those stages, I do have to admit that my mom knew what she was talking about - but boy, I still get a little-kid thrill when I wake up in the morning to see that everything's all white and fluffy outside. As I was watching this storm shape up over the week, I'd had pleasant visions of going for a good long walk in the snow, doing some grocery shopping on the way home & then cooking something in the comfort-food variety in the evening.

I wasn't supposed to have a cold on the same weekend we had the perfectly-timed blizzard I'd hoped for! My plans required at least a little energy, and I don't have any of that. What a total waste of a good snowstorm. Bah.

Fortunately I still had some good soup in the freezer - and plenty of low-key stuff to do here at home. Just not what I'd hoped for. Whine whine, huh?

2/11/06 paddle

Most of today's crew coming up the ramp at the DTBH (Midtown) -


With Sweetwater Kayak's British Canoe Union/Greenland Week a little more than a week away, I wanted to make sure that I got some good time in on the water this weekend & next - plus I should hit the gym at least a couple of nights next week, last week I just didn't have time - so completely ignoring the fact that I woke up with lungs that felt like they'd been lightly sandpapered I joined some friends at pier 63 for a 10:30 launch, with vague plans of paddling north against the increasing ebb until we got tired. High water at the Battery (the standard benchmark I tend to use for trip planning) was at 7:07 am, low at 1:32, so launching midway between the two I was expecting maybe a bit of current going against us, but not that much. First thing I noticed when I got to the pier, though, was that the ebb appeared to be very solidly underway, with the water beyond the shelter of Pier 64 moving in a southerly direction quite emphatically. This was probably due to the fact that the winds were already blowing straight down the river - we're having a nor'easter this weekend, and one of a couple of reasons I, although generally loathe to launch before noon given the length of the subway trip on weekends, actually called for a midmorning launch was because I wanted to be sure there was no chance of us still being on the river when the blizzard arrived. The e.t.a. of the storm was sliding around quite a bit last week, but by later in the week Saturday morning was looking like a good bet. Still, the wind was already coming squarely out of the northeast, and that's the sort of thing that can cause noticeable differences between what your tide predictions say & what you actually find to be the case out there. That was definitely the case today; we rounded the corner of Pier 64 to find a gusty breeze in our faces and a solid current against us. Nothing we couldn't paddle against at that point.

We'd coordinated with Nancy & Harry from the Downtown Boathouse - now actually in Midtown (their old Pier 26 location was demolished & their proposal to become the operator at the spiffy new boathouse in the northernmost segment of the Hudson River Park) but they've been the Downtown Boathouse for so long that misnomer or no, that's who they are. The plan was to meet them at 11; owing to the headwind & current, we were a skoshie bit late, but that was OK 'cause they were just launching when we got there. Haven't paddled with them for a while - was sorry Tim wasn't there, he's a pleasure to paddle with too, but he was on some sort of Long Island adventure today. According to the loose plan for the day, we paddled north into that gusty headwind and an increasingly powerful current; finally, a bit shy of Riverside Church, we all seemed to simultaneously realize that we were making very slow headway & decided it was time to head for home.


That cut the trip down a bit from the original 4 hours I'd envisioned spending on the water - but feeling a bit under the weather, I was fine with that. Plus we ended up using that time to accept our northern neighbors' invitation in for a spot of tea! Green tea with roasted rice, specifically. I hadn't seen the inside of the midtown incarnation of the DTBH, so it was fun to get a tour - it is so clean and spiffy-looking, and it has heat, and indoor plumbing, and (wonder of wonders) a hot shower (that's the part that caused a few green eyes, Pier 63 has a cold outdoor shower in the summertime - in the wintertime you just go home smelling like a drysuit, which is helpful in obtaining lots of space in the subway but otherwise unpleasant)...nice digs. Funny dock though. Harry's got some pictures of our joint venture up on Hudson Kayaker where he gives an entertaining review of the dock.

Afternoon Tea at the Downtown Boathouse


We then headed on our way & then went to the Half-King pub for lunch and some intensive pipe dreams. The snow started while we were there, although it was very light. That was the one thing that was a little bit dissappointing about this paddle - as late as the day before, it had really been looking like we might get some gentle snow towards the end of the paddle, and that can be so nice. Ah well. I am not going to complain about the weather we've been having this year.

Almost home


So that's it for tonight; I've now kept myself up late enough that I won't wake up at 2 a.m., so it's time to get some sleep. This being under the weather unfortunately kept me from going to an Irish music house session which was going to be fun; I held off making a decision until way too late, but I just had a feeling that running around out in a blizzard when I was already feeling really run-down might just push it from run-down to flat-out sick.

And with Sweetwater just a little more than a week away, I seriously don't have time for that!

Semi rant...

Haven't indulged in any good NYC-dweller liberal rants lately...well, this isn't so much a rant as a comment. I'm taking a quick lunch break & decided to head over to Polling Report, check out some raw national statistics. And wow. Look at all the red over in the last column. Sure I've been hearing & reading about that but somehow I just find it more impressive when it's just a long list of different polling agencies all telling about the same story.

ok...maybe just a mini rant.

I'm on the MoveOn mailing list & I do actually scan most of the emails they send me. They seem to have a boilerplate email:

Subject:(Insert clarion call to action here)!

