Something pointless about the economy. And snow hike pix.

So there I was, getting ready to come in to work. Yes, it's Saturday. I've just had a little too much work to keep up with during normal work hours & a couple of quiet hours at my desk will let me wrap up a few projects that have been almost, but not quite, finished for a little too long now.

The phone rang, and it was an old friend calling to tell me she got laid off this week.

Isn't this just how things are now? You either have too much work, or not enough.

I'm actually genuinely glad I'm in the former category & (knock wood) likely to stay there. I can ride this out where I am. Good place to be & I'm glad I didn't go chasing off after bigger bucks in the finance industry, as I'd thought of doing now & then when things got particularly rocky.

I'm very worried about my friend though. She's got people relying on her. Actually that's true of a number of my friends.

Like I said, there's no real point here. Just hope that things level off before they get much worse.

OK, on a happier note - how 'bout some happy snow hike pictures? TQ & I went to Sleeping Giant State Park up in Hamden the day after the cold water workshop. We'd originally meant to go to the AMC rolling session in Greenwich, but we kinda overslept & anyhow, it was a glorious day for hiking - sunny & much warmer than the day of the cold water thing. Took my camera, of course, here are my favorite pictures from the day:

Let's build a SNOWMAN!


Isn't it interesting the way this bush has sort of little fins growing along its branches?

I'm afraid I don't think the bluejay lived to tell the tale.



We took the Gorge Cascade Trail. Things were pretty slippery, we were doing a lot of "boot-skiing" on steep bits, TQ with great verve, me a little more cautiously. We very specifically picked this one instead of the one that goes up over the top of a quarry - that one's got the best views, but would've been pretty iffy. I was actually hoping for spectacular icicles along here but it was a little too warm. Still pretty nice, though.

I Can Has...

...TERIBURGER?

love it love it love it!!! go see!!!

auwe...

Like I wasn't already homesick enough with my parents relocated to some summer-tourist town in NC without me even having a chance to get in a last trip home*, and with this winter being a real one** -

My friends Steve (aka "Tetefano") and Camilla have just spent 5 days on Oahu. They did make it up to Aiea, I wish I had known, I would have begged them to go get lunch at & take pictures of the Forty-Niner***, the building, the saimin, maybe lau lau & lomi lomi salmon, yum. No pix from my hometown except Arizona Memorial tour though, they didn't like the Aloha Swap Meet much & that was what they went to in Aiea proper. More in Waikiki, froufy drinks, spam musubi, surfing lessons, hula, all kinds of tourist-kine stuffs, silly to sublime, all part of the fun. They have been vlogging diligently & I had a great time catching up last night. Ended up a little weepy, though. God do I miss that place.

The surfing lesson is the best - longboard surfing, plenny good fun, Steve got Camilla having a great ride, and Camilla having a great wipeout, and he even tried to get a couple of his own rides - not entirely successfully, but a noble effort.

*I was invited, but it was on too short notice during a bad time at work & would've been an awful trip anyways, kind of like going to Disneyland the day after your favorite auntie died.

**It does seem to be relenting, we've had a few stunning days lately, hear it's a good one today, will be working late but maybe it'll be a walk across the bridge night!

***One of the weirder things that bugs me about the whole move thing is that the last time I was out there was the first time I was there with a digital camera. I wanted to take pictures of everything that was same as I remembered from small-kid time. 49er, Aiea Snack Shop, the library (with the alley with the crowing roosters behind it) - all sorts of peculiar things, not obviously photogenic, just stuff that was part of my childhood environment. But taking pictures always meant asking people to wait, and I was taking so many anyways, and I felt stupid asking, and I figured I'd leave some of those sillier pictures for my next trip. Ha.

There will be a next trip, though. I swear. Maybe not this year, but yikes, next year's my 25th high school reunion - haven't made any so far, but now I have some serious impetus.

If I can get myself back to my hometown, then maybe my parents not living there anymore will stop bothering me so much.

