Frogma in Florida Day 4 Sneak Preview: Roses, a Banyan, and An Observation On Seagulls

A rose is a rose

is a rose

is a rose

And roses in January are great, and check out this beautiful banyan tree,

And seagulls don't care how fancy your dock is.

Lots more to come from Day 3. Any Florida friends know where we were?

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(frogma kayak smily, patent pending)

Marine Park Bridge OOPS I mean Gerritsen Creek Paddle Feb. 3 2019 (with ice and a seal)

OK, gotta interrupt the Florida flow again because after an entire week with the vexing vortex (the polar one, that is), we had an absolute gift of a warm winter day right here in NYC and a friend and I actually made it out for what ended up being a spectacular paddle. I'd actually tried to make this a club paddle but for some reason it wasn't popular - it's almost like there was some big culturally significant event going on today that had people too preoccupied to come out and carpe this glorious diem with me*....hmmm. Go figure.

Fortunately the one person who could make it is somebody I have enjoyed paddling with for years, we go back to my Pier 63 days and she's a very good paddler, and we enjoyed a pleasant 13 miles on this warm and quiet day. This was great, because the trip I'd suggested was more like 8.5 miles, I'd said we would go out to the Marine Park Bridge and back. I had thrown in a hint about keeping going if folks were feeling energetic but with a larger group chances of that being an option were a bit less, a trip leader can't tell people that the trip is going to be a certain distance and then drag them along if they aren't really up for going farther, there's got to be a genuine consensus.

With the weather having been SO cold last week, it had dawned on me as I was getting ready in the morning that there was some chance that the dock would be frozen in. People had been at the club on Saturday for a potluck/informal planning session and I was hoping that if the dock had been icebound, somebody would've warned me, but I still had my fingers crossed as we went to the club, and I ran down to the dock to check before I did anything else. It was fine, there was ice on the land side of the dock, but open water on the side facing into the channel and all the way out into the bay, and then just enough ice out in the bay to be fun. 

Ilene and I launched at 11:00, as planned. With the ebb running until 1:20 and both of us moving at a good cruising pace, we got to the bridge a little before noon and there wasn't a lot of discussion about keeping going - we are both believers in the idea that in winter paddling, the paddle should take longer than getting ready for the paddle (oh the gear, the geaaaarrrrrr) so we needed to keep going for that to work. In the end we paddled up Gerritson Creek towards the nature center, turning around when we came to a section of the creek that was iced over. That made for a very good paddle.

We watched a seal and the seal watched us for quite some time at Dead Horse Bay. The beachcombers were out in force (Dead Horse Bay is the location of a landfill where people's abandoned belongings were trucked when neighborhoods were being razed for the Belt Parkway - really a sad story that I just learned recently - so there's just a seemingly endless supply of old bottles and broken china and other household bric-a-brac to pick through), but we only one saw one other recreational vessel outside of the Paerdegat, a small sailboat that came motoring out of Gerritson Creek. That's always one of the wonders of winter paddling in Jamaica Bay for me - having so much space all to oneself in NYC (not in the middle of NYC, to be sure, Jamaica Bay is out on the edge, but still in the city) is just such a remarkable thing.

We did run into one of our club racers out for a spin on his stand-up paddleboard when we got back to the basin, and two other racers had also turned up to do some training.

Tough putting on the drysuit after Florida, but it was worth it, it was great out there. Would've been fun to have a few more people, but having the flexibility to up the mileage the way we did was definitely a plus. I'll be watching the forecast for the next chance to get out there. 60 on Tuesday? Awww heck, it's month end close, can't play hooky.

All pix after this - click for a slideshow view, as usual, and see if you can spot the Manhattan skyline in the 2nd to last photo.

*Note for readers who aren't reading this right when it was written: It was Super Bowl Sunday so I'm guessing people may not have wanted to work in a paddle before their evening plans. 

Frogma Goes To Florida Day 3: Boca Grande Sightseeing

Day 3 found me back with my folks and my sister touring the lovely old town of Boca Grande on Gasparilla Island. This was one of the B's (the old friends of my parents, with my mom and Nancy being best friends going back to elemantary school) recommendations, I think we could've stayed for a month just seeing the places they liked, without even starting in on the recommendations I'd gotten from the Church of the Double Bladed Paddle facebook group.

It was a nice day for strolling, temperature had dropped a bit and it was pretty breezy, but with a fleece and a windbreaker I was pretty well set for whatever.

