One Paddle...one very short paddle, boo.

One paddle, two paddle, three paddle,
Four to take me home...

Boy, am I falling behind on my trip reporting! So here's the first in the catch-up. April 8th. Beautiful day, had potential, but not nearly what I was wishing for that day - we short-changed ourselves when we probably could've gotten away with a little more time than we gave ourselves.

This wasn't the best boating winter ever; January and March were kind of a wash for paddling what with the snow and the snow and the snow and the cold and aaaaagh the snow, plus the flu that was going around flattened me for a week or two in there. I did sneak in that one 8 mile paddle to the Cross Bay Boulevard Bridge and back on one less Arctic weekend in February in between snowmabombaggedon fun, but then that was pretty much it until April. And this is of course the time of year when work gets extra extra crazy, and paddling is the absolute best way for me to blow off some of the stress from that, so by April I'd worked up a pretty intense craving some time on the water.

But then all of the sudden in April it's time for the club to start gearing up for the season, and so right when I was really NEEDING some time on the water, there ended up being a string of meetings three weekends in a row.

First one was a kayak committee meeting on April 8th. Potluck beforehand, then a meeting with scheduling.

Now, Sebago has the most astounding potlucks, and meetings - well, I don't always enjoy them but you just have to have them if you're going to have a well-run club, which we really do. But this one was running at cross-purposes against getting out for much of a paddle (OK, could've gotten a great paddle in if we'd gotten up at 6 am, but I am very seriously not a morning person even when well-rested, and I'd been working some long days in April).  So I dithered and grumbled about what to do with the day until finally a couple other trip leaders proposed a pre-meeting paddle. I talked to TQ and we decided we'd go for that. 

It ended up being a bit on the breezy side, and we were the only other ones who showed up. We ended up running late, so we told Chris and Stephen to go ahead and launch without us, we would catch up with them.

We found them hanging out by Green Can #3. It turned out that part of their motivation for calling for a pre-meeting paddle was an interesting project for a navigation workshop they were teaching - they'd brought along a GPS and were checking actual locations of a couple of the nearby aids to navigation to see how closely they matched the locations on the charts. I must remember to ask them next time we paddle together how that turned out - that was some serious commitment to teaching a good class!

TQ and I left them to their location-finding and proceeded to go on a teensy weensy loop - first we blew down towards Mill Basin, then realized we were setting ourselves up for a long slog into the wind going back to the Paerdegat, so we cut over towards Canarsie Pier to get the slog into the middle of the paddle, then back to the basin.

That was short. WAY too short. We got back to the clubhouse and for one reason and another, but at least in part because I'd just been dreaming and dreaming about a good long work-stress-vanquishing cruise and ended up with this stupid little tease of a 3 mile paddle, I had a little bit of a meltdown right before the meeting. Fortunately not witnessed by too many. Hindsight 20/20, afterwards TQ and I agreed that we should've just stayed out longer.

Note to self: You joined a paddling club to go paddling. Next time you NEED to go paddling, just go already. It's not the end of the world to be late for a  meeting at the club.

PS don't worry, next one was better! And at least I got some pretty pictures. Click on any of them for a slideshow view. 

A Fish Story!

An Honest to Gosh 100% True Fish Story starring me and my friend Vicky, with special guest appearance by Myrrhlyn the Dog, on a beautiful day in Jamaica Bay and Queens. Click here to view the photos! 

More photos from my first ride on Canarsian

It was SO nice to get out on the water on Saturday when I really hadn't planned to, and it was absolutely gorgeous out. Here are a dozen photos from our spin around Canarsie Pol. The moon was out, looking as though it was snared in a net of clouds, and Derek got my attention as we passed the daymark in time for me to spot the osprey he'd noticed there - my first of the season! Click on any photo for a better view (slide show unfortunately doesn't seem to be working right now). 

Opening Day Bonus - My First Ride in Canarsian

Canarsian!