Dear MoveOn member:

Please help us protest (insert well-known conservative person or group's name here)(insert questionable activity or opinion linked to said person or group here) by (choose one or more of the following: writing your hometown paper editor; writing your representatives; signing this petition; forwarding this email; donating money to [insert suggested recipient]). And thanks, as always, for your work making sure that America's priorities are in the right place.

Sincerely,

–Eli, Ben, Marika, Carrie, and the whole MoveOn.org Political Action Team


It would be really nice, right about now (since sooner isn't possible), if organizations like MoveOn would get the message that people have gotten the message that maybe Bush is NOT the best thing that ever happened to this country and change their focus from "send us money so we can tell everybody how awful the Bush administration is" to "send us money so we can tell Democratic leaders that it's time that they get their sh** together and come up with some constructive alternatives to the status quo". I mean, political campaigns, sadly, are just marketing, and marketing is a two-step procedure, right? 1. You convince someone they have a problem; 2. You convince them that you are the one who can solve that problem. If you forget about the second half, you've missed the whole darned point.

OK, lunch break's over.

Technorati tags: MoveOnBushpolitics

Excuses excuses -

Sorry so bad about posting lately, I'm terribly pressed for time this week, thought to wrangle a couple of emails I sent in the midst of bashing through way too much stuff into at least a stopgap post & still get 7 hours of much needed sleep - just sort of an update on why I'm a bit scarce & what I've been up to in my absence:

Thanks! Stuck in the middle of the usual week-plus insanity we get at the beginning of every month as we close the books on the prior month; back into teaching pool sessions at Sarah Lawrence on Wednesday nights, too...I wonder if I went back & started copying my teaching-at-SL posts from last year, would anybody notice? Did get a really good paddle in on Saturday, three of us set out with no particular destination in mind (I like that kind of paddling, where it's just about paddling, not about getting somewhere in particular), just three & a half hours of solid paddling - we made it to the George Washington Bridge & back, no messin' around, . Good stuff. Rained on us quite a bit but who cares, drysuits work just as well in a right-side up boat as they do in a sideways or upside down boat. Gotta do paddles that long or longer for the next 2 weekends plus hit the gym pretty hard next week & week after so I can get the most out of the Sweetwater BCU/Greenland week (and the Wisconsin spies of whom I've received advance warning can't bring back any really embarrassing stories about how that Bonnie was such a whuss for Derrick to write up on Kayak Wisconsin).

Winters here has been sort of a non-event, really funny when I consider that I started blogging last year 'cause it was blizzarding & the river was full of ice. I'm starting to doubt we're going to get ice down here this year, there's been word of it further up the river, but it takes a pretty serious winter for it to make it to NYC - I can remember more winters without ice in the Hudson than with, and this winter has been sort of frivolous (hope that sort of disparagement doesn't draw the attention of the weather gods).

So, hmmm, recycling posts? I'm such a creature of habit, I could probably get away with it if I just throw in new ones after vacations or classes I didn't take last year. Basically, I will paddle every weekend & teach on Wednesday nights until late April or early May, and somewhere in March I'll get happy 'cause the daffodils are coming up and the cherry trees are promising to bloom, then I will bring the schooner down unless the schooner comes down on a close week, then I will start working on the schooner one or two days a week, then one day I'll be really happy 'cause it's time to put the drysuit away (although on second thought I never really say "Ok, that's it for the drysuit until winter", it's more I'll just wear it less & less & then one day I'll hang it up in the closet & the next time it'll come out is to get a protectant spray on the latex gaskets 'cause I'll realize I'm probably through with it for the season), then I will take my surfski out for the first time & be really happy about that, then it will get really hot and the city will smell bad and I'll start paddling after work at night & falling over at the slightest excuse, and so on and so forth, and once every month I'll have a week where I'm super stressed over close, and there'll be budget-time madness...ho hum, everything old is new again. Or maybe it's just old again. Well at least my life doesn't revolve around television shows, now that's what I would call boring.

Happy Chinese New Year1

Gung Hay Fat Choy!

As I'd been thinking of doing, I went to Chinatown yesterday for the Lunar New Year parade - I've seen the aftermath before, but my general dislike of crowds had kept me from going - well, it took a while to get started but boy was it fun when it did, I'm really glad I went!

I'd actually started in on a much longer post last night, I got a pretty good spot for the post-parade lion dance in front of the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Society & it was a fun one - the choy for the Choy Cheng (go look at Robin's Empire's excellent "What's a Lion Dance?" post for more, no time for details right now) was up with some dignitaries on a second floor balcony & the lion had to get up there to get it & that was fun how they made that happened - anyways, it was a good series except that then the Blogger photo post thing started acting up - like Belinda, when it's good it's very very good, when it's bad it's horrid (but it's free, y'know?) - and it just got to be too late to mess around with it anymore so I threw in the towel & went to bed.

However before that I had gone ahead & posted a whole CNY gallery on my buzznet account, figured I'd just put up a quick post here linking to that. Again, Buzznet navigation hint - a little blue square with 3 little white dots is a next page (>) or prior page (<) button - on the main photo, it moves you to the next picture; on the "my photos" thumbnail set it will move you to the next page of thumbnails allowing for a little more of a browsing approach (in this they happen to be in chronological order but don't need to be looked at that way). Hope you enjoy! OK back to work now!

