Friday Blues (plus a few more walking songs)

 

Caribbean blues, that is. Possibly the best kind outside of da 'aina! :D Unfortunately I'm not down there right now, just got to looking through some old Buzznet galleries for a picture of a remora that I was pretty sure I had on line somewhere after seeing an excellent shot of one on the fantastic Windtraveler blog. Here's mine (also blue, taken during the same snorkel as the turtle). Gave me a bit of a turn when I first spotted him under our boat, but first I realized that it wasn't big enough to be a threat, and then as I got closer I realized that it wasn't a shark, just a shark impersonator. Pretty cool.

I was having fun looking through those older photos and when I saw the dory one I posted earlier this week. I didn't think I was going to be doing any real posts this week, so I thought it would be fun to just put up a few random favorite photographic blasts from the past. Didn't end up being quite as at a loss for posts as I'd expected, but I did want to do a "Blues" post, because of the above, and also because my blues-lovin' honey had a great addition to my walking songs. He doesn't read my blog but I was telling him about the walking songs I'd put together, and he told me about a perfect blues song to add - Walking the Blues:  

I love the start. "Man, slow down. We'll get there. Take your time." 

There were a couple of other recommendations - Capt. J.P. had two Everything But the Girl songs, Five Fathoms and Walking Wounded (US-viewable version here and here). Buck acknowledged that the stated mileage might be an overly ambitious goal for my monthly miles thing, but I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles) is indeed an excellent addition. Michael didn't send me a suggestion but he posted a picture of himself with David Bowie on Facebook. That sent me looking for Bowie songs involving walking - there's Dead Man Walking of course, but possibly more appropriate for this occasionally animation-obsessed blog is a less obvious one - Walking in the Air. Anybody know the Bowie connection without googling? Based on the comments attached to that video I'm thinking this is going to be a total no-brainer for about 10% of this blog's all-time audience according to Blogger stats - the rest of us were more likely to be watching the Charlie Brown Christmas special.

Happy...

Happy

Day!

And I think that I'm going to celebrate by going to see Life of Pi tonight!

This was jokingly suggesting as a "Pi Day Trifecta" (eat pie, do math, see Life of Pi) on a friend's Facebook page, but seeing it reminded me that I have been meaning to see that movie, and tonight is actually a plausible night to do that! I'm looking forward to it - I loved the book.

Note on 3/15 - Pi-fecta accomplished! I did math (well, that I do every day, that's my job), I ate pie (Hill Country Chicken pecan, not Bubby's but quite tasty and closer to the theater) and I watched Life of Pi in 3D (which is definitely on the "most beautiful movies I've seen" list). There was a bit of a chuckle in the theater when Pi first wrote "3.14" on a chalkboard - I think I may not have been the only person celebrating Pi Day!

  

Recreational Kayak Safety Demo at SCSCS (not-so-random pix, hooray!)

And here are some not-so-random photos! Got home early enough that I do have time to put these up - this was a series I took during a very entertaining demonstration of recreational kayak safety at last weekend's Southern Connecticut Small Craft Symposium. This was actually pretty interesting for me to see, I actually don't know much about these funny little boats, except that they can be a lot of fun in the right places - have I ever told my full-moon paddle through a hard-working beaver colony on the Manistee River in Michigan? That was in a recreation kayak like one of these, and it was the perfect no-fuss boat for that paddle. 

Mark from the CT-DEP Boating Division gets ready to make trouble. Phil from ConnYak gets worried. I mentioned on Facebook that both Mark and TQ tried to drown me during 2 separate demos - well, at least Mark tried to drown himself first. Guess what inexpensive but potentially lifesaving piece of safety gear Mark has deliberately left out of his kayak today?

Let the troubles begin. Hmm

 Excuse me, but are you in need of assistance?

No, no, I'm fine, um, got it all under control, yes indeedy...

  See, it's floating back up now - yeah - see, I can get back in now...

Ah, there, I'm back in, I can paddle home like this just fine, yes, yes, just...

  fine...just...fine...uh...

 ok maybe I could use a bit of a hand. Since you're here and all. But I would have been fine if you weren't, yeah, honest I would. 

It took a little work (even a small kayak holds a few hundred pounds of water, and this one was FULL) but in the end Phil completed the full t-x manuever and Mark lived to tell the tale. Actually this was interesting - rec boats still require the full "x" part of the "t-x" rescue, where you slide the boat all the way across your deck, doing a little teeter-totter thing to empty both ends of the bulkheadless boat. When I was first learning to paddle (back at the turn of the century! :D) I was taught to do sea kayak rescues this way because back then a lot more sea kayaks didn't have bulkheads - they just used the safety equipment Mark "forgot" for this demo, namely floatbags. These days, most sea kayak do have bulkheads, and the bread-and-butter recovery is a T-rescue  (pick up the bow of the inverted boat, let the water run out of the cockpit, flip it back to rightside up and it's ready for your friend to get back in). Mark's biggest safety point for recreational kayaks was that people buy them because they're looking for an easy & inexpensive toy, and all too often don't want to shell out what they perceive as being "extra money" for float bags and lifejackets. Mark set this situation up - but it doesn't take a capsize to swamp a rec boat, conditions kicking up to where the waves are dumping water into the cockpit could end up the same way. And the lifejacket is not up for debate - these guys fall under CG regs same as any  other canoe or kayak, and although you may have the option of just carrying the lifejacket, it'll do you more good in an unexpected incident if you're wearing it. 

