11/2 - A Beautiful Paddle With A Seal Sighting!

April 2018 drawing based on one of Artie Raslich's lovely seal photos from an American Princess sealwatching trip that year. BTW, the American Princess whalewatching season with Gotham Whale has been extended - it's been a great year for seeing whales right here in NYC, and the whales are still here and being seen, so they're going on through November! 

Trip Report, 11/2/2019 So I went for a beautiful paddle with TQ and Chris C (a clubmate who isn't on FB) today - Chris had suggested it to a group of friends and I looked at the forecast (55 degrees, light winds, sunny) and said "Heck yeah".

I forgot my camera so of COURSE there was a harbor seal hauled out on the sandspit on the east side of Ruffle Bar. He looked like this (with no photo I couldn't resist sharing this April 2018 drawing again) only more relaxed and with the NYC skyline clear in the background.

Chris had her phone in her day hatch and we thought of trying to get it out to get a photo, because it was such a good shot, but as we were sitting and talking and looking at the seal, it moved around and started to look at us a little more closely. We didn't want to scare him off the sandbar (the basking is important for them to warm up and rest) so we gave up on getting a photo and moved on.

Might have to be my next drawing - Inktober is inkt-over (I did it, 31+ drawings in October, yay!) so I can be a little more relaxed about my next production - but that was a pretty neat thing to see and would be a good subject for a new drawing. (11/5 update - I drew it, it's at the bottom of the post now)

We also had juvenile black skimmer circle us a few times - he was hanging out a little later in the season than I realized they did, but a look at a bird page said they don't always rush off at the end of the season. There were large and talkative flocks of brants (hrnk hrnk hrnk!), and the first bufflehead ducks I've seen this year.

And a wish loon. Well, it looked like a cormorant to me but the three of us all love loons (Chris does an uncanny imitation of the loon's call) so when we first saw the bird in the basin we wished it was a loon. And as we were discussing it later in the paddle and Chris and I were saying no, it was probably a cormorant, TQ very determinedly said, "It was a wish loon. There are different kinds of loons. Common loons, red-throated loons, and wish loons. That was a wish loon." We were all satisfied with that.

The real loons will be back soon. Always love watching the Jamaica Bay cast of characters change with the seasons.

A splendid couple of hours on the bay. 8.5 miles, mid 50's, breeze 5kts down to nothing. Sweet. 

11/5 update: I drew it! Click on the picture for a better view.

"River" Reading with Elisha Cooper, Community Bookstore, Park Slope

One more full vacation day before I head back to work, but today I did do a work-related (but in a fantastic way) thing.

Note - Links to additional readings of "River" appear at the end of this post - if you're in the NYC area and interested in the book but haven't got time to read my entire event review, scroll on down to the end; also, click here for book details. 

It was a stormy, rainy, windy day here in Brooklyn, so not a great day to sneak out for one last paddle (I might do that tomorrow though). I did want to do something though. One of my Sebago friends has been putting together some music sessions and there were enough takers for one today - that was tempting, but then I went on Facebook and saw that Elisha Cooper, author/illustrator of my new favorite Scholastic book, River, was having a reading at the Community Bookstore in Park Slope. The Q train wasn't running this weekend so there was going to be maybe a little extra waiting in the rain for shuttle buses, so I was still ever so slightly on the fence, but when the friend I'd asked for a ride to the club ended up deciding not to go because she got the cold that's been going around (sounds like the same one TQ and I started our vacation with), I decided storytime was the thing to do.

In case you missed my first post about River - I found out about this book from Nikki, a delightful Scholastic sales rep with whom I'm Facebook friends, much earlier in 2019, when she first posted about getting a peek at the F&G (folded and gathered, one of the last steps of a picture book before it finally goes into print - as the name suggests, it's basically the cover and all pages of the book, folded and gathered together in the same way the final book will be printed, but unbound and without the hard cover, providing one last less expensive chance for the author, editor, and design staff to look things over for any final changes that need to be made - also lets the sales reps and other interested parties see something very closely resembling the final book) of a book about a woman DOING A SOLO PADDLE DOWN THE HUDSON.

It's not actually a book about me (in fact, Cooper used his daughters as his models, which I think is pretty cool). But it's about as close to my heart as any book we've published, in the just under 2 decades I've worked for Scholastic, has been - because I paddled part of the voyage that Cooper's strong and competent main character travels, and that trip was one of the best things I have ever done for myself.