Shorts and excuses

Later in day, one more quick note before I hit the gym for a quick raising of heartrate - speaking of friends doing things that impress me, my friend Scott Chicken is taking a really constructive approach to hitting a certain age that's known for precipitating many a mid-life crisis. He should start a new blog & call it Scott Chicken Run! OK, sorry, not so funny, long crazy day. BTW if any survivors of marathons would like to go over there and give him an encouraging word, I'm sure he'd get an ulcer from the pressure...NO NO I mean I'm sure he'd really appreciate it! heh heh heh.

Another jammed day, just taking a quick break...more links...how to post without actually having to write anything, just send people somewhere else!

Shorts. Oh, those hateful Malaysians and their shorts (no, I'm not being petty, just go look & you'll see what I mean).

Also rather loved this series of airborne shots ofHaleakalaon Pandabonium's Pacific Islander blog. Pandabonium's post on Chinese New Year Hawaiian-style was also most excellent.

I have to confess that not only am I overloaded with work this week, but I got 2 books last Sunday - I made a spur-of-the-moment decision to go see Narnia at the Pavilion Theater in Windsor Terrace last Sunday, decided it would be nice to precede that with a stroll through Park Slope & ended up stopping by a secondhand book shop & walking out with Sherman Alexie's Reservation Blues (very neat, finished that last night) and Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (which I'd dipped into once while kittysitting for a friend & have had on the back burner as something I really wanted to finish reading ever since) - since "free time" is limited this week & next, the curling-up-with-a-good-book time has been debited directly from blogging time!

ok, back to the invoices now. Phew. They never end (which is good 'cause if they did I'd be looking for work and I don't like doing that!). Just had to look at words (and pictures) for a little while.

Top 10 Literary Hoaxes plus A Really Real Race

ok, can't resist posting this link that our company librarians put up on the Really Big Children's Publishing House intranet today - it's The Guardian's Top 10 Literary Hoaxes Of All Time and it's fascinating. Remember the Hitler Diaries hoo-hah?

Also since I am doing a quick post here I also just HAD to put this up - one of my new friends from the Rosemary Ruth is going off to do a couple of legs of the Clipper Around the World Yacht Race! Way to go, Brian! To quote a Hawaiian-style high school football cheer I dimly recall...GO, GO, GEEV'UM!

ok, gotta go go back to work now!

So Long, Pier 64

Note the evening of the following day - inspired by BlogChelsea's success in finding a historical photo of Pier 64, I dug further in Google than I had before & found this moment in the history of the pier. Also found this, which gives a south-to-north view of the sites from Battery Park up to the north end of the Hudson River Park, with brief descriptions of each pier combining history and planned uses - similar to theOldNYC.com website's Hudson Piers Virtual Tours but more concise & at first glance perhaps a little better researched. Just thought I'd share those links before turning in. May not get in much in the way of posts this week, kinda busy with the non-virtual world!

Well, from the barge parked alongside, and the orange netting festooning the upper levels, it looks as though they're getting ready to tear down the old piershed at Pier 64. I went paddling yesterday & right at the end I took a ton of pictures because they are very efficient at dismantling things once they get going. My friends were very patient & waited for me to go for a post-paddle dinner, I was just afraid that, if we have any bad weather that precludes paddling next weekend, the whole thing might just be gone - I'd been meaning to take a last set of pictures & suddenly there's no more time.
Afterwards, reviewing the shots on the way home, I found myself sort of wishing that they could have figured out a way to leave a little more rust in the Hudson River Park - it's a nice park but everything's so shiny and new. This piershed - well, if they'd gotten to it earlier, it...coulda been a contender (to borrow a line from a movie that this piershed always makes me think of) but there were people who wanted it to go, too, and while people were debating, the elements were working away above and the gribbles were munching away below and eventually the debate was rendered moot because it would have cost a ludicrous amount to even make it safe, let alone useful. Still - I will miss the old ghost that's marked the start and "home again" for so many paddles, and sheltered so many classes I've taught & personal practice sessions from the wind & the waves.

Still, although I do wish the Hudson River Park could have kept a little more in the way of nods to the history of the area as a genuine working waterfront, there's more to this story than just a lack of interest in preserving history (aka useless nostalgia, it's all how you look at it...) it's absolute desperation on the part of Chelsea residents for a real waterfront park. Way way way back when, when people were first looking at revitalization of the North River piers, there was a proposal for an anchor for such activity that was shopped here & there along the waterfront - well, Chelsea said "OK" when all the other candidates said "NIMBY!", and that's what put the Chelsea in Chelsea Piers. One thing Chelsea folks found very appealing was a promise of a certain amount of square footage of waterfront public space. In the proposal, Pier 62 looked like it was going to be a park. That turned out to be a skatepark - which is great for the kids, but hardly the quiet waterfront retreat that a lot of Chelsea residents envisioned. The public "passive recreation" (that's the park's term for quiet areas to sit & watch the river go by) space proper turned out to be a walkway that runs around the perimeter of the Chelsea Piers complex - basically a sidewalk that faces the river. Then the park started construction down in Greenwich Village, and there's some nice stuff being put in down there, where there wasn't much of anything; Chelsea got something called the Chelsea Waterfront Park, which is much nicer than you might think a park bordered by freeway is, but the fact is you can't really see the water from it...well, this piershed is going down because a group of Chelsea residents got fed up with such treatment & started actively demanding that they get a waterfront park that's actually on the water - understandable even if I would've liked to see this old relic turned into...say...a giant boathouse where anybody that wanted to keep a boat could pay some money and keep a boat, instead of space always feeling like it could be pulled out from under you at a moment's notice (that's looking less possible now, thank goodness, but there have been times when the fate of the barge where I keep my boats has appeared to be hanging from a VERY slender thread)!
That's at least the story I've pieced together from various board meetings I attended back in my Manhattan Kayak Days - please note that I could be WAY off base! However it all came about, I expect that it will end up looking something like the Christopher Street Pier (seen in rare deserted condition on a very rainy day in this post, and will be a similarly pleasant place to hang out & catch some rays - and that will be really nice for the long-deprived residents of Chelsea. Still hard not to get a little nostalgic, though, when for the last seven years or so, this view has meant the beginning & end of so many journeys.