Kayak Rainbow (much less dreary)

OK, also not quite in order. And maybe not quite the full spectrum. But we certainly had a sharp-looking fleet turn up at the pool session this week. All lined up for a good hosing down before we take them inside. Actually I'm glad I have gotten my boat there a couple of times, otherwise it just doesn't get washed all winter - the water at the club gets shut down to keep the pipes from bursting.

This just gave me a good chuckle. I'm pretty good about zipping up but I border on obsessive-compulsive when it comes to key check. The whole security setup at the club is with big padlocks. A padlock on the gate, padlocks on the clubhouse, padlocks on the containers. Leave your keys on the wrong side of one of those padlocks & you are somewhere between slightly & seriously screwed. Especially if you're a cell-phone-less renegade like me. Lock 'em in your container with the clubhouse open - there's a telephone with a list of phone numbers next to it, it'll be mortifying but somebody will probably come bail you out.

Lock 'em in the clubhouse with the front gate locked? Oops, time for a little Escape from Fort Sebago action. Then you still get to call somebody to come bail you out. Fun on top of fun.

I don't have "keys" written in the bottom of my boat, but I have got a ritual - I jingle them every time I have to lock a lock. And they don't go on the dock without being in a zipped or clipped container.

I had a great pool session this week. Or at least better than my last, which was not so hot (although it was fun & it was great seeing everybody). I'm on track for rolling every month of the off-season (Sebago's doing our usual demo at the Long Island Paddlesports Symposium, outside again this year, so that'll be March, February's the only month that's up in the air for an obvious chance to roll), and I've broken the barrier of rolling in water with actual ice in it (somehow that concept had always sort of unnerved me, but the Cold Water Workshop gave me the perfect chance to try it), but when the water gets that cold, my rolling gets to be all about just getting the boat rightside up. I do not mess around with the stuff I'm not so good at, and when I don't mess around with the stuff I'm not so good at for a while (as has been the case this winter), when I do get back to messing around with it, gee, surprise surprise, I'm even less good at it. It's half rustiness, I just get out of practice, & half just the instinctive "yikes" reaction sneaking back in. For a lot of people, the hardest part of learning to roll is learning to stay in the boat when it goes over in the first place. I'm a very confident swimmer, comfortable in the water, but even so, our brains are wired to advise us that being upside down underwater with our legs stuck inside 50 pounds of fiberglass is just Bee-Ay-Dee BAD. Not entirely inappropriate advice either, but anybody who really wants to learn to do kayaking beyond the rec-boat-on-a-pond is eventually going to get to the point where they have to convince a part of the brain that's been around & doing it's bit to keep the human race alive for a very long time that no, this time it's really OK to be upside down underwater etc etc. I was just looking at a site about brain functions & it seems like what you've got going on is a bit of a dance (or maybe a tug-of-war) between a couple of parts of your limbic system - the amygdala (which handles fear, but also memory...) and the hippocampus, which I'm not going to link to because the definition is too good:

Hippocampus- the portion of the cerebral hemisphers in basal medial part of the temporal lobe. This part of the brain is important for learning and memory . . . for converting short term memory to more permanent memory, and for recalling spatial relationships in the world about us.

Sounds like the brain's Learning-To-Roll-A-Kayak center to me. Whaddayathink?

I'm getting a bit off-course here though. My point was really that even though I know perfectly well that I have a fall-back roll if a roll I'm still working on fails, and a wet exit if the fall-back roll fails, and friends all around in the off chance something really weird goes wrong, I will still find an odd lack of confidence sneaking in if I don't practice regularly. Not quite fear - just a lack of enthusiasm for throwing myself into all the rolls I'm not so good at, sticking with the basics &, well, actually just spending an inordinate amount of my pool session chitchatting or otherwise avoiding actual practice. It's a weird feeling when I get that way. I was kind of being that way at my first session of the winter 2 weeks ago - until L. went completely bonkers with the hand rolls and then got me doing one of those hand rolls where you just don't bother coming off the back deck (a roll I was doing lots of the first winter when rolling became fun & then somehow stopped doing & eventually just sort of forgot). Still felt like a less-than-great practice session, but I was glad Laurie was there & pushed me to try something new-old. Got the hippocampus back in gear, I guess!