And Cooper, an incredibly accomplished author and skillful storyteller, captures the voyage so beautifully. His renditions of the section of the Hudson that I paddled (his character begins at Lake Henderson in the Adirondacks and finishes at Sandy Hook, NJ, while I put in at Waterford and finished in Red Hook, Brooklyn, so she overlaps me by a little - but a stretch that I've paddled on other occasions - at the south end, and by quite a lot at the beginning) are just spot-on and brought memories of my own trip just flooding back.

So I set out into the wind and the downpour to go to his Park Slope story hour - and it was lovely.

The bookstore is a small independent one, so the crowd wasn't huge. The book is interesting in that it's not a goofy silly giggler a la The Wonky Donkey, but Cooper engaged the kids with questions about things like what you would want to bring on a river voyage like this (the kids had some good answers, too), and then did a walk through the book's events, not reading line by line but giving a good sense of the story and sharing the splendid art. I was absolutely delighted to hear one of the parents there say, at the end, that the book was giving her the inspiration to think about doing an adventure with her family - I think that's what this book is all about and it was great to hear somebody pick up on that so immediately and directly.

He finished with an actual little bit of an art lesson and talk about his earliest artistic attempts trying to draw the animals on the farm where he grew up. That was really interesting - particularly his comments about how frustration with not getting things quite right was something that started early on and continues to this day. I think good stuff for kids to hear - helped me too, actually, I fell behind on my Inktober efforts and wasn't particularly thrilled with some of my catch-up efforts, but I came home after the event and sat down and just quit stressing out about making things look nice and just had some fun with the catching up - even did an extra drawing for today's "Coat" prompt, just for kicks.

He finished with some really cute caricatures of the kids who were there - he asked each of them what their favorite thing was and then drew them with those things.

Sorry no pictures - I took some but then quite idiotically hit "delete-all" before I'd actually uploaded to my computer. :( Fun morning, though.

I hadn't gotten my hands on a copy of the book through work yet so I went ahead and got one there (and because I like to support my local booksellers and because I have only once in recent memory walked into a bookstore and walked out without something besides what I came for, I also picked up Where the Crawdads Sing - so many people I know love that book and I thought of it just before I had the staff ring up my copy).

Elisha signed it and this is now a prized possession - it would've been anyways but check out the inscription!

I managed to get it home dry and then spent a lovely bit of time curled up on the Evil Futon of Nap (my ultra-comfy chaise-longue-esque futon that lures me into a doze almost every time I settle in for a read) with the book and a cup of hot cocoa. I didn't even nap this time.

If this sounds like fun to you, and you're in NYC, there are 4 more similar events scheduled.

He's going to be VERY busy next weekend - Patagonia in SoHo on the 2nd - not sure what time, I'll find out UPDATE: Patagonia event cancelled for now, possibility of a reschedule.

On the 3rd, he'll be back in Brooklyn for back-to-back events at the 2 Greenlight Bookstores - 11:30 in Prospect Lefferts Garden, and 1:30 in Fort Greene

And then on the 17th, he'll be at the Stories Bookshop and Storytelling Lab in the North Slope at 10:30 am.

Hope paddling friends - or anyone with a young person who likes to dream of adventures who stumbles across this - can make it! 

Back from the North Fork!

Hi, I'm back! We've been off on the North Fork of Long Island on our first vacation for just the two of us in a couple of years. We stayed close to home, heading out to the lovely Sunset Motel in Greenport (totally unsolicited plug, we were just really happy with our stay there). The Sunset was discovered by a couple of Sebago clubmates back when we used to have an annual weekend out there - most of us would tent camp at the Long Island Kampground but not everyone was into that, and a couple of them found this hotel and were quite happy with the place, even inviting the campers over for sunset drinks (the place is appropriately named, and every room has a sun porch that looks out on the sound - spectacular!)

TQ and I booked their Sunday - Thursday special and late Sunday morning, we loaded up our boats and headed out. It ended up being a drizzly day and I have to admit that although I do enjoy camping and have great memories of staying at the Kampground, I didn't have any major regrets that we weren't turning in there as we drove past on our way back to the hotel after a quick dinner in Greenport.

Our first full day out there was gorgeous, but we were both just recovering from colds and we woke up feeling incredibly unambitious and decided to just roll with that. We'd brought some leftovers along that we had for breakfast; TQ went to get a haircut, I hung out on the sun porch with a cup of tea and read until he got back. Our main activity for the day was a walk on the beach, and when we found the barbecue area at the bottom of the first set of steps that you descend to get to the water, we instantly decided to grill instead of going out for dinner. We had our walk (nice) and then we were off to the IGA supermarket for provisions (including sandwich fixings for the next few days) and then a delicious meal followed by a perfect sunset.