Phil was playing the wise paddler - he had float bags in his boat -

  

and would you look at that - 

with those in, his boat had enough positive flotation that he was actually able to roll (impressive!) and, even without a sprayskirt, come up ready to just paddle on!

Note next day: And I left it at that because that was all the pictures I took before I ended up getting back in the pool, had brought the Lumix, not the Optio waterproof. However, Phil and I had a little bit of an email chat today and now I think like I'm leaving out a couple more pretty crucial safety points if I don't add a little more. On the off chance anyone EVER stumbles across this looking for safety advice for recreational kayaks, I'm going to write a little bit more. The demo did go on for a good bit after this - rolling this boat was pretty much a fun thing for an experienced paddler to try in a pool, this is NOT going to be a practical, real-world recovery option. Rec boats aren't designed to roll and mostly, when they go over, they stay over.

Once he'd pulled off a roll, he went back over and fell out, which is what would really happened. Getting back in was tricky; he couldn't just climb back in; using a sling he pulled it off, but it didn't look easy. I'm really curious myself now - I think that the next time I find myself in a rec boat on a hot summer day in Michigan (the place where I most frequently end up in rec boats), I might just have to try it myself. 

Anyone who paddles a recreational kayak should try it too. They're stable, but there's no such thing as an unflippable kayak. You might not plan to flip, and you probably won't - but if you do, make sure you know that you can get back in!

Random Pix Week Post 1: Dory Dance

I'm a little swamped here at work this week, so I think that instead of real posts, I'm just going to take the occasional break to go look at some of my older galleries and post whatever catches my eye. Today's pick: Volunteers at Connecticut's Mystic Seaport demonstrate the capabilities of a well-built dory. October 2006. I hope Doryman sees this. More pictures from that same trip here.

Sorry about the obnoxious ads, if you go over there - my Buzznet galleries are a holdover from the earliest days of this blog, when Blogger (pre-Google) recommended that site for photo hosting. Buzznet was a lot less buzzy back then, they went very niche to survive when Yahoo and Google went head to head for photo sharing, now I joke that it's photosharing for the pink-haired emo youth set. The ads do bug me, but at least all my stuff is still there.

(note 3/27 - Sorry, turning off comments for this one, being targeted by spammers.)

Pie n' pix

These next 2, click on the picture for a better view!

Pie n' pix. Rewarding myself for going to the office today - I didn't get everything done I would've liked to but what I did get done will at least cut down on the likelihood of needing to pull an all-nighter (I'm too danged old for those). 

The pie is Bubby's Michigan sour cherry. This was an excellent Facebook discovery and a very nice instance of the total disregard the world of the internet has for silly things like physical location - I found out about Bubby's when a friend from high school in Hawai'i who now lives in Seattle got very psyched on Facebook because a Seattle friend of his was bringing him one of these (a whole one!) from NYC. Pie not being the most readily transportable food, I figured a pie worth hand-carrying across the country on a plane was worth looking into, and when I did I discovered that the place was less than a mile from where I work and is open 24 hours a day. I didn't go right away but I added it to my list of budget-season late-night comfort food refuges, and now, 'tis the season. Oh yeah. 

 The merry-go-round is Jane's Carousel in the Brooklyn Bridge Park and I'd been thinking it might make a neat night picture. Walked across the Brooklyn Bridge to get there, and then walked a bit more after taking the pictures because we had nice weather tonight. And pie.

A Ti Grows In Brooklyn

This is a ti plant that I started eleven years ago from one of those little ti logs that they sell in the airport gift shops in Hawai'i. It lives in a pot in the sunniest window in the apartment - it's probably a quarter of the size that it would be if it had been lucky enough to get planted in a backyard in Hawai'i, but for Brooklyn, this is a pretty nice ti plant. I took this picture yesterday morning as I was gearing up for a very sloppy commute during what I sincerely hope was winter's last gasp (crossing fingers, knocking wood).