and here's a bonus shot for being patient with my sniffling...the whole reason I took my camera was 'cause I knew the Rosemary Ruth was going to be lurking about somewhere in the harbor - it was a powerful ebb yesterday, and they were approaching Pier 63 just as my friends & I were coming in at 4:30, finishing a 3-hour paddle - I spotted them actually just after I took the last picture and bolted down to get some nice schooner-at-sunset photos - well, I think this was the best one & I thought I'd share it, just for a nice upbeat finish -

Salisbury Mark's tag!

Oy, what a week - glad at least that my last post was a nice one since I didn't have a chance to do any writing after that this week! I had to be very diligent at work this week because it's half my department's turn to move this week, so in addition to the usual work, I also had to pack my desk up. That's all done, and now I keep reaching for a calculator that's not there, or going to put a faxed invoice in a tray that's not there, and so on and so forth - so that kept me busy & working late (and last Sunday too, just to get one very bulky project finished off, which I'm glad I did even though it cost me any paddling last weekend, 'cause I'd be sweating right about now trying to finish that off before the IT people come to take my computer away). Plus Wednesday night was the first Sarah Lawrence pool session (beginning kayaking for Sarah Lawrence students from 7 - 8:30, immediately followed by rolling classes for the Yonkers Paddling & Rowing Club from 8:30 - 9:45 - so that kept me out pretty late. I intended to post a little about that last night, but stayed a bit late finishing my packing, got home & first my dad called to say hi, then I curled up on one of my pieces of living room furniture with a kid's book (Guardians of Ga'Hoole, if you must know) - piece of furniture in question was something I think I should call the Futon of Nap, friends of mine gave it to me when I moved as they had needed to put a stationary bike in the little corner that the frame had been made for. The futon is a standard double & a bit too long for the frame, so it's bent up in one corner & the effect is like a cross between a hammock and a chaise-longue, and if I'm the least bit sleepy, curling up on it with a good book is guaranteed to lead to dozing off (particularly pleasant on a sunny summer afternoon, when a nice breeze is coming through the open windows, the living room light is all dappled with the light filtering through the leaves of the ailanthus tree - that's the a-tree-grows-in-Brooklyn tree btw - and the birds are chirping & kids are playing somewhere a ways away...ahhh) - anyways, last night was no exception.

How's that for a digression? I should have called this "In Praise Of The Futon My Friends Gave Me". I started out meaning to just do a quick post, 'cause Salisbury Mark has tagged me with a game that I think even I can keep short, perfect for a lunchtime blog break. Without further adieu - the challenge is to list 8 points that my "perfect partner" would have. Way to put a person on the spot, eh? At first I asked if I could get off the hook with a forfeit eating haggis to celebrate Burns Night (and posting a photo of self doing so) - which was last night & I forgot to even have a Scotch in his honor - but then I decided this was preferable. So here goes:

1. He should be a mensch (wonderful word, hooray for Yiddish!)
2. Shares my liking for boats & the other outdoorsy stuff I like doing every now & then.
3. Likes me for who I am (convincing me of that may be tricky...).
4. Likes himself for who he is.
5. Funny would be lovely.
6. Intelligent would also be nice.
7. Reasonably adventurous
8. Doesn't need to be together ALL the time...

ok the moving guys are here so I gotta shut down (which is good 'cause I'm already looking at this going "ok, what did I miss, where does it cover 'accepting of imperfection without being defeatist about it', wouldn't something about liking to cook be fun, this is why I'm bad at memes, 'cause I actually get perfectionist about it...) but quick quick, I get to tag 8 people - off the top of my head, Chosha, Happysurfer, Wenley, Loup, FH20, and I'll think of more later 'cause they're coming to take me away (or at least my computer)!

Chinatown Gets Ready for Lunar New Year

technorati tags: Chinese New Year, Lunar New Year,year of the dog

April Free Friday is going to feature....

Super quick addition to yesterday's post - I just went to the South Street Seaport site to send Mrs. KB the Free Friday calendar, because I'm kicking myself now for not inviting people because I thought everybody would think it was silly, when she actually thought it sounded like fun - anyways, I noticed that for the Free Friday there in April, Shelley Seccombe herself is going to be giving a personally guided tour of The End of the Waterfront. How cool is that gonna be?