The boats may not have been happy with not getting off the car, but I think we both felt a lot better with the rest and quiet. 

Fishing on the Brooklyn VI

Setting Out From Sheepshead Bay

So to borrow a great phrase from my friends of Norwegian descent -

UFF DA!

October has featured all kinds of bloggable fun, but between Inktober and winding things up at work for a vacation nothing's getting posted!

I'm still at work tonight, I had my work all planned out for a reasonable day today and then a bunch more stuff came in (I've said on FB now and then that my job can be like being in a baseball game with too many pitchers, and that's especially true when I'm getting ready for vacation, as I am this week) - I have one more fairly chunky report that's the last item on the to-do list that was on my desk when I started the day, and I'm inclined to just power through that and then have an easy day tomorrow - but I am taking a quick blog break here before I tackle that final item. I have a lovely and not too enormous Flickr album from a fishing trip I went on on Saturday and I figured I would just share that. Click here to view (but read the rest of my trip report here to have the whole story).

A couple of nice folks from the Sebago fishing committee know that I'm interested in fishing and have been trying to get me out - I haven't been able to get out with either of them on Jamaica Bay, but J. also likes to go out on bigger boats. His favorite one in the Sheepshead Bay fleet (which I've eyed with interest for years because it's really easy for me to get there) is the Brooklyn VI, and last Sunday he was taking a neighbor out and invited some of his fishing friends - plus me, woohoo! I was already signed up for whalewatching on Sunday (no whales, but a whole bunch of dolphins came through at the end) and had been thinking of a longer paddle on Sunday, since conditions were looking nice, but it didn't take me too long to decide on the fishing.

Early start, of course - glorious sunrise, as you can see above (the boats all head out around the same time). I'm not a morning person so I don't see a lot of sunrises - the ones I do catch I have to say are pretty nice, though.

This was a full day out, and we headed all the way out to Fire Island. Captain was after striped bass for us and he found some!

Unfortunately, not for me. My spotless record of never having caught a fish in NY waters remains unblemished. I'm ready for a blemish but nope, once again not my day. However, it was still a pretty great day. I did rent a perfectly serviceable rod and reel from the boat and it was fine, but J. had brought along an extra spinning rod. I'd never used one of those so he showed me how to cast with it (not an overhead cast of course, one with the rod held low off the side of the boat), so there was that to practice and get better at (with occasional utter botches), and it was beautiful, and there were monarch butterflies going by, and other people were catching fish, and great big ones, so that was fun to watch, and best of all was that J's friend caught his first striped bass - and it was ENORMOUS. It was in fact one of the 2 biggest fish caught that day and when they both put on the scale that decides the matter for the pool, the mate could BARELY hold them in the air! It was the other fish by a hair, but wow it was close.

Oh, yeah - and we saw a whale! We went by it pretty fast but I saw it come up and spout very clearly. So I did get to see a whale this weekend!

And then the best part was that when J. organizes a trip like this, one of his rules to keep people happy is that the group shares the catch. He'd tried to explain this to me early in the day, but I somehow was picturing that only working if there were multiple fish. Watching the fish being cleaned, I got my heart just set on eating fresh fish for dinner, I'd started asking the crew if there was a chance of buying one of the fish they'd caught (and that was looking like a possibility although other people had asked earlier so it was a matter of whether they had any left) - fortunately J. re-explained, while they were cleaning the fish, that when he said we share the fish, that meant even if it was just one. And at that point it was finally dawning on me how much meat there is on a fish that size.

So, yeah, I ended up coming home with this enormous filet, which I cut up into 5 pieces, each suitable for a meal for 2. First 2 I cooked this week, the other 3 went straight into the freezer. AWESOME.

winnah winnah fish fo dinner!

Maybe next time I'll catch my 1st fish in NY waters - but this was pretty darned good.

me and Mrs. Holcomb. a long long time ago on a lake in Texas. Old friend of my Texas aunt and uncle - took me under her wing one week during a summer when we spent some time visiting in Houston, and oh my did we catch some fish. I was thinking of her on Sunday. Wonderful woman.

Dawn fisherman, Breezy Point jetty

Inktober!