 Speaking of winter storms - I've been a little annoyed by this silly business of the Weather Channel's suddenly deciding that we need MORE forecasting hysteria (a friend cracked me up recently by using the term "forecasms") and coming up with this thing of naming normal winter storms. Nemo? Saturn? Faugh. It doesn't bother me enough to really work up a good rant (on the annoyance scale of 1 to 10, I'd give it about a 3, right around the level I'd also assign to the ridiculous name game played by realtors in which EVERYTHING has to be named with cutesy abbreviations -- DUMBO was cute but then all the real estate people had to jump on the bandwagon, and now it's just dumb), just a comment or two on Facebook. However, I have been enjoying the Atlantic Wire's thoughts on the trend and I thought I'd share their latest before I run off to New Haven: How To Totally, Responsibly Freak Out Over Winter Storm Saturn

Southern CT Small Craft Symposium, Saturday, March 9, 2013

Mark Chanski, CT-DEP, Bureau of Outdoor Recreation, Boating Division, 

 talks lifejackets at last year's SCSCS

Argh. Sorry about the last minute notice, I think I put this up on Facebook a couple of times and never remembered to do it here. Anyways - if you happen to be anywhere in the vicinity of New Haven, and you are looking for something fun and paddle-related to do tomorrow, why not put on your boots (or skis or snowshoes or whatever) and walk (or ski or snowshoe or whatever) on over to Wilbur Cross High School to start getting psyched for boating season at the 2nd annual Southern Connecticut Small Craft Symposium. Click here for more information.

  Here's my review from last year's SCSCS, which was a little small but a lot of fun - this year's should be a little bigger, and still fun! Sebago is sending a small contigent, come see how bad we are- some of the club's most certifiable members, decades of combined paddling experience, and yet somehow, jeeze, we still can't keep our boats right-side up!

     O
;D />
  O

Walkin' (4 of 4) - Made for Walking?

Dig those crazy go-go dancers! :D Yep, her boots are made for walking. Hm - can't seem to make the same claim for my standard footwear.

I'm afraid I'll jinx my new walking habit if I do anything as committal as shelling out the cash for a pair of sneakers that are actually designed for walking, but these lower-end Nikes really aren't cutting it. Maybe it's just that the sneaks are too old (I think they were new late last summer, but even before I really started doing these post-work hikes, I still walked a good bit, that's just part of how people get around in NYC, tough on shoes), but my feet are definitely defining the range of my post-work walks. I'm good up to around 10 miles. Next couple of miles gradually get to be less and less fun, and somewhere around the 12-mile point the rest of me is fine, but the feet are just going "Ow. Ouch. Ouch. Ow. Ow." with every step. Sort of funny that the walking is what's running me into this limit - I used to run some and I never had problems then, but then again, my usual run was 3 miles (once around Prospect Park). Every now and then I would get ambitious and try to go around again and when I did that I would always end up with an unpleasantly twinge-y knee or ankle and that would be the end of that for a while - but I never ever went far enough that my feet had anything bad to say about the endeavor. I'm going slower these days, but a lot farther.

I have a paddling friend who runs a very nice outfitter shop, with lots of shoes, up in Cold Spring (click here to visit her website). Lovely little town, great hiking, haven't been there for a while, this need for some shoes that are made for walking might be just the excuse I need!

 And I think that's it for this week of walkin' songs. Too slow for you? OK, here a RUNNING song!
 

Walkin' (3 of...4, I think it'll be) - WALK THIS WAY!

Walk this way!

Or this way, or this way, or maybe this way!

Three of my longer after-work walks - one of the nicer things about living in NYC is that you really can walk out of the office at the end of the day and do this sort of thing.

PS - Aerosmith not your thing? Well, maybe Paul Simon and Ladysmith Black Mambazo can help you with those walkin' blues.

Walkin' (2 of ?) - Pop Walks!

woohoo! walk like an 80's pop star! :D

Hi! Bubbles here! Actually this is a little out of order but Bonnie's internet was down last night and she didn't have time to do the maps she thought she would have time to do on her lunch hour today. That's, like, sooooo March for her! So, like, she was like, OMG, can anybody do the blog today? and I was like, fer suuuure! Here's some totally awesome 80's walkin' pop! Whoa-ay-oh! Walk, women! Walk, men! Don't forget your headbands!

Walkin' (1 of ?) - Ah, Patsy...

I made an interesting discovery last night as I left the office around 9:00 - with all the walking I've been doing in the last 2 months, suddenly the 2.5 walk from work across the Manhattan Bridge to the DeKalb Avenue station in Brooklyn doesn't seem all that long.

I don't think I'll be taking Patsy's after-midnight example much, but although March is just one of those months when work gets crazy, I may be able to keep from reverting to desk potato (cubicle tuber?) quite as thoroughly as I feared.

Note later: Well, that's just eerie. This post was a lunchtime whim on a busy day, and I chose the song without having the faintest idea that Patsy Cline died fifty years ago today. I only found out because Carol Lois Haywood mentioned it on Facebook.

More on Pier 40

There was a very good article about the situation at Pier 40 in the NY Times last week. Thanks to a friend on the NYCKayaker/HRWA Facebook group for sharing that in response to my posting about the the meeting last week - I had hoped that following that meeting, there would be something in the press that I could pass along. This is a well-written discussion of the issues that were discussed on Thursday night, and the individuals and groups that are involved, and I'm happy to pass it along. Click here to read.