This time around was lots better.

Cheerily Depressing: Rubbish Rainbow.

I'd gotten the idea to do this over on Alison Dyer's Squid Ink. She and a couple of her friends were stormbound on an island one day last summer & while killing time, made a Garbage Rainbow. She's been documenting refuse problems in her area of Newfoundland as a personal project, and this was just a twist produced by the weather suddenly handing her some time to kill, but she'd suggested that it might be an interesting project for kayak bloggers who are interested in sort of bringing people's attention to the astounding amount of crap we see out there to do the same in their own areas.

I'd left a comment saying that sounded like fun & I'd probably do one sometime once the weather warmed up enough to make beachcombing fun. See, I had this crazy idea that it was actually going to take me time to get the full spectrum. Ha. Silly me.

It's a little depressing how wrong I was. TQ & I stopped for a quick break on Ruffle Bar on Saturday. Nothing fancy, we just wanted to have a little tea & stretch our legs for a bit. I collected this mini-rainbow in about two minutes, from a shoreline space of just a couple of square yards. I was standing up near the high-water mark, where a lot of the trash gets stuck in the brush along the shoreline. I looked around & realized I was seeing just about every color I needed. Those that were missing, I found just a few steps away.

Jamaica Bay paddle, 2/7/09

Just a few pictures from a 3 hour & change afternoon paddle. The weather gods smiled on us, it was in the 40's & a beautiful day. Paddled around 9 miles around Ruffle Bar & Canarsie Pol. Saw a seal on Ruffle Bar - first time I ever saw one in Jamaica Bay! Raccoons, too, been seeing them out on the beaches of Ruffle Bar a lot this winter.

Small Boat Shop Cold Water Workshop - 1/31/2009

Seeing the Coast Guard off - this was an excellent addition to the cold water workshop, they came & talked about both the gear they use in cold water (quite similar to kayaking gear, really) and the work they do, and what recreational boaters can do to make their work easier. Good stuff.
Please note there's ice in that water. I rolled every month of the off-season last year, but it was a bizarrely warm winter & the water never got that cold. This is the coldest water...

to which I have voluntarily subjected myself.

Would you believe it was actually a lot of fun? Informative too, this week is falling apart workwise but I'm hoping to get at least one more post out of it.

A bunch more pictures from the day over on my Flickr page! Pictures variously by me, Jean & TQ - thanks guys!

Tired of winter...

i wanna go home...

(don't miss step 33)

I Made UglyShips.Com!

Or rather, one of my pictures of the psychedelic tugboat Hackensack did!

Woohoo! Check it out, UglyShips.com!

Thanks for the heads-up, Bowsprite! Great post over there, too!

But First, Photo Tag!

Oops. I promised more pictures & writeup from the cold water workshop, but I haven't quite sorted out what I want to talk about yet, if I want it to be a couple of posts, or if I want to do it as a photo gallery, or what...

So being all befuddled in that direction, and also rather tired, I'll just take the lovely out that DaveO has provided me, in the form of tagging me with a photo archive game.

I've been terrible about tags for a while - I have a tendency to overthink & overwrite them, so that something that's just supposed to be a fun thing ends up keeping me up all night blathering on. This one was simple, though - the instructions were to "go into your photo archive, pick the 4th folder in the archive, select the 4th picture in the folder, and write about it. A person then needs to tag 4 other people to do the same". Well, that's simple & I was very curious about what picture that would come out being!

And the one above is it!