As I'd mentioned in the last post, I'd made a decision to garden rather than paddle. That was a bit of a tough call - if you've been reading this blog for very long, you'll know that I really like traditions like New Year's Day paddles and Escapes from Black Friday (by land or by sea, either one's a million zillion times better than shopping), and the Opening Day paddle is definitely one of those. However, I'd actually gotten out both of the weekends before that, one very short one before the kayak committee potluck on the 7th, and then a 14 mile solo which was my first ever attempt at finding a whale in my kayak. More on that in a trip report later. I didn't find the whale but the long paddle was very satisfying, just what I'd been aching for for weeks, so I wasn't feeling quite as much like I NEEDED to paddle as I sometimes do this time of year.

Saturday was just a perfect day for gardening, and we're getting to the time of year when I really like to get the garden going, so that's what I ended up doing, and that was satisfying too. Anyways, there were plenty of other boats out on the water, nobody organized a paddle but some independent paddlers went out, the CCNY Concrete Canoe Team was practicing sprints near the dock (they look good this year!), and some of the sailors went out. While all of these other things were going on, some club members under the direction of Jim L. (who's both a sailing committee co-chair and the head of the boatbuilding group) went next door to the Diamond Point Yacht Club to put the club's Point Comfort 23 safety boat, Canarsian, back in the water for the season.

After the potluck and general meeting, I was sitting with Barbara, our relatively new membership chair, as she signed up some new members who'd joined us. Sebago's modernized enough that there are now administrative things that can be done on tablets on site, instead of people filling out paper forms and somebody then needing to type all of their info into the club database. Barbara hadn't used the tablet for sign-in before, and although I couldn't really offer to help I did offer to sit with her and offer moral support.

Well, that lasted until somebody came through saying that Patrick was taking Canarsian out for a spin. Boat ride? Out on the water for opening day after all? Heck yeah! Poor Barbara, so much for moral support from me, I was up and grabbing a PFD off the clubhouse rack with apologies, but without a moment's hesitation. 

Because I have seen Canarsian from here...

and from here...

and from here... 

and even from here, back when the boatbuilding group was first putting her together --

But because rides on Canarsian are generally being given on open house type days, when I'm making myself useful helping out with kayak or war canoe trips for our guests, this was my first time seeing Canarsian from HERE! 

A fantastic finish to Opening Day! 

Spring, have you sprung?

I sure hope so! Feeling cautiously optimistic that Spring might finally be here in earnest after that crazy yo-yo start the season had here in the Northeast, I decided to break with tradition today. It was opening day at Sebago, and that usually means a pre-potluck paddle, but nobody really instigated anything. I could easily have taken on the instigator role myself (and I felt a little guilty that I didn't), but it just seemed like today would be a very convenient day to get my garden plot at the club ready to go for the season. My first stop of the day in Canarsie was therefore at Dragonetti's Florist and Garden Center, over on the other side of the Paerdegat Basin, to pick up some compost; I walked that over to the club on a luggage cart. How's that for urban gardening for you?

I used to clear out the bed in the fall, at the end of the growing season, but a couple of years ago some of my ecologically-minded friends were sharing an article recommending leaving things more or less alone until spring, to provide shelter for beneficial insects like native bees and ladybugs and food for birds. It made enough sense that I've now adopted that practice for my garden. So the above is pretty much the shaggy dried remnants of last year's plants. 

Mostly cleared out

I was so happy to find new growth on the lavender, thyme, and rosemary. We had some harsh weather and also some very up-and-down swings this winter, and although all of these had made it through last winter, they were looking pretty dry the last time I'd looked at them. I was afraid it had all been too much for them, but look at the fresh new growth here on the lavender! Thyme and rosemary are also coming back. 