Note later - Another paddling friend weighed in on my Facebook posting of this same article, saying that the probable outcome here is that the two sides keep fighting "long enough for the pier to collapse...no one wins, not the kids , not the Trust, not the kayak community". Unfortunately, from what I heard last week Thursday, I have to say I agree. I found myself leaning towards the Durst's concept, because it uses what's there and so actually seems like something that could happen much faster, but the Champions group is very set on their idea being the only way that things should possibly proceed.

Makes me glad, once again, to be out of the Hudson River Park - there are politics in the Paerdegat, including occasional border disputes, but as far as I know, we just don't get to the scorched-earth level out there. I feel very badly for my friends at Pier 40 (New York Kayak, the Village Community Boathouse, and to a lesser extent, the Downtown Boathouse, their program there is just a satellite, so loss of Pier 40 isn't quite as bad, but it has allowed them to keep a toehold in an area where they began) - it must be very depressing to be caught in the middle of all of this.    

March!

Anybody else ready for summer? :D

Farewell, February --

pity you were only 28 days.

Pier 40 meeting - Facebook notes...

Interesting meeting.

It was strange just being there as a curious onlooker. Unlike my politicking days up at Pier 63, I mostly don't know the cast of characters who were presenting concepts; as I mentioned, I'd completely lost track of what happened after Cirque du Soleil so I sort of went in with no idea of what was going to be presented and no preconceived notions beyond something of a personal preference for grassroots efforts.

Personal preferences are subject to change, though.

I don't think I'm going to have time to write up a full report but here were a few impressions I threw out on Facebook when I got home last night (slightly edited):

"I don't know the cast of characters in this section of the park at all, but there's the grassroots-looking set (who I really wanted to like, being a fan of grassroots efforts) and then there's the men in suits, and the men in the suits presented what looked to my uneducated eye like a fairly practical reworking of what's there (including boating), and the grassroots guys were pushing for what appeared (again to my untutored eye) to be a pretty extreme (and expen$ive) redesign, funded by sticking a couple of apartment buildings in on the water's edge, facing the pier. I don't want to rush to judgement when it's not territory I really know, but I found myself leaning towards the proposal of the suits."

"Weirdest moment of tonight's meeting: one of the presenters, dismissively referring to a picture showing the south side of Pier 40 (home to 3 separate and complementary boating organizations) - 'There's nothing you can do with that'. Really? Nothing? What really sort of threw me about that was that it was the group that had styled itself as more of a community, grassroots type. Wasn't expecting them to be so dismissive of the boating, somehow -"

"Maybe I should have submitted my question. I'd written one down about whether the Champions really meant to dismiss the 3 boating groups that call that strip of 'nothing' home as completely as it sounded like they did, but I refrained from submitting because I know so little about that particular community's politics.Refrained from....chickened out...decided to leave to...the...actual residents, really."

"The people at the organizations there (Downtown Boathouse branch, New York Kayak, and Village Community Boathouse) all know what they're doing, who they're dealing with, and I suspect they're already well along with how best to deal with the situation."

I'll be interested to see what develops. The chair of Community Board 2 asked that the concept proposals be made available for posting on the C.B. 2 website - I'll try to keep an eye out for those and link when they're up.

Oh - and what did happen with the Cirque du Soleil? Apparently both proposals that were submitted in response to that RFP were dismissed as economically unfeasible. Pier 40 is in a tough situation - dilapidated and going down fast. Seems like something needs to happen soon, or it'll be too late for anything to happen at all. 

Meeting Tonight (Feb 28th) re plans for Pier 40

Passing along something Carl Steiniger posted on the HRWA group on Facebook. I'm completely confused about what's going on at Pier 40 now, there was an RFP, there was Cirque du Soleil, there was a local group, I don't know where everything landed - I guess I'll go find out tonight. I'm not quite as obsessive about what's going on in the Hudson River Park as I was when I kept my boats there, but I still have a ton of friends in the park so I care about what happens there. Will be there for silent moral support if nothing else.

Carl's post:

Thanks to Nancy Brous for the heads up -

i believe some on this list are interested in the future of pier 40 at

west houston street on the hudson. it is the home of the village community boathouse, ny kayak company, the interim home of one of the downtown boathouse locations, not to mention the many non-boating uses currently there. as has been the case for so long, discussions about its redevelopment are ongoing, made more critical by Hudson River Park's financial problems (in large part a reflection of City and State $ issues) and more recently by the effects of last year's great storm and its surge. i thought this public meeting, sponsored by community board 2 of Manhattan, might be of interest:



Dear Neighbor:



Just a reminder that Community Board 2 (Manhattan) will be hosting a Pier 40 Forum this Thursday, February 28th, at the Saatchi & Saatchi Building, located at 375 Hudson Street (between West Houston and King Streets). The Forum will begin at 6:30 p.m.There will be presentations regarding a number of income-generating proposals for Pier 40 and comments by many of our elected officials. If time allows, there will be a limited question and answer period. We hope you can attend.