This was taken during one of the longer day paddles I've ever done, a circumnavigation of Staten Island done on Saturday, July 16th, 2005. About 50 miles. My folks had just sent me my first Pentax Optio WP (I'm working on #2 now, #1 went to the big darkroom in the sky after a day of surfing, I knew it was leaking but I stuck it in a ziploc bag, hoped for the best, and didn't get it) & it turned up about a week before the big trip. I took about a zillion pictures that day but lucky for this game, the 4th folder was sort of a subset of pictures I'd taken in the Graveyard of Ships.

This picture appeared in my blog on Monday, July 18th; I'd done a quick trip report on Sunday the 17th & eventually did a 2-part photo trip report on Buzznet - Part 1 was southbound, Part 2 was northbound, and then there was the Graveyard of Ships set.

Now let's see, hmm, who shall I tag?

I think I shall tag...

It's hard to choose really - but I'll start with Tugster Will,

and oh, let's take this international!

Captain JP in London

and

Claire of Claire's Garden in Scotland (and I should start a pool on whether it will be a flower or a horse!),

And then how about Japan? Hello, Pandabonium?

(hope none of you mind, I usually leave the complicated ones for "whoever wants to do them", but this one's not too complicated!)

Paddlers Survive Repeated Duckings in Icy Norwalk Harbor!

Ha, and how is THAT for an attention-getting title? Not to worry, though, it was all completely intentional - if you missed it, there's a full explanation down a few posts!

Yep, we did the full demo, rolling, assisted rescues & self rescues, and then a bunch of people jumped in & went for a swim, and it was all good educational fun!

Turns out that not having enough space for sea kayaks to manuever was not going to be an issue. There are bubblers and then there are bubblers - Rex Marina's bubblers do some serious agitation of the water. The shop has them run those for a few days before the workshop, they clear the whole slip area - plus the area wasn't quite as locked up as I'd thought it would be. It's more like the Hudson, where the ice comes & goes.

Pictures & more of a writeup tonight - just wanted to confirm that we did do the demo & actually had a great time. Beautiful day - cold, yeah, but that just helps make the point!

A few more Coney Island pictures -

Heading up to CT tomorrow from work, time to pack up the Great Big Bag so no time for much writing tonight. Bit frustrating having a blog a few topics I'd like to write about, and no time in which to actually do any writing, but that's the life I've got. Well, the way things are now, I can't complain about having too much work. I have a decent job & that's a good thing. We're just feeling it like everybody else. Anyhow, in the meantime, here were a few more random Coney Island pictures that I liked from last weekend, and another video snippet (well, this time more of a sound clip that happens to come with a visual component).

An emptying Astroland, with the Astroland Rocket, the Astro Tower, and the Cyclone in the background . It was announced this week that the family that owned Astroland is donating the rocket. It will stay in Coney Island. It will be a fine souvenir.

My favorite Coney Island mermaid, on the side of the Grill House. She doesn't have much competition, though, I always miss the Mermaid Parade for one reason or another, so it's pretty much her & the Cha Cha's mermaid.


Carnival games, that's all, just liked the way the light looked -

Somebody's sad. Usually in NYC, a bouquet tied to a fence like this is left in memory of a departed friend. The picture on the bouquet (you can see it if you click on the picture for the full-screen-plus view) is of the devil that loomed over the Dante's Inferno ride.

The Wonder Wheel isn't going anywhere.

Sound clip with video component:

Astroland Tower in winter - Astraeolian Harp @ Yahoo! Video

One thing I always notice when I get off the train at the West 8th street - Coney Island Aquarium stop in the wintertime is that high, hollow tone on that snippet. To me, that's like the signature sound of the place in the off season. I'm pretty sure that the source is the Astro Tower, acting like the world's largest Aeolian harp. Or would it be an Astroaeolian harp? You can't hear it in the summertime over the rattles and shrieks and music and buzzers and bells and all, but whenever the wind is blowing in the wintertime, it sings itself a solo.