Our first stop was at the Boca Grande Historical Society, where we watched a very good video overview of the town's development. It's nice to get a sense of a place when you're there for the first time, and we enjoyed the stop. Development of the area started with a deep-water port for shipping the phosphates (used for fertilizers and other industrial applications) that were discovered in the area in the 1880's. A railroad was put in to make the transportation of the phosphate more efficient; some clever developers realized that with the area being absolutely beautiful and having some fantastic fishing (with the local rock star among the fish being the tarpon, nicknamed the "Silver King" by the locals), that train could also bring frozen northeasteners down for a winter thaw-out (yes, speaking as a now re-frozen northeasterner, that was a very good idea) and so they put in the inn that's still there to this day, and laid out the resort town around the train station.

Our next stop was the original Boca Grande lighthouse, which is now open as a museum. More history there, plus, yes, beautiful scenery. Interesting birds here, we couldn't figure out quite what they were - possibly swallows? -  but they were flying in from the gulf. We didn't really notice them at first, they weren't in close formation and so didn't make a huge and noticeable THING like that amazing Jones Beach dunlin dance, but as you stood there looking out at the inlet (like my sister and my dad in these pix) you realized that they just kept coming and coming and coming in a seemingly endless stream!

The last two photos are of the Gasparilla Inn, which was the original inn built to house the frozen northeasterners way back in 1911. Absolutely lovely, put me a bit in mind of the grande dames of Waikiki, the Moana and the Royal Hawaiian. Still coddling well-off Northeasterners to this day but very open to less-wealthy tourists wandering through their airy and expansive lobby. We went and wandered around there after lunch at Miller's Dockside. The B's had recommended the Eagle Grill but they only do dinner - the downstairs restaurant fed us very well, though, and there was a gorgeous old 1920's yacht for us to gawk at while we waited for our seafood, and I spotted a dolphin! You can see the yacht below, unfortunately the dolphin didn't hang around for photos. But at least I saw one!

We got home in time for my sister and I to run to see another sunset, followed by another good dinner with the B's at their favorite local pub (sorry, I forget the name).

All photos after this - click for slideshow view!

January Reading

No, no, I didn't read ALL of that in January. Just still tickled by finally owning enough bookcases for my whole personal library! I went back for the matching one they had at the secondhand furniture place after overfilling this one and that should cover it for a while. Happy happy joy joy!
January reading (lifted directly from last night's long FB ramble):

I've been thinking that it would be interesting to actually keep track of the books I read for a year. I am an inveterate bookworm and between the books I own, a variety of sources of free books (work giveaways, apartment giveaways, Brooklyn Library, Sebago Canoe Club Library, Ditmas Park Little Free Library) and sufficient discretionary income for the occasional bookstore binge, I'm always working on something, and with my 1.5 to 2 hours of commuting time pretty much entirely dedicated to reading, I get through so many books in a year that I would never be able to give you a list at the end.

I would be able to tell you the ones that stood out, and maybe that list would be better as it would reflect on the quality rather than just quantity, but there are so few books that I just end up not liking that maybe a full list would be fun.

So here's January 2019:

Finished David Cordingly's Seafaring Women: Adventures of Pirate Queens, Female Stowaways, and Sailor's Wives (had started reading in December 2018). Nonfiction, a wide variety of good stories including some wonderfully brave women who stepped up and assumed leadership roles in eras when a proper woman wasn't supposed to do such things. I'm not sure where I got this but it's going to the Sebago library even if it wasn't from there originally (it's not labeled as such, which they usually are)

First complete book of 2019, quite intentionally, that was how I wanted to start my reading year: Michelle Obama's Becoming. I read this so slowly, savored every word. Keeper. Miss the Obama White House SO much.

Tin by Padraig Kenney - Advance Reading Copy from work, comes out in March. Aimed at ages 8 - 12 but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Alternative history with robot children, themes of friendship, loyalty, family, and at the risk of making it sound heavier than it is, some serious consideration of what it means to be human. Will put this out in the Ditmas Park Little Free Library (like to get the work finds into general circulation).

Mr. Vertigo by Paul Auster - Vaudeville era story of a guttersnipe orphan boy who's taken from his uncaring aunt and uncle by a man who teaches him to fly. Again, meditations on family, loyalty, betrayal, this time at an adult level. This one's a keeper, it was a rip-roaring adventure with a lot of underlying thought and that's the kind of thing I'll speed read the first time just to see what happens, then go back for a more leisurely revisit.

Missing by Cath Staincliffe - I like a good murder mystery every now and then. This one was British and featured a good female private investigator protagonist who I liked very much. Put it out in the Little Free Library when I was done with it, I don't tend to hold onto a lot of mysteries.