Sincerely,



David Gruber

Chair

Community Board No. 2, Manhattan

Bob Gormley

District Manager

Community Board No. 2, Manhattan

Natural Beauty?

Or just another brick in the wall? Poor Baydog, just when I'm making my first excursion into eating innards at Tasty hand-pulled noodles Inc., he's having some sort of rough patch in his love affair with food - the sushi's not cutting it and the groundhog er Philly cheese steak, which seems about as close to the polar opposite of sushi as you can get, also isn't quite it. Maybe some nice dim sum?

This was actually part of my February hundred-mile victory feast, and it was as good as it looks. If you read my Tuesday night post, you know that I went for walk that would have been great if I'd started, oh, an hour or so earlier; however, that did get me within easy striking distance of another 100-mile month, and when I looked at the map and discovered that a return to crooked little Doyers Street would be about a mile and a quarter, I instantly decided that I was going to go have dinner at Nom Wah,, a classic-looking old place that I'd noticed 2 doors past the noodle shop (and therefore one very hearty bowl of hand-pulled-noodle soup too late to try).

It was the perfect foil to Monday night. It was a little on the dreary side, but it was short enough that it didn't matter, and I knew exactly where I was going, exactly how long it was going to take, and in fact, exactly what I was going to order when I got there - what could be better for a solo diner than an 8-piece dim sum sampler? That's what's shown above - I chickened out of taking a picture myself, because I was out in the middle of the room by myself and had the real camera along (one of the good bits of Monday's walk was the full moon rising next to WTC 1 and over the Winter Garden; the Winter Garden currently has an art installation of colorful lighted disks that appeared almost moon-sized, I brought the Lumix with thought that if it was clear on Tuesday night I might be able to get a picture -- it wasn't and I didn't) and it just seemed awfully conspicuous.

Thing is, it turns out I didn't need to -- what they brought me looked EXACTLY like the picture above, which I took from their website! No food stylists with the primping and the makeup - that's genuine natural beauty there! Only concession for the website was the checkered tablecloth. This would have been a fine light supper in itself; I got self-indulgent and added a roast pork bun (which if I were in Hawaii I would describe as "onolicious" or maybe even "brok' da mouth!", pretty close to my favorite manapua, and that's a good thing!) and the fried sesame balls with lotus paste. Wonderful. I'll be back. May skip dessert next time, you order everything at one go and my eyes turned out to be bigger than my stomach, and then I ate all three of the sesame balls anyways and there I was, on past perfectly comfortable to a little more stuffed than necessary.  Next time, maybe just an almond cookie for the road. I did get a jar of their chile oil on the way out as a present for TQ, he loves spicy stuff and Nom Wah's looks like it might pack a good punch!

As for Baydog - well, if all else fails, maybe a good dose of salt. Salt air and salt water. Not too long 'til Spring, right? 

Nobody Shakes It Like The Polar Bears Shake It!!!

The rest of you Harlem Shakers, just lay down the funny hats, watch this, and bow to your betters! Let's hear it for the crazy and amazing Polar Bears of Coney Island and The Bronx. Faaaaabulous! Note on the 27th - Oh, and how appropriate that I've got dancing polar bears up on International Polar Bear Day. I'm changing the date of this post from yesterday to today. Happy Polar Bear Day to all!

NONgoals - a bit of an explanation

Lifted from this morning's Facebook status update - sort of explains the whole "NONgoal" thing I was cackling about back in January.

99 miles in February, one to go!

Although last night's 11 and 3/4 mile walk was a good example of why I'm talking about "nongoals" with the walking. Having done 100 in January, naturally I had that in my head as a target for February, even though I'd promised myself that I wouldn't do that to myself - February is a shorter month, and we are beginning to get into the spring crunch at work and the last thing I need to do is inflict extra pressure on myself.

Last night was a lovely night, though, and I'd been thinking that it might be a good night to wrap up another 100 mile month.

I did another new walk, and a nice one (over to the Hudson from work, down around the Battery and then up along the East River to 57th street, then to 57th street and 7th ave to meet the Q train) but I started a little later than I should, I was tired enough that I got very aggravated by running into unannounced barriers on the East River Promenade and having to backtrack (I may actually be at 100 miles but the turnbacks aren't easy to spot on Google Maps) and then the Q train was doing the horribly annoying 2-section thing (see note at end) by the time I was riding home. This is why I don't want to start setting goals of 100 miles a month - the whole point is that I'm trying to up my activity level by doing things I enjoy, not ruin things I enjoy by obsessing over upping my activity.

Note- Horribly annoying 2-section Q-train thing goes like this: Up until around midnight or so, I could have gotten on a Q train at 57th street and that train would have taken me straight home, fairly quickly. After midnight, the Q gets broken into 2 sections, one from 57th street to Atlantic Avenue (2nd stop in Brooklyn as you're coming from Manhattan and a very large station where a lot of subway lines converge and you can also switch to the Long Island Railroad) and another from a different platform at Atlantic Avenue on out to Coney Island. Pretty much automatically makes the time it takes to get home at least half again as long. They do it for track work, it's not like the MTA is actually trying to make late-night commuters unhappy, but it still makes late-night commuters unhappy.