Compost added, onions and daffodils thinned, and that was it for today - by now the meeting had started, I'd just wanted to finish this up. I forgot to put out the cat discourager sticks, but we don't have as many stray cats as we used to (there used to be a guy that was feeding them in the parking lot of the gym next door, and I think that the gym got new owners a few years back, and they may have asked the guy to cease and desist) so I'll keep my fingers crossed that this doesn't get used as a litter box. 

I actually got seeds during one of the snowstorms we had over the winter. I went to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and they had these pretty seed packets on display in their gift shop. I just couldn't resist making a nod to warmer weather there in the middle of the snow. I was going to plant the beets and chard today but there was suddenly an opportunity to go out for a boat ride so I did that instead - so even though I wasn't expecting to, I still got to get out on the water on Opening Day. 

And here's the first garden-aided dish of the year - onion soup with the thinned onions, plus white wine and some broth I'd made a couple of weeks ago. In addition to a dinner tonight, this will make a good lunch or two during the week, which is likely to be hectic .

Great start to Earth Day weekend!

Early Bird? Nope. On-Time Bird. Late Snow.

If you've been reading this blog for a while, or if we're Facebook friends, you've probably seen this guy before. This is The Early Bird, and I was inspired to paint him a few years back when I'd seen my first oystercatcher of the spring a good bit earlier than I ever had before - mid-March or so - and then a couple of days after that, it snowed, and I just couldn't stop thinking of the poor bird out there in the sloppy wet snow, wishing he hadn't been such an early bird. He now reappears on my social media every time I see a spring bird and then it snows.

Snow in mid-March isn't that unusual, but this year spring keeps giving us false starts and then winter comes back for another encore, even though the folks in the northeast and midwest are all yelling "GO HOME, WINTER, YOU'RE DRUNK!"

So we had a bit of a snowstorm in early April and our Jamaica Bay Guardian Don Riepe totally outdid my bummed-out oystercatcher with this magnificent photo of an osprey wondering what is this white stuff doing all over the nest.

Actually the osprey doesn't look nearly as put out as my oystercatcher does, but seriously, this poor guy just flew a very long way starting from someplace warm and sunny only to be greeted with a snowstorm - well, wild animals are tough, but I still can't help feeling a little sorry for them when this happens!

Click here to read a great NY Times article about an osprey tracking project that Don was involved in a few years back. They actually had a blog while it was running, and I absolutely loved following the sea eagle's journey from his wintering grounds in South America back to the nest platform in Jamaica Bay. I was so sorry when it ended!  

Floral Filler #3 - Forsythia

Blooming quite beautifully at the Sebago Canoe Club.

Fish on Friday!

h/t to Joe at The Horse's Mouth for my stealing of his Friday theme since time immemorial, plus my Hawaiian friend K., whose FB page was where I first saw this and loved it more than I can say. Had to share this for all my mainland friends who are curious about how that neighborhood McPokebowl (possibly spelled with an é) joint stacks up against the real thing. Now you know. Perhaps I owe an apology?

PS - Leonard's...ahhh...SWOON!

Floral Filler #2 - Incandescent Daffodil

Same day as the cherry blossoms, in front of my building. I got home from the club potluck just when this daffodil was still illuminated by the sun but the shadow of the building had fallen on everything behind. I will admit to upping the contrast but not by a whole lot, the daffodil was shining out like neon! 

Springtime on the Paerdegat

Woodcock Encounter in Manhattan

By guizmo_68 [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

American Woodcock in a happier environment.

Well, I had a different sort of night on Friday. I worked late wrapping up one of the 7 licensor forecasts that are due next week and was finally on my way home when I found an exhausted woodcock hunkered down in the middle of the sidewalk on Broadway near Canal Street. I watched it for a while and it didn't budge as people walked by. I didn't want to just leave it there, somebody was eventually going to kick the poor thing. I didn't have a towel but I had a plastic bag which I wrapped very loosely around its body, leaving its head sticking out, and then I just picked it up.