Another fun Free Friday at the South Street Seaport

In my last post, I'd asked a semi-rhetorical question involving whether the educators at the South Street Seaport would let an unaccompanied grownup join in with their Family Fun: One Scratch at a Time kid-friendly scrimshaw activity - the answer was yes, absolutely, and I wasn't the only one, and as you can see here, I had FAR too much fun with it. Actually I didn't try to round up a gang to go this time 'cause I knew that was likely - it was one thing last month to try to gather my friends for an interesting lecture about rum and a rum-tasting, that's all fine & good but - "Hey, who wants to go do Family Fun tonight, it's Scrimshaw for Kids?"...well, somehow that was something I didn't see a lot of people having much fun with. Now me, I'm a compulsive doodler - I don't think I've ever owned a notebook that didn't end up with the margins completely filled with small but lively scribbles. This seal, or variations thereof, is a pretty standard one - I thought about trying to do an Adirondack (the doodles in the notebooks feature a lot of schooners in the summertime) but decided to stick with something easy, hence the seal.

I wasn't sure how "kid-friendly scrimshaw" would work, but it turned out to be a very clever, simple & inexpensive art project - the blanks were cut out of white plastic disposable plates, they had a variety of sharp tools that you'd use to scratch your design into the plastic (kid-friendly but requiring close supervision), then once you finish scratching out your drawing (which you could draw first in pencil), you'd scribble everywhere there were lines with what I think were oil pastels, then you took a paper towel & wiped off the plate - the paper took everything off the flat bits, the places you'd scratched would retain the color, and there you were. The docents who were supervising this were really wonderful with the kids - there was no "now you should draw a ship", although there was a good simple pattern available for drawing a square rigger, it was more "you should draw whatever you want to". The little girl sitting next to me came up with a marvelous little Chinese junk with a little fisherman in a little Chinese hat, while her more impetuous little brother dashed off a number of sea creatures - the kids did mostly seem to stick with nautical themes, but I'm sure scrimshaw rocketships or dinosaurs would have been praised just as warmly. The nautical themes were coming out though, because to prime the idea pump, the docents were encouraging people to go walk through the museum's "Soundings" exhibit first.

This was one of two small but lovely exhibits I had time to visit that evening. "Soundings" is a collection of some of the museum's best pieces; this included scrimshaw (I got the idea to do even as much crosshatching as I did from looking at the detail of some of those pieces - the ships in particular were incredible, every bit of rigging seemed to be there), carvings, and some incredible ship paintings. The one I found the most mesmerizing depicted a square-rigger being towed to her berth beneath the Brooklyn Bridge - the towboat is an early steam tugboat, and I think what I found so astounding about this was that the bridge is the same, the tugboat could have been any of the tugboats that I have visited in the Graveyard of Ships in the Arthur Kill - for that matter, the ship could have been one of the barques that are now nothing more than a still-proud bow, before the outline of a ship traced out in stubs of ribs, protruding from the water...that sort of thing just gives me shivers in the same way these lines from Walt Whitman's Crossing Brooklyn Ferry did when I read them at the Museum's Walt Whitman exhibit last month -

Flow on, river! flow with the flood-tide, and ebb with the ebb-tide!
Frolic on, crested and scallop-edged waves!
Gorgeous clouds of the sunset! drench with your splendor me, or the men and women generations after me!

And I'm standing there going, like, "Yo, Walt...you talkin' to me?". Seriously, though - ever read a poem that made you feel like the poet was speaking quite specifically to you (extremely eerie when he's been dead for years)? I felt like those lines were written for me - and the other people I know on the river - in a way that no other poem I've ever read was. Actually maybe that's not so presumptuous - maybe that's the whole point of the enduring quality of Whitman's poetry - the way it still speaks to ordinary people like me. Whatever the case, those lines got me where I live (and I think that quite coincidentally it was the same weekend that Pia and I went for a walk that took us right by the Fulton Ferry Landing - where they have lines from the very same poem cut into the railing).

ahem. Oh yes. The other exhibit resonated maybe even more - this one was called The End of the Waterfront; I knew it was there but I walked into a room that was full of large photographs of exactly the same piece of waterfront that I spend so much time in - circa 1970. The photographer's name is Shelly Seccombe; her website is here, and if you are a New York City resident with any interest in the Hudson River, I really recommend this - especially if you happen to be downtown, it's not a huge exhibit but, well, let's just say that those little midget pictures on her website are nice enough, but they don't do her stuff anything CLOSE to justice. Now of course the trick is that when I'm out with my camera, I need to keep taking my own pictures, the way I have been ever since my folks sent me the best toy ever & not start trying to make everything an imitation Shelley Seccombe (here, do you like this? there was water on the lens but there was still something I liked about this one -

There was also a performance by New York Packet, a local singing group that specializes in...here, copying from that link, "working shanties, ballads, the Hudson Valley, immigration, African-American song, the Port of New York, inland waterways, Irish traditional song and the repertoire of New York's concert saloons and early vaudeville". They stuck to the saltier stuff for this one; it was fun, I love to sing but a dear friend of mine who's a really good singer put it very well one day when she diagnosed me with acute FOSA - Fear Of Singing Alone. However a concert like this one is well suited for a person of my inclinations - the sea chanteys were all work songs and everybody's supposed to sing along to keep in rhythm, so audience participation was not only encouraged but just about required. Actually we tried one summer to sing chanteys on the schooner while we raised sails but I for one couldn't do it, I'd get self-concious & start laughing to cover the nerves - plus we kinda go hell for leather when we raise, we want it to look as smooth as a seagull unfolding it's wings, and the chanteys were meant for sails a lot bigger & heavier with everybody yo, ho, hauling away steadily on the "yo, ho, haul away boys" bit. But with plenty of other people also singing away, I was comfortable enough to even play with trying to match the harmonies during the choruses (I used to sing alto in my choir days, harmonizing's fun when you get it right).