I found out about Inktober when I got a group of friends together to go see Margaret Atwood at Town Hall. It was a great evening, Samantha Bee interviewed her, and their conversation was fascinating and thoroughly leavened with dry Canadian wit. Before the show, of course, everyone was pulling out their cell phones to take photos of the stage -- everyone, that is, except me (I'm still resisting the smartphone) and my friend Shari B, who pulled out a small sketchpad and a pen and proceeded to draw it!

I thought that was rather delightful and I said so - I liked her drawing, too, it was simple and clear and did a good job of showing the stage. She told me she'd been taking a drawing class that was specifically aimed at those who consider themselves artistically uninclined, and it sounded pretty interesting.

She also told me about Inktober, invented by illustrator Jake Parker. It started out as something he came up with for himself "as a challenge to improve my inking skills and develop positive drawing habits", and then people wanted to join in. I've joined a Facebook group and a Flickr group for Inktober, and I'm really enjoying it - the group participants range from people like me up to professional artists, there are doodles, there are comics, there's a woman who's doing a gorgeous noir graphic-novel presentation, there's Chicken Month, there's an alternative set of horror prompts called Shocktober, there are drawings that are silly, gorgeous, simple, elaborate - and so far I haven't seen ANYBODY say anything negative. Is it that possible this is the one set of spaces on the internet where if somebody doesn't like something they just scroll on by? Even the FB admin mentioned that today. Pretty nice, I hope I haven't just cursed it.

Anyways, so far so good, I did fall one day behind during a weekend at Lake Sebago where we ate and paddled and then ate some more and then talked on into the evening all of the sudden I was just ready for bed - but I caught up tonight by reining in my tendency to throw in everything but the kitchen sink (almost literally on Day 2 when I drew a wave of trash where there are even legible labels on some of the things) and doing something simple for Frail.

No great masterpieces so far and I but I'm having fun with it and I'll be curious to see if I notice any difference in my drawing by the end of the month. If you've been following this blog for any length of time at all, you'll know that I like to art every now and then, but it's sporadic - I'm doodling all the time but this idea of sitting down and Drawing A Thing every day for 31 days is new.

That's it for the write-up - click on any photo for a slideshow view of what I've drawn

post post

Running off to the woods for a day. Here are some posts to tide you over. OK actually they're pilings. Anyways, just thought they were kind of cool. 

River Day!

 Hooray, Hooray, It's River Day! Elisha Cooper's lovely new picture book is in bookstores today, and he'll be making a number of appearances in the Northeast, with several in NYC, over the next few weeks.

 I've been saving this video for today - he shares a number of scenes from the book (you'll see why I'm so ridiculously over the moon about this one) and in a very sweet moment, he also talks a bit about the models for his main character. When I first got my hands on the book, one of my first reactions (naturally) was that it was really interesting and nice that the book was about a woman doing a solo paddle, when it would've been just as easy to have it be a guy, but being someone who tends to accept things at face value, I didn't really think to wonder why, but it's neat.

 Elisha's events are listed here

 And it sounds like his pre-release Sunday special event in Rhinebeck, where book sales for the day appropriately benefited Riverkeeper, was a success.

 Note: I am an employee of Scholastic, the company that is publishing this book, but this is not my job (I'm in finance in fact) - I'm just delighted with the book and want to tell everyone in the world about it!

River - Book Signing in Rhinebeck, Sunday, 9/29/19

Further to yesterday's post about this new Scholastic title that I'm so excited about - if anyone from the Rhinebeck area happens to stumble across this within the next 2 days, and you're interested in getting a signed copy of the book, meeting the author, AND supporting Riverkeeper, all at the same time, Oblong Books has got you covered. Click here for details and to RSVP. Wish I could go!

note: I am a Scholastic employee but this blog is purely a personal hobby - I'm sharing this here because I just love the book.

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River, by Elisha Cooper

Well, how perfect that I have been in a Hudson River vein for the last couple of posts - because today I'm going to stay in that vein to tell you about an absolutely gorgeous book about a woman's solo paddle down the Hudson that's coming out next week. Here's Elisha Cooper's cover for River. 

And here's Trusty Romany looking south on the Hudson River back in August 2014, when I was able to make a long-held pipe dream of a solo paddle down the Hudson into reality.

I've worked for Scholastic for 18 years now and of all the books we've published in that time, this may be the one that gives me the most personal delight.