My first thought had been to walk it over to the Hudson River Park and find it a safer-looking spot in the plantings for it to spend the night, but when it just let me pick it up without any objections at all, settling down in the crook of my arm like a tame pet chicken, I got to thinking maybe I should take it to one of those 24-hour emergency vets and see if they could help it. I haven't got a smartphone but I stopped a couple of young ladies who were passing by and they kindly looked up a vet. The nearest one was at 15th street and 5th avenue, so me and the bird got in a cab and went there.

Unfortunately they only take dogs and cats there (she said the only thing they would do with a bird there was euthanize it if it was badly injured, and my little bird didn't have anything obviously wrong with it except for maybe being exhausted). The receptionist was able to give me the name of a 24 hour vet that did take birds up at 62nd street, and also the name of a wild bird rescue that would open at 8 am. Only hitch is that TQ and I had a family gathering in CT in the morning and we were supposed to be up there at 10. I tried to call him to see what he would think of me skipping the gathering and take care of the bird, maybe taking the train up once I'd gotten the bird squared away (his family is all fond of animals so I think that would have been ok), but he must have turned the ringer off to sleep, so no dice.

So I left the vet and stopped outside trying to decide whether I wanted to try taking the bird up to 62nd street, or take it home and explain the situation to TQ in the morning, or possibly go back to Plan A and take it to the Hudson River Park and try to find a safe spot in the plantings to tuck it in for the night, leaving it there and hoping for the best.

Now, as I'd been carrying it around, it had seemed like it was perking up a little bit, opening its eyes more (lovely dark eyes), picking up its head, and beginning to move a little bit more. I'd been holding it very gently and it really hadn't been trying to get away through any of this. Well, as I was standing there trying to decide what to do the bird took matters into its own hands, suddenly gave a much more energetic wiggle and then jumped right out of my arms and flew away!

I wish I'd been able to get it to a park but maybe warming it up helped. I hope it was able to find someplace better than the middle of a sidewalk to spend the rest of the night.

BTW I originally posted this on Facebook and specifically shared it with a couple of friends who know a lot more than I do about birds. One of them I would have called for advice before I even picked up the bird except that I lost my cell phone earlier this year and haven't re-built my contact list yet. They agreed that the bird I found had probably flown into a window and stunned itself - this is a big hazard for birds in NYC, and keeping it warm and safe while it recovered turns out to have been the right thing to do. The first to give advice also recommended the Wild Bird Fund (same place as the receptionist at the vet had recommended) as the very best place to take a bird in need of help - click here for a success story involving a woodcock found much the same way I found mine, only a little more banged up so in clearer need of help). She also mentioned that the best way to transport an injured wild bird is in a paper bag, she said they stay calmer that way, which makes a lot of sense. Good to have knowledgeable friends - thanks all!

Gowanus Tour Snippet - the Carroll Street Bridge

I've been meaning to post about the excellent and informative tour of the Gowanus neighborhood, led by urban planner and Gowanus Dredgers co-founder Owen Foote, that I joined earlier in March, but haven't had much time. I thought I would get a little bit of a start tonight with a few photos of the Carroll Street Bridge. I found this to be really interesting, I'm always kind of intrigued by machinery where you can actually see things working (I got such a kick out of the locking-through process on both my solo trip down the Hudson and the Erie Canal trip TQ and I took a couple of years back, and friends who've been reading this for a long time may remember me geeking out over actually getting to see a tugboat's rudder quadrant in action in Rudder Post).

The bridges on the Gowanus are all built to open so that boats can pass through. This one is not your usual drawbridge, though - this one, the entire bridge is mounted on rails. A stout cable is attached to the bridge, passing around a set of pulleys and into the structure that houses the machinery. When activated, the cables drag the entire bridge down the tracks into this clear space on the shore, then back into place once the boat's gone through. I'd never seen a bridge like this before, and it turns out that this one's one of only four left in the country (that detail courtesy of Forgotten NY, which also shares a funny movie clip featuring the bridge in action). It would be fun to see it happen, and it seems that schoolkids in the area sometimes actually get to go for a ride!