Anyways, another really enjoyable night there at the South Street Seaport (with the usual bonus of getting one Hawaiian-kine plate lunch from the L&L Drive Inn by the seaport for dinner (eternal gratitude to Mr. SeaLevel" for cluing me in to the fact that this even existed). Free Fridays, every month on the third Friday of the month - as the old saying goes, "Be there, or be someplace else!"

Frogma is One Year Old!

Yup. One whole year! I'm at 10,382 hits on my sitemeter, broke 10K I think it was week before last - didn't post anything about breaking 10K though because that includes 292 hits for my own posts, which I tend to re-edit after posting & each republish adds another, plus every time I look to see if there are new comments from work (more often than I should) - all in all I'd probably shave at least 700 off that number as self-generated. Anyways - wow, yes, one year of my waterlogged randomness and dang, I'd love to talk more about this but I have a trifecta of deadlines that I'm dealing with (Lyn, that's why I haven't emailed back but THANK YOU THANK YOU for that additional & rather key info about the campsite NOT being right at the launch site, they said beachfront, I assumed, we all know the phrase about "assume", right?) and tonight it's Free Friday at the South Street Seaport Museum - I wonder if they'll let big people try the scrimshaw, that sounds like fun, plus they will have sea chanteys & a guided tour of an exhibit of traditional sailor's crafts - so I don't know if I'll have much time for any kind of retrospective post like you're supposed to do when your blog hits a year. In a way, though, how very reflective of my life - too many things I love to do so I never do any of 'em really well. Sure beats couchpotatodom, though.

Anyways, as I said I have a ton I have to accomplish in the next couple of hours, but I did want to say thanks to the people who've been stopping by, commenting or not. What a lot of really interesting people I've "met" - and in a few very cool cases, even actually met - over the year.

And that, my friends from all over, is all I have time for now! I am sorry about that - but I thought it would be fun (& make up in some degree for today's hurry) to repost my very very first post, in which I answered the question:

"What's a Frogma?" (Frogma Post #1, January 20, 2005)

I'm a sea kayaker.

Well, like most people, I'm a lot of things but I made up the word "frogma" while enjoying a flame war on a rather lively kayaking list server, so it came from a sea-kayaker frame of mind.

Kayaking is a sport with a lot of subdivisions - whitewater, flatwater & sea kayaking barely begins to touch it. That's part of why I like it so much - so many different avenues to explore & so far ALL of 'em fun. But then I just like being on the water in the water, around the water - I swim & sail too - as long as I can get out there in some way on a regular basis, I'm pretty much happy.

But to return to the point of the story - these subdivisions do sometimes produce divisiveness. Surprise surprise. Recipe for a great flame war - take a bunch of people who have been drawn by different routes to a sport that can be approached a lot of different ways. Make some of 'em fanatically devoted to THEIR approach. Make a lot of 'em opinionated New Yorkers just for kicks. Put them on a list serve where real names don't show, drop the temperature to 15 degrees, freeze the river they love to play on, stir in the resultant cabin fever and...yee-HA! Very amusing - from the sidelines anyways.

Anyways, I was following this particularly violent thread one day when the word "Frogma" hopped into my brain. I can't remember whether it was the one where paddler A accused paddler B of trying to lure beginners to an ICY DEATH after paddler B posted a winter trip notice or the one where an inflatable fanatic (I mean a fan of inflatable boats, not...oh, you know) went on this howling rant about the terrible dangers of decked boats. It's always about the terrible danger. Whichever it was, I was following the postings & almost got to the point where I felt like I was reading fundamentalist religious maniacs, it got that fierce. The unquestioning cleaving to certain sets of beliefs - the certainty that all others are doomed...Unbending, self-aggrandizing, dogmatic...only amphibious. Voila. FROGMA - the dogma of the semi-aquatic.

Rather delighted with having made up a good word like that, I did a Google search, found that the only other people using it was some band in Denmark or someplace, and stashed it away for future use.

Seems like as good a name as any for a semi-aquatic persons's personal ramblings.

As I mention in the description, btw - I'm starting this because it's too cold & dark right now to go paddling & I'm bored. There's a very good chance that it will last only until it's more inviting outside - and that's at the outside. I don't think I've ever managed to keep a journal for more than a week. But for what it's worth, figured I'd give it a try.

Hmmm...now the question is - do I tell the bloggers whose blogs I already read & occasionally comment on that I'm blogging, thereby giving my blog at least a base of people I know (and that's the weird thing about reading these blogs - I feel like I know these people but only one of 'em is actually a friend of mine) - or do I just keep quietly anonymous for a while & see what coalesces?