I found out about it from Nikki Mutch, a lovely Scholastic sales rep with whom I'm Facebook friends. I'm in finance, and not high up in finance, which means that I don't really hear much about books we're publishing. Nikki shared it on Facebook back in April as she was getting ready to sell our Fall 2019 list. I saw the cover and her description and just about fell off my chair - she told me who I could talk to about getting an F&G (Folded and Gathered, an unbound preliminary print run allowing for adjustments before the final version) and when I read it - oh, it just gave me chicken skin. Here's what I had to say after the first reading:

ok I might be just a tiny tiny tiny bit excited about a book that Orchard Books is publishing this Fall. 

It's a story about a woman doing a solo paddle down the Hudson River. Friends will understand exactly why this just makes me smile from ear to ear just saying that! No, no, no, it's not actually about me, but reading the F&G of Elisha Cooper's book and seeing the glorious watercolors with which he's illustrated it just brought memories of my own voyage flooding back!

Fall seemed so far away then - but now here we are, and it comes out next week, and check out this great review from Kirkus!

This book would give a kid some great paddling dreams of their own to dream -- and it definitely gives this grownup an itch to go do it again - and maybe take more time this time, I only did a part of the trip described in the book.

Glorious. Elisha Cooper truly captures the river that I (and so many other boaters) love.

PS - for trip reports from my 2014 paddle, click on the "My Hudson Voyage" link below. 

Back to the Hudson, 9/7/2019

So what's nicer than a beautiful weekend day getting back on the Hudson? Another beautiful weekend day back on the Hudson the next weekend!

This was a Sebago trip that my friend Laurie B. planned. I help out with the Sebago calendar and when she asked me to put the trip on there I emailed her right back saying "OK, and sign me up!"

We put in at Englewood and paddled up to Alpine, just under 5 miles north (and directly across from Yonkers, the location of the prior week's festivities), looking up at the magnificent cliffs of the Palisades. The link goes to the website of the Palisades Interstate Park Commission; this park, running from just south of the George Washington Bridge to just north of the border between Bergen County in New Jersey and New York's Rockland County, is a real local treasure, with the amazing cliffs, beautiful woods, a couple of marinas, a number of nice little picnic and recreation areas, and then a spectacular hiking trail from end to end (mostly easy, level hiking with one challenging scramble area at the "Giant's Stairs" section).

Englewood used to be a favorite day trip destination for the crew back in my Pier 63 days - it's about a 10 mile paddle but timed correctly you had a strong current assist both ways. I always loved setting out from our seriously urban rusty barge launch and then paddling up and having a leisurely lunch in all the natural beauty. Alpine has good memories too - there's a grand old stone pavilion there (it's in the picture of us on the beach at Alpine), and back in the days when Irish music and dance was my main hobby, one of the highlights of the summer was always the Alpine Ceili, which was put on by Manhattan's Irish Arts Center and always featured great local musicians. I don't think that happens any more, but there was an overlap between my taking up kayaking in 1998 and the end of the ceili, and there was one year when the ceili just happened to be on a weekend when the tides were perfect - and I threw some dancing clothes and shoes in a drybag, jumped in my shiny red Seda Glider (a faster boat that I used to own), and paddled to the ceili! Oh, the looks on people's faces when I turned up that way - priceless! Such a great day.

So it was so nice to get back to this much-loved stretch of the river for a day. It was a much grayer day, and a bit breezier, but the Hudson is beautiful in all sorts of moods. With the wind and current at our backs, we absolutely flew from Englewood to Alpine; we took a nice long leisurely lunch break there and then had a good strong current sending us home. It did get choppy enough from the wind against the current that if we'd had less experienced paddlers along, they might not have enjoyed the trip back as much as the trip up, but we had a small and solid enough group that the conditions were just good fun. And just the first hints of fall foliage!

And speaking of playful conditions - as soon as I wrap this up I'm off to play in some small surf with Kayak Dov and my fellow June IDW participants. I haven't gotten around to a writeup for that, but I will at some point - it was great and a really good next step in my continuing progress of getting my paddling act re-built after cancer (as mentioned in the last post). We were supposed to have a surf day during the workshop but it got thunderstormed out - Dov and Dale Williams (Georgia based instructor, great teacher) came up with some solid alternatives, but Dov went above and beyond what most instructors would do and offered us a makeup day later in the year. That's today! This will actually be my first time out in surf since my surgery. Surf report according to Surfline.com: "The surf is small and inconsistent but enough for the bigger boards if you are motivated to get wet" - well, sea kayaks can count as "bigger boards", so I'm hoping that this ends up being the perfect re-introduction. Fingers crossed, knocking wood, wish me luck!

All pictures after this - click on any for a slide show view.