Fish on Friday

I'd like to be
Under the sea
In a parrotfish's garden
on the reef.

Parrotfish (uhu) with Christmas wrasse - two of my favorites. It's very very cold in NYC, the weekend's forecast is totally unsuitable for recreational boating so I'm looking forward to my first pool session in 2 years (!!!). It's going to be nice to work on my rolls in warm, clear, blue water ("yoga in a boat", I like to call it), but of course thoughts of warm, clear, blue water on cold winter days gets me thinking about the very best warm blues - the ones along the shores of O'ahu! Wish I could take a holiday there - especially now that I know that changes are coming to Haleiwa. At first I was afraid that that meant that I had missed my last chance to get shave ice at Aoki's when I decided to go hike among the honu (Hawaiian green sea turtles) instead of taking a shorter walk and then going back for my treat - thank goodness, it doesn't sound like this will be the end of Aoki's, but I will miss getting my shave ice at their classic old shop.

I am so glad that I at least got this that day:
Mahalo nui loa to dear Pua for sharing the news, and for talking me through the initial shock. It's funny, I half expect one or another my favorite places in Aiea to be gone every time I visit - but Aoki's? I'd have thought that whole little stretch of Haleiwa town would be in some sort of historic preservation district, safe from the wrecker's ball.

Consolation Prize #2

It was really cold out, but I still talked myself into a bit of a post-work walk by promising to reward myself with a stop at Wonton Garden, a noodle shop on Mott Street that's open late and sees a fair amount of me during budget season. I'd actually been crushed last year when I was all set for a bowl of their good wonton soup with thin Cantonese noodles on night after work and made my way there only to discover they were apparently closed for good, but as it turned out, they were closed for a very long renovation (yay!). I hadn't been since I discovered they'd reopened and I though I'd go tonight. I didn't make it. On crooked little Doyers Street, a little over 2 miles into what ended up being a nice little 3-mile walk, I was brutally waylaid by Tasty hand-pulled noodles Inc.

Dont'cha hate it when that happens?  
I had the house special, which is hand-pulled noodle soup with beef, oxtail, tendon, tripe, and a fried egg. I was a little scared of the tripe but I figured I could pull it out if I didn't like it, and it turned out to be pretty good. I figure this is Consolation Prize #2 for the noodle soup with soy-glazed pork belly I missed out on. I certainly felt consoled after this meal. Big-time comfort food, oh my yes. Very tasty indeed. 

I'll make it back to Wonton Garden before too long - budget season and royalty review time are both coming up fast and there will be plenty of late nights to go visit my old favorite hole-in-the-wall -- although I don't know if I can call them a hole-in-the-wall anymore, they are looking kinda spiffy since the reno! 

A Grand Ramble on President's Day

Deep in the heart of BROOKLYN!

 Note: If you don't have time to read, scroll down, there are more pictures are at the end! 

 So yesterday's chowderhound pictures were taken during one of my best rambles yet. I do still mean to do a post about how all of this "urban hiking" I've been doing is part of a Non-New-Year's Ir-resolution (short version: because the only New Year's resolution I ever kept was the one about never making another New Year's resolution again!) and why I made such a big deal about 100 miles being a NON-goal - but tonight I just want to share some pictures of yesterday's walk. This one was a little more planned out than most have been - I had a 3-day weekend to play with, with a 1:00 pm sea kayak committee meeting pretty much wiping out Sunday (good timing, with temperatures below freezing and winds that sounded like they were going to rip the roof off the club that was the one day of the weekend I really didn't want to be outside, I've toughened myself up because I think I'd go nuts if I stayed inside ALL winter but you know, there are LIMITS for this transplant from the tropics, and Sunday was way beyond those) and TQ unfortunately working on Saturday and Monday. Of those 2 days, Saturday was clearly the one to scratch the kayak itch, which I did (yay); Monday was looking like another excellent day for a long, long walk with Bella as long as I layered up for wind and cold. The interesting thing about walking with Bella as opposed to walking solo is that I lose the option to stop in a coffeeshop or jump on a bus if I get too cold, so I really did gear up pretty much exactly as though I were heading off for a hike in the woods - hiking boots, windbreaker over fleece and windpants over jeans, water for both of us, plus a good breakfast for me (kinda Hawaiian-style - ramen noodles with spam and an egg! :D) and a small extra helping of food for her (she gets breakfast early, before TQ leaves for work, I figured she'd need something to walk on too).

We set out from Midwood a little after 10:30 and the great part was that we didn't have any particular time we needed to be back.