Happy Spring 3

That's more like it!

"Just plain silly" label ends here.

New Yorky/real politics. Splendid day for a March for our Lives. Central Park and 81st Street. For more photos from the marchon Flickr - click here. 

Happy Spring 2

Same daffodil, 12 hours later:

Happy Spring

Technically, at least. 

Gowanus Graffiti and Street Art Flickr Album

Poor TQ came down with a bug, so our plans for tomorrow are off, but I ended up going to the walking tour of the Gowanus Canal anyways, and it was great!

I was very interested in going on the tour because Owen Foote, the co-founder of the Gowanus Dredgers who was our guide today, is an architect and urban planner who's been involved in water use and ecological awareness in the Gowanus area for years. He's incredibly knowledgeable and as I expected, he gave an amazingly informative talk about the history and present time of the area as he led us on a walk that wound through the neighborhood, starting at the Smith and 9th street subway station and finishing at the northern end of the canal, where the water swirls and foams as the pumping station pours in water from the East River.

It was such a good tour, and I took so many pictures that I'm not even sure where to start, so I decided to start with the same thing Owen started us off with - street art! There's an amazing variety in the area, and our first stop on the tour was at the GOWANUS street mural. I've put together a flickr album of the art that particularly caught my eye today -- click here to visit. I hope you enjoy it! BTW, if you liked this post and you live in the area, keep an eye on the Dredgers website, they're going to start offering monthly art walks led by a local artist as one of their things to do once the weather warms up a bit. I will definitely be joining in on one of those!  

Choices Choices -

Gowanus Challenge 2013!

What a decision to make on Saturday! The Gowanus Dredgers are hosting a guided shorewalk along the Gowanus Canal, which is an area I've really never explored but find interesting. I shared that on Facebook, and moments later one of my Coney Island swimming friends said, "But wouldn't you rather come join us planting beach grass on Coney Island?"

Tough call! At this point I'm leaning towards the shorewalk just because it's shorter, I have some other things to do this weekend, and TQ and I are going to CT for a small family gathering on Sunday, so it's Saturday or bust. I can't remember the last time I've wished as hard that I could be in two places at the same time (or that one event was sure to happen again). Ah well! 

Annual Admission That Mom Was Right

Kids hate to admit that their parents are right, but almost every winter since I moved to New York City, I have to admit that my mom was right about the snow.

My sister and I were lucky little Navy brats who got to grow up in Hawaii. Hawaii is an absolutely spectacular place to be a kid, and I loved it, but every year when Christmas rolled around and we'd put up the ersatz icicles and snowflakes and decorate the plastic tree (you could buy a real one but they were shipped over on a Matson container ship, cost a zillion dollars, and were well into dropping their needles by the time they made it to the supermarket parking lot), my sister and I would start to get wistful about white Christmases. We'd watch the Christmas movies, and the TV specials, and we'd see the beautiful snow scenes on the Christmas cards we'd get. Wouldn't it be neat, we would think, if it could just magically snow, just for the holiday? Snowball fights! Snow angels! Snow forts and igloos! Snowmen! Sledding! So many wonderful things!

My mom grew up in New Jersey (not Joisey, please, New Jersey, properly enunciated, she's from the areas that gave the Garden State its name). She grew up with snow, lots of it, every winter.

And when she would catch us mooning about the white stuff, she would try to explain the different between Hallmark-card snow and real snow. Real snow, she said, isn't all that neat. She would grant that it was pretty when it first fell - but then, she would continue, it doesn't go away. It hangs out, getting plowed and walked on and driven on, and it goes from beautiful white to dirty gray, and you're oh so ready for it to all be over.

My sister and I were skeptical back then - but now?

Yep, Mom was right. And this storm didn't even manage the new-fallen-snow prettiness part. Straight to frozen muck.

Come on, Spring!