Final note on 1/20/2006 - Oh man. Have you seen Derrick's hydrofoil kayak writeup (I'm sorry Wenley I know you found it first, I just don't have time to go find it when Derrick just did his!)? Well, I thought that looked pretty interesting. But this is INSANELY cool! Go take a look! really! it's intense!

Sweetwater here I come!

The deed is done, I actually reached Jean Totz (president of Sweetwater Kayaks) on the phone Tuesday afternoon & after a brief discussion about boats, I gave her a card number & it's done, I'm all signed up for Sweetwater's BCU/Greenland Skills Week! I was being so paranoid that somehow if I didn't get them the money, somehow the classes I wanted were going to get booked up - it's a very specific set of classes & instructors they have that made me want to do this. Now I have to work out the logistics - that's going to be interesting.

I started with a vague plan of flying down & camping out, renting a boat from them; today I checked with a friend who's been down there & has offered to loan me a tent and a stove (was considering getting one of those for myself, I had one on sort of on a long-term loan from another friend & it did get used a couple of times, but not averse to putting off that purchase a little longer, camping opportunities in the New York City area being sadly limited...gee, I never did write that letter to the new head ranger of the Gateway Recreation Area - the one where I was going to ask couldn't they please please please make there be somewhere a LITTLE closer than Croton Point where a law-abiding kayaker could paddle from NYC and camp legally?) about there being any food available in the vicinity - answer was nope, no food. That means that esentially what I'm planning for is a completely self-contained camping trip, four full days with a partial day at each end. And everything has to fit in my giant duffle bag! And just to make it even MORE interesting, Lyn mentioned that there are extremely aggressive raccoons at the campsite & that if you leave food in your tent & they are feeling clever, they will unzip it; if they aren't feeling clever they will just go right through the side. Tonight I asked her if the presence of a human being in the tent with the food was a deterrent - haven't heard back yet! I do rather expect to be the single carless weirdo from NYC (well, Dubside doesn't have a car either so a - I'm in good company & b - I should be careful about equating carless with weird...) This may all sound like a bit of a challenge for somebody whose idea of a good time is paddling for Japanese gourmet delicacies, but I think this is going to be a good time too.

I am actually finding this kind of funny - on the whole, when I say the word "logistics", it's usually paired with the word "headaches" - but somehow I'm already having fun thinking about the logistics for this one. What will I need, what can I dispense with, how can I keep my kit down to my one big bag plus paddles now that I'm adding full set of camping gear, I wonder how those dried scallops you can buy in Chinatown would go in a rice dish for dinner... But then I thought for one split second about renting a car & taking my own boat down, and immediately my head started to hurt. I guess this is also where being a little bit of a loner when it comes to doing this sort of thing comes into play - having at least two people involved would make a big difference - loading the boats is so much easier, plus then you can switch off during the (ugh) 18-hour-plus drive. Mostly, though, I just want to get there in the most expedient way possible, with all meals & such planned for. As long as the logistics are aimed at making that happen, I guess I feel like they're worth it.

I also just thought of something that Captain Peter likes to say to Adirondack passengers when the prevailing conditions on the harbor are such that we could have a wonderful sail north, or a motorsail to the Statue of Liberty. Ordinarily, your thirty-five bucks (includes beer & soft drinks) by day or forty-five (we add champagne, wine & better beer) buys you a 2 hour trip which will includes as close a pass to the Statue of Liberty as we can manage. That's what people expect and that's what we give 'em. However, every now & then, we'll have a small group of passengers who are clearly there because they like sailing & they like our lovely schooner. Under that rare circumstance, the captain will sometimes offer to run the sail to maximize the sailing - the issue won't be forced, but the offer will be made. Sometimes somebody will be on the fence, and that's when Captain Peter likes to say, "Is it going to be about the journey, or the destination?".

Seems that here on my home waters, for me, it's always about the journey, but with something like this - suddenly, the destination is everything and the thousand-mile plus journey to get there is...a hassle to be gotten through as fast as possible.

And this time it's not just the destination, it's who's going to be there, and how much I hope they will help me shake loose the rust that I feel like I've been accumulating lately...

Cheri Perry, Dubside, Nigel Foster, Greg Stamer -

This is NOT going to suck...

Sushi Paddle Part II - Japanese Goodies!

We didn't quite make it to the George Washington Bridge, which was the original plan - one of our newer paddlers hadn't seen the trip details & missed that part & there's nothing like going on a strenuous paddle, thinking you're at the midpoint lunch break, and then being told "Oh, no, we've got six miles more before we eat." Instead of suffering in silence (which is what I would probably do once I figured out I'd misunderstood), she asked me about turning back...well, honestly with it being as cold as it was, and with a pesky beam wind to contend with, I had been thinking about eating one of the energy bars I always carry in my PFD on our next water break, and going back to the food court for something hot didn't sound like the worst idea to me either - and somehow when we announced that we were going back, everybody else did too. I guess nobody really had their heart set on the bridge. Arrival at Edgewater - ever so ready for a hearty lunch the Asian food court! Onolicious!