I'd actually been looking at the map of Brooklyn the day before, trying to decide where to go, another bit of pre-planning I hadn't bothered with in any of my previous urban hikes. With a whole day to play with, I did think about heading someplace I hadn't actually been before. Coney Island Creek by land, instead of by sea? Gravesend Bay? Maybe that nice promenade that runs past "Bailout Beach" (a little pocket beach just south of the Verranzano Narrows Bridge that's a nice break spot on a good paddle and also one of the only places to get off the water along that stretch of the Brooklyn shoreline when a paddle in that area turns not-so-good)? In the end, though, I decided to head back towards Gerritsen Creek, which I'd almost gotten to a couple weeks ago on another weekend walk with Bella - TQ was working that day too, but I ended up cutting that walk short because he was supposed to get home by four or so and I'd realized that conditions were actually favorable to maybe snagging a pie at DiFara's without waiting for two hours! This time it was a little bit warmer, we didn't have any plans for the evening, and I didn't come up with any good surprises (I have to say the pizza surprise was a good one and well worth turning back a bit before Gerritsen Creek), and Gerritsen Creek is a really nice place to take a dog, so in the end we went with that, and it was great, and the wind chill factor didn't seem to be quite as biting as I'd expected, so we added in a loop through Sheepshead Bay, with the stop to "share" some chowder I couldn't resist posting the minute I got home. Here are a few more favorite pictures from the day -

Graffiti only a grinch could hate at the Midwood High Athletic Field. OK, probably principal-sanctioned, but  it's nice, right? 

Marina near the north end of Plum Beach Channel We stopped here for our first water break. It's funny,  this is an arm of Gerritsen Creek; I've paddled past this a dozen times or more but somehow never thought of turning in to explore. Of course in the summertime it's full of jetskis and motorboats, but so is the rest of the area.

One less-pretty picture - Gerritsen Beach got absolutely hammered by Hurricane Sandy. Mostly  the  residents have done an amazing job of cleaning up but there's still evidence here and there. 

Gerritsen Creek, with the towers of downtown Manhattan in the distance (tallest one is the new WTC 1)

Icy reeds

Lovely little bungalow court in Sheepshead Bay. Glad to see it looking ok after Sandy. I love these little courts - I think some of them have gone done to be replace by big glitzy condos with Miami-esque wave-styled rooflines and such, but if I had enough money to have a little place on the water and not have to worry about a storm taking it, I think I'd rather take someplace like this.

Donna G, one of the Sheepshead Bay fishing fleet. I always find myself thinking it would be fun to go fishing on one of these boats when I walk through this area - haven't gotten around to it yet but there are a couple that are known as family-friendly (which I would hope to mean "women won't be made to feel like they're spoiling a boys' day out") and maybe one of these days I will get around to it. That, and paddling the Gowanus Canal with the Dredgers...good to have things to look forward to! 

Sheepshead Bay. The bay is named after a kind of fish, but if they ever wanted to rebrand it to appeal to the gentry  they could call it Duckhead Bay. Or Swanhaven. But I'd be sad if they did.

Randazzo's! Yay!

Back home in Midwood, just before sunset.

Rough estimate of the day's route. A fine urban hike!

More pictures from the day over on Flickr.

How To Share Your Chowder With A Dog

1. Get some chowder

2. Eat up all the chowder by yourself.

3. Let the dog lick the empty container. The dog will be thrilled.

Note: For sharing chowder with humans or cats, you might want to look elsewhere for hints. These instructions might not work as well with species who have a less liberal definition of "share".

Alas, No Noodles. Made it a Paddle-My-Buns-Off Paddle instead!

Oh, so sad! No more late night noodles and dumplings at Purple Yam - they said they tried for 3 weeks and it just wasn't flying :( . I have the worst timing - I went in when they first posted that deliriously delicious-looking shoyu-glazed pork-belly noodle soup, which was a week or two too early, then I waited until a week too late to try again. Still had a fine meal (tried the tamarind shrimp with rice cake, which was very good), and then as a consolation prize I got an order of Purple Yam's fabulous cua pao (steamed pork buns) to go. I had one for a late-night snack, and through some admirable self-restraint, there are 2 left for breakfast.

Purple Yam's cua pao is a huge favorite of mine because it's about the closest thing to manapua I've found in this town, with the exception of the char siu bao at a Chinese bakery that shut down a month after a co-worker who also hailed from the islands introduced me to it, and one other little hole-in-the-wall bakery in Chinatown whose address I idiotically failed to note (I'd stumbled across it during one of my rambles). Funny thing is, almost every Chinese restaurant and bakery in the city serves steamed roast pork buns that resemble manapua - but there's something about the seasoning of the meat that's not right. I think they cook the char siu sweeter in Hawai'i or something (or maybe everything just tastes sweeter to me when I'm there), but whatever the case, Purple Yam's cua pao comes pretty close.