Pitchers & catchers notwithstanding -

There's still some winter left. Particularly dreary specimen of a winter day today too - it was still looking pretty here in Ditmas Park when I left for work, but the snow had already turned to sleet & by the time I got into the city...

BLECH. Good day to go to the office & not go out all day.

Oh well. It'll come, the spring. Won't it?

In the meantime, hey, at least it seems the Hudson River ice yacht set has a good shot at happiness this year. Now would that be something fun to see, or what?

ps - wow. Just stopped by the Stevens Institute NYHOPS harbor conditions site, checking the New York Bight Apex surface temps. OK, it's not like Sebago's SailComm needs to start thinking about hosting an ice yacht regatta - but it does look like sticking a set of runners to the hull could be a helpful modification for any kayaker who's planning an launching in the basin this weekend!

Change

When some things change, it can be such a relief.

Elsa's Irish Music Party 2008


But it's nice that some things don't.

Elsa's Irish Music Party 2009


Same sunny apartment full of nice people, good food & lively tunes - what a pleasant way to spend another chilly winter day.

Cold Water Workshop at the Small Boat Shop, 1/31/09

From Cold Water Workshop at the SBS, February 2008

.

This year, they might have to cut a hole in the ice for the swim!

This is a fun & informative event & if you live anywhere around the South Norwalk, CT area & are looking forward to pulling your dusty boat out of the winter mothballs as soon as the air starts warming up, this would be a great thing to attend. Early Spring (see "Hope", post before last, it's coming!) always seems to be the worst time for small-boat tragedies - the air starts warming up & people just can't wait to get on the water, but they don't realize how hazardous the water can still be.

Workshops like these are a very good way to learn what you need to know (and wear) for cold-water paddling. It's a 2-part approach. In the morning, Chuck Sutherland (webmaster of my favorite off-season boating safety site, link at end of post) gives a talk about hypothermia, and the local Kokatat rep does a show & tell of all the various cold-weather clothing & talks about how the various pieces work together to help a person with the right skills for off-season boating stay safe & comfortable in water temperatures from "ooh, refreshing!" right on down to freezing. Then there's a lunch break, then anyone who wants to can get suited up & go swimming. It's all pretty interesting, but I think the swimming is the fun part!

TQ & I even did some rolling & rescues last year & unless it's too hard to cut a hole big enough to manuever in, I think we'll probably be trying it out in the ice this year. BRRRR. That will be interesting! I'm actually a little nervous, but it's a great opportunity to practice & see what it's like to work in water that cold (this will be the coldest water I've ever been in).

Whatever we are able to do, I will definitely be taking pictures!

Visit TheSmallBoatShop.com for more information.

Want to learn more about cold water boating, but can't make the workshop? Check out Chuck's site - well worth a visit!

Gong Hey Fat Choy!

Manhattan's Chinatown, 1/26/08 - Members of the New York United Lion and Dragon Dance Troupe practice their moves (and keep warm) out on the sidewalk prior to a Lunar New Year performance at the Red Egg Restaurant.

Happy Year of the Ox!

The Original Nathan's Lives On

Well, I don't think anybody who saw that picture I put up in December of the Thor Equities people putting up the For Lease sign on the Nathan's on the Boardwalk thought that that could be the end of Nathan's.

But just in case anyone was wondering - yes, the original Nathan's lives on!


And they were doing a fine business, even here in the depth of January!


Plenty of hot dogs for all.


I Haz A Hot Dog!



Srsly, though - I'd just assumed that whatever was going to happen with Coney Island, there'd be at least a few vestiges of what's there now left & that Nathan's was a solid enough business, and even more basically, enough of a fundamental part of any tourist's mental checklist of things that are really New Yorky, that Nathan's would be one of those survivors.

I got a little swamped & out of the local news loop in December, though, so I missed the short flap in the papers about Nathan's maybe being slated for shutdown. Instead, I saw the CEO's refutation of that rumour on the NYTimes' CityRoom blog.