Actually I think that we turned back at a good time. If you look behind these bundled-up kayakers, you can see the area that becomes the dreaded Mud Flats of Edgewater as the water level falls. More like tarpits. The problem here is that the bottom slopes out VERY gradually here & once it gets beyond the stones on the beach, it's really nasty. The section along the wall does have stones almost all the way out to the end, and you can usually get boats out there for a while after the rest of the area becomes, if not impassible, at least very awkward - but those rocks are very slick, and as you can see there are sharp pointy things sticking up here and there...back when I was guiding for Manhattan Kayak Company, if you ever asked me where a lawsuit was most likely to happen, I think I would've named this without much hesitation. I could name other spots that might engender bigger lawsuits, but for just a sprained ankle or broken leg being able to happen easily, this was it (we caught on pretty fast - well actually Richard, the guy I'm usually referring to when I talk about my earliest mentor, caught on pretty fast - & started scheduling the sushi trips earlier in the tide cycle, that was better). With the water level where it's at in this picture, we were fine - had we gone to the bridge, though, things might have gotten pretty messy by the time we got back!
As I'm writing this, I'm sitting here nibbling daifuku (a Japanese sweet made of mochi, made from special mochi rice) stuffed with red bean paste. I've been told it's an acquired taste, but it reminds me of growing up in Hawaii, where mochi-pounding is part of New Year festivities. This is not something my family did, of course, being haole (Hawaiian word for "stranger" - exclusively applied to Caucasians & can be anything from neutral to really hateful depending upon the spirit in which the word is pronounce), but I think I remember some of the staff at Iolani, the high school I attended there, bringing in plates of mochi after their families had mochi-pounding parties, just like mainland people bring cookies to the office. Of course any office would have plates of cookies or candies too, that's Hawaii for you, you get the cookies AND the mochi too. It's funny, with all these Pacific Rim bloggers that have reached out & found our little - but growing - circle of Western kayak bloggers, I was getting thoroughly nostalgic over posts like this one, or this one that somehow replicated that sense I used to have that this was going on, and although my family didn't do it it was all part of the fun of the holidays in Hawaii. Anyways, one of my favorite stands at the Mitsuwa Marketplace is the U.S.A. Minamoto Kitchoan, which sells the most beautiful wagashi - and this time I finally had a camera! Look, aren't they beautiful?


Now these are the very fancy kind, which I would never buy for myself - as you may be able to read on the spring-looking ones (the designs and ingredients change with the seasons), these are generally served as part of tea ceremony - or you would give them to someone as a hostess gift or something. They have much humbler-looking ones - still very delicious, just not as painstakingly crafted & much more suitable for popping into the day hatch of a kayak & taking home for personal consumption - and I'm afraid I'm not very generous with my wagashi - for starters, on the occasions I have been generous, the response to the flavor has been lukewarm, and since I consider these a special treat, I get selfish now.

Also there are other things there that are more shareable - like these!

Everybody likes these - they are a kind of sweet waffle filled with either red bean paste, white bean paste, or (a new development since my last sushi paddle) custard. They make them fresh all day & you buy them hot off the iron - in fact the fish ones are empty because I just bought the last two taiyaki (that's what the fish ones with the red bean paste are called) - two to make sure I had plently to share!

These are wonderful, especially on a cold winter day. In fact although we always call this Edgewater trip a "sushi paddle", I don't think anybody actually ate sushi this time - too cold, we all walked in dying for soba and udon and ramen and what have you. No picture of that, I was too hungry after our chilly chilly paddle up - can tell you though, it tasted wonderful. The one funny thing was that they've renovated the food court completely since I was last there - it's all spiffy-looking now, with big screens over the seating area showing (while we were there) sumo wrestling, kite flying, and the Hi Hi Puffy Ami Yumi Show. Cool, but we did feel a little more self-conscious than usual,

especially when two cleaning people came over and started mopping up around us - you know the picture of the ice coating my kayak had by the time we got to Edgewater? There was a fair amount on the paddlers, too, and when that thawed out it ended up all over the floor...sheesh. Paddlers, can't take us anywhere without things getting all soggy, yeah? Like big retrievers that insist on jumping in the water then shaking themselves off all over you or something. However, this was a first - I'm sure we've gotten a little water on the floor before but to have not one but 2 cleaning people come racing with mops - that was a surprise! Next time I expect we'll be a little more careful about leaving as much water outside as we can - this is one of New York paddling's more unique destinations (as opposed to that run-of-the-mill old Statue of Liberty, ho hum...HA HA HA! I'm kidding, I have been to the Statue about a zillion times on various boats, not bored yet!) and it would be terrible if we wore out our welcome! The only problem with the renovations are that they've moved things around, and the ramen stand menu has changed, it is still VERY good but there was this one kind that totally used to give me Shiro's Saimin Haven flashbacks, (Shiro's being an absolute institution in Hawaii, wonderful saimin there) which they don't seem to have now - maybe I just got the wrong kind though. Have to go back and try again!

We left just as the edges of the mudflat were beginning to show & had a beautiful paddle home - it had warmed up enough by this time that the ice had melted from our kayaks (although I took yesterday's ice shots on the way home).


Heading for home. Notice who we are sharing the river with? Nobody. That's right. That's one of the joys of winter paddling around here - there's still commercial traffic in the channel, but they all move in predictable patterns & as long as you see 'em coming, you can stay out of their way - but the edges of the river, the pierhead line and just beyond - we had those all to ourselves. Beautiful.