 Oh, and how was the paddle? Well, I stayed closer to home than usual - I launched a little too late to go to the marshes, and a little too early for beachcombing, and it wasn't the nicest day, and I was on my own, so when I say I made it a paddle-my-buns-off paddle, I'm not really kidding. Instead of setting a destination, I stayed closer to home, took a leaf out of our racing paddlers' book and just did laps, focusing on keeping the boat moving at a good brisk clip for what ended up being 3 hours. The folks at the club who paddle the tippy little K-1 rockets tend to stay in the basin and do loops - I couldn't quite restrain myself that much but I did work out a very nice loop that ran up and down the entire length of the basin, out into the bay, east to the Canarsie Pier and west to what we call the "Jeep Marsh" (located between the Paerdegat and Mill Basin, and a pretty destination at high water despite the abandoned Jeep parts at the inlet to the marsh and after which it's named). I did the big loop twice and then did one more full circuit of the basin because I was a few minutes shy of 3 hours. I'm not sure I could've done 3 hours in the basin but this mixed up the scenery nicely, and also broke up the chilly fighting-the-headwinds pieces and the slightly-too-warm tailwind segments, in a really nice way. And for all it wasn't the prettiest day out there, it still pulled of some decent moments:

 

Noodle Paddle.

I paddled about 13 miles in around three and a quarter hours today. I think I may have earned one of these:

Valentine Post: Heart in the River, A Big Red Birthday Hug, and How I Learned To Read

The usual! I took this in Fairmount Park, somewhere near Philadelphia, on a great trip a couple of years ago to go see some Pirate Burlesque on the barkentine Gazela with Will and Elizabeth - what a great trip that was, and this has become my standard Valentine's Day picture 'cause I love it & it's perfect for my outdoorsy/watery theme.

Plus - what better day for a Big Red Hug? :D

Yeah, working in children's publishing does have its good points sometimes! Thank you to Brian at A Movable Bridge for taking the picture - the first nice lunchtime surprise was running into him up in the cafeteria, and then as I was talking to him, Clifford came sneaking up behind me. Clifford's celebrating his 50th birthday this year - we kicked off the festivities last Fall, because it was in 1962 that Norman Bridwell first sent a set of his drawings to an editor who really took a shine to one of a little girl and a big red dog and suggested that that pair might make an interesting basis for a book of their own. Clifford the Big Red Dog came out in February 1963 and the big dog just got bigger and bigger from that point on. We've had balloons all week and today Clifford was up in the cafeteria handing out hugs and cupcakes!

There's a lovely interview with Norman Bridwell in School Library Journal (I actually laughed out loud reading the story about his editor warning him "You know, we're not running a Norman Bridwell book club...") - and as long as I am going on and on about Clifford I will just add that my favorite thing so far from the celebration was when Mr. and Mrs. Bridwell and their daughter, Emily Elizabeth (yes, THE Emily Elizabeth!) came to visit last year. Norman gave a very nice talk for the staff here, and at the reception afterwards we all got signed copies of The Clifford Collection. I just LOVED that because as a fortysomething, dyed-in-the-wool bookworm, one of the first books I remember was the original Clifford.

I suppose that I'm pretty good proof that one of the best ways to teach a kid to love to read is to read to that kid.  I remember getting read bedtime stories every night (or poems, and with poems I always wanted one more, and my dad would always close with, "I'll tell you the story of Jack and Ory, and now my story's begun; I'll tell you another about his brother, and now my story is done!", which drove me nuts because I never found out what EITHER of those stories were).  In doing so, my folks actually taught me how to read without realizing that they were doing so; I don't recall it myself but the story they've told me was that they figured out that I was reading along when one night one of them mis-read something, and I corrected them. At first they thought maybe I'd just memorized the story, but then they tried me on something I was less familiar with and I read that too. I don't know if Clifford was one of the titles I learned on but I do remember Clifford, and another Bridwell classic, The Witch Next Door, as being early, early favorites.

Funny thing about working here is that of course we're surrounded by Clifford all the time, but it's mostly the TV version and the Clifford I remember from "small-kid-time" was a much doggier sort of dog - like he didn't talk, and I was pretty sure I recalled him actually snarling at one point, and he was just generally a little less tidy in a way that I liked. I'd been thinking it would be fun to get my hands on a copy of the first one just to see whether I was remembering it right, but somehow never got around to it, so it was tons of fun to get this signed copy of the first 6 stories - turned out I was recalling correctly, and on top of that there's a great little intro section that includes the original drawing that started it all. Lots of fun. Happy Birthday Clifford!

Follow the Osprey

Canarsie Pol osprey, April 2007

With the remnants of last weekend's blizzard still in evidence, there's certainly no mistaking the fact that it's still winter, but the days ARE getting longer (I do love it when I start seeing a bit of blue still left in the sky when I leave work at my usual hour of 6, and we are there!), and the various Sebago committees are beginning to gather to plot out the season's fun (SailComm was last night, kayak & canoe committees this weekend), and before too much longer, our local ospreys will be starting their long flight back from their wintering grounds to the South. One of the ospreys that nests in the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge (over in Broad Channel) has actually been tagged with a GPS tracker, and I'm really looking forward to following along on Osprey's Journey.

Thanks to John at Control Geek for passing the word word word, word on the bird!

Cross-posting at the Sebago Canoe Club blog.