The Fairy Tale Detectives: Sisters Grimm Book One by Michael Buckley - I think my friend Mandy Huang was telling me about this series last year and I found Book 1 on the giveaway shelf at work this year. Premise: What if Grimm's Fairy Tales were actually case histories of crimes and the fairy tale creatures who were the victims and perps were alive and well and living in a small town by the Hudson River? Good fun and there was a really cool author addendum at the end talking about common elements and themes you find in fairy tales and offering readers who'd like to try their own hand at creating a re-told version ways to start playing with that. That was kind of cool - I'm alway somewhat awed by storytellers, it's such a sort of mysterious skill to me, and here's and author saying to "Here's how I do it, now why don't you give it a try too, it's fun!" Totally neat thing for kids.

Dactyl Hill Squad by Daniel Jose Older - This one was the pick for the Scholastic employee book club January meeting. I've been trying to attend for months now, finally actually made it and thoroughly enjoyed it. The book is kind of a crazy fun conglomeration of genres - premise is what if they had dinosaurs instead of horses during the Civil War? So, alternative history, real history, action/adventure, dinosaurs, and a little bit of magic in a very recognizable NYC, with a fantastic bunch of kids displaced from the Colored Orphans Asylum by the Draft Riots in the lead roles - we need diverse books and this one's great. This one will probably go to the Little Free Library.

Both of those are from series, which I don't always love - I actually tend to get very cranky if I get to the end of a book and the author leaves me hanging, but in this case although it's very clear that there's more to unfold, the authors have basically wrapped things up well enough so you aren't left going "BUT YOU DIDN'T FINISH WRITING YOUR BOOK YOU LAZY BUM!". Both authors left you at a reasonable close to an episode and although you know there's another one coming it feels like you could step away from the characters if you want to. For the Sisters Grimm, if I ran across another one I would read it but I don't feel any particular need to go hunt down the next one. I am looking forward to the next installment of the Dactyl Hill Squad and since I sit near the editor I'll probably be able to get my hands on that pretty easily.

Last book of January, another work find - Floored: When Seven Lives Collide by (no really): Sara Barnard, Holly Bourne, Tanya Byrne, Non Pratt, Melinda Salisbury, Lisa Williamson, and Eleanor Wood. Collaborative YA fiction from the UK, 6 assorted teenagers get onto an elevator at the United Kingdom Broadcasting Offices together and something happens that causes them to bond as a group of friends, dramatically influencing their lives for years to come.

More friendship, family and loyalty - was that my January theme or is that just how authors do? Hmmm.

Dunlin Murmuration, Jones Beach, 1/26/2019

Taking a quick break from Florida posts because a couple of Sebago's birders led a hike at Jones Beach on Saturday, the highlight of which I can share without much writing (in best Barbie voice: "Writing is hard!")(well, not that hard, it just takes me way longer than I ever think it's going to) -

As we were approaching the jetty at the end of the point where we've gotten a pretty good view of seals in the inlet in the past, one of our sharp-eyed aviphiles noticed that the curious conglomeration of small, round, grayish-brown stones on the beach beside the jetty weren't actually stones - they were a huge flock of the medium-sized sandpipers called dunlins. They were all tucked up against the wind with their feathers fluffed and their heads beneath their wings. We watched them from a distance for a while, amazed at their numbers, and then skirted the flock to go to the jetty and look for seals and eiders and whatever else might present itself. 

I'd just switched my lenses from the smaller lens I used for the photo at the top of the post back to my zoom lens when I saw motion out of the corner of my eye and turned to see the entire flock swirling into the air. We'd stayed far enough from the dunlins to not frighten them but there were suddenly a lot of people around, and then I'm told another beachwalker approached from the other direction, maybe didn't spot them in time, and up they went - and the ensuing murmuration (that's what it's called when you have a large enough flock of birds flying close enough together to look like a shifting speeding color-changing cloud - the most famous ones with the viral-est videos are starling flocks, but this was the same thing) was simply magical. Everyone on the point was just standing all going Ooooh and Aaaah exactly as though we were watching the best 4th of July fireworks ever.

With my camera already in hand, I got some lovely photos as the flock circled around before settling on the jetty - and better still, Chris Bickford, another club member who enjoys taking pictures, got an absolutely beautiful video. Click here to view, and do make sure you click on the video to expand it to full-screen! For the photos here, as usual, clikc on any one for a slideshow view. Enjoy!