You get a really good sense of how people feel about the whole Coney Island facelift thing in the comments, too.

No need to look much farther than Times Square & Soho to see what people are afraid of - those areas used to have character (ok, in the case of the former, that character was "nasty, sleazy, skanky & louche"). Now, there's not much there that you wouldn't find in your basic suburban mall.

A clean-up isn't always a bad thing. I think that with Times Square, most people would agree that the Mall of the Mouse is a big improvement over the bad old days.

But it would be so nice to see something a little more original out in Coney Island than another Red Lobster with extra neon...

Hope...

People were walking around my office this morning yelling things about pitchers & catchers. Could it possibly be that spring is on the way?

(Ha, you thought I was finally going to say something about the inauguration, didn't you?)

Coney Island, January '09 - Friendly Fur Seal

Having a non-paddling weekend for a change. Some of us had been hoping for a paddle today, as the forecast was mild temperature-wise (mid-30's) - but by yesterday the windspeeds we were seeing in the forecast had gone from a just-fine 10 kts when I was looking early in the week, up to a windchillin' small craft advisory "gusting to 30" when I looked yesterday. The incipient plans were dropped.

It was absolutely gorgeous out though, so as I frequently do when conditions preclude getting out in boats, I went out to Coney Island.

I ended up having the most amazing time at the aquarium - I ended up alternately playing with & watching other people play with a fur seal!

It being cold, I had all the usual cold-weather accessories - scarf, hat, and gloves. When I went inside the Sea Cliffs exhibit, where they keep the otters, seals, walruses and penguins, I took off the gloves & scarf. I was standing in front of the seal tank when I noticed this seal seemed to be looking at me much more intently than seals usually look at the people looking at them.




So I waved my scarf at it and suddenly - oh, hello!


I never saw a seal quite so interested in what was going on outside it's tank.


It seemed to be particularly intrigued by waving scarves.


Me, I couldn't get enough of this game. The seal would follow you from one side of the window to the other - if you stepped back from the window, it would watch you intently - I even figured out that if you walked away from this window, there was another window about 12 feet down the hall & the seal would zip down there & wait for you...too funny!

I took about a zillion pictures of other people playing the seal's game and then finally realized that the Optio does have a little video capacity, so here's a little sample of the fun. This wasn't even much, you get the basic idea here, but the bigger your motions, the more the seal seemed to like it. These folks were a little reserved.

 

The funniest thing was as I was leaving, right at closing time. I went back upstairs to the outside section of the exhibit. As I was walking past the seal pool, I stopped for a second - and curious, remembering how this seal had had no problem tracking me from one window to the other, I waved my scarf again - and within a couple of seconds, the seal popped up & swam right over to me!

I felt very, very bad that I didn't have a fish for it!

On another note - is it just me or does that sea otter appear to be winking?


Tomorrow's colder but less windy. Could've been a paddling day, or I could have gone to the pool - but it's my friend Elsa's annual Irish music party and that was such fun last year. Woman does not live by boat alone. At least not this woman!

Sita Sings the Blues

Totally, totally, totally off any of my usual topics...just had to share my current YouTube favorite(s).

Takes about 15 minutes to watch all 4.

I think I can promise that you'll never think of the Ramayana in quite the same way again!

.....O
:D/>
.O

Part 1: Dandaka Dharma


Part 2: The Abduction of Sita


Part 3: Hanuman Finds Sita



Part 4: The Battle of Lanka



Afterwards, if you like it & are curious about what sort of marvelously odd person would actually think "Hey, wouldn't it be great if the Ramayana were set to some classic 1920's jazz songs?", check out www.ninapaley.com! I see that the feature film is going to be aired on WNET (NYC's PBS station) in March - I don't have a TV, but I'd bet a bowl of buttered popcorn that with this spiffy new computer, that might not be an obstacle. Or I might just stick with my original plan of catching it at the New York International Children's Film Festival - just one of the stops on Sita's world tour!