A ramble on rolling!

Rolling with joy, summer 2010, photo by Joan Byron

WARNING! EXPLOSION OF KAYAK GEEKERY!

Posted this yesterday on Facebook - figured I'd share here too as it ended up being more of an essay than planned, plus I can add some links here. I'd meant to talk about having a good time at a pool session and somehow that morphed into telling my entire personal history of rolling!
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So, back in one of those crazy times at work but quite buoyed by thinking back on the rolling session to which I treated myself on Sunday. Been weirdly on the fence about writing about it but an old friend called me "the ballerina of kayakers" on FB today, which was SO sweet and also EXACTLY what I'm trying to work my way back to these days (see above photo from 2010, which just captures how rolling feels to me when I'm rolling well - I LOVE this shot!)

I didn't roll for a while after my mastectomy for kind of obvious reasons. 1st roll after that went fine. 2nd one too, 5th one, 10th one, 20th one...mostly all fine, although sometimes the hip snap could've been snappier, but somehow the glee with which I used to fling myself over back when Violet was living in the area and paddled with me just hasn't come back, and that does so much towards relaxing you and letting you really play in your boat.

I don't know if this is true for all paddlers, but for me, an awful lot of the rolling game resides in my head. I didn't learn to roll all that fast; an early success (I didn't know how I'd done it, but hey, I was right-side up and the instructor swore he hadn't brought me up, so yay) in my first rolling class was followed by something uncomfortably close to a dislocated shoulder on my 1st attempt outside of a class. Took a while to work through the chickenosity that left behind (that thing about getting right back on the horse they made me do when I was a kid taking riding lessons? Unfortunately not so easy when dealing with rolling and a shoulder injury); eventually (in particular thanks to some careful instruction by Richard Chen-See at Manhattan Kayak, who did so much towards laying my early kayaking foundation) I ended up with a pretty solid roll. I still never really, truly, 100% believed it was going to work, though.

What finally busted through that mental block was getting into a string of winter rolling sessions back when the Yonkers Paddling and Rowing Club was running those at the Yonkers YMCA. They were on work nights and you would sign up for a set of them. Jack Gilman and Andy Laiosa were the main instructors there. Jack introduced me to Greenland rolling; those of us with rolls would practice in the deep end while beginners were working with instructors in the shallow end Yonkers had a great little fleet of old-school whitewater boats for the small YMCA pool; they were super easy to roll and with a string of sessions to play, you could just have more and more fun figuring out how many oddball ways you could get these boats rightside up. There was one memorable series in particular where we just started rolling with anything that wasn't nailed down - pool buoy? Check! Kickboard? Check! Hey, how about that lifesaving dummy? Yeah! Jack even brought in a hockey stick and a toy hockey stick one time and we rolled with those, too (hockey stick is fine but has to be facing the right way or the curve of the blade makes it dive - good to keep in mind next time you capsize in Canada and the only thing you can get your hands on is a hockey stick).

So that was the winter when the whole rolling thing got to be Just Plain Fun. I don't remember where that fits in with my first combat roll, which was with Atlantic Kayak Tours at a BCU 4-star training & assessment in Rhode Island, but I do know that that was when I just started rolling for kicks on almost every paddle - which I hadn't been doing before.

Fast forward to 2016, though - after the surgery, I did start rolling again, but there's just been this timidity about it. Again, as I said, not that I was failing - just that I didn't trust myself after a long break from practicing, with some very weird re-rigging of my pectoral muscles added. So, like, every time I went out, I would find some excuse not to roll. Too cold. Too windy. I have a cold. To many beginners on the trip. Don't want to make this paddle about me showing off. Yeah. BLAH BLAH BLAH. Needed more rolling, less excuses.

One great moment last year, though, was my first combat roll since the operation. That was on the makeup day that Dov Neimand ran for those of us who'd taken the IDW he'd run with Dale Williams in June of last year - with lightning storms in the area, we'd gotten weathered out for our rough water day, and although Dale and Dov had still given us what I would've said was a thoroughly good day of alternative dry land and indoor instruction, Dov still offered us a surf day. That happened in October, and although it wasn't the best conditions, we did get a good workout out at Breezy Point We finished off playing in some weird waves running over the sandbar at right angles to each other - there was one point when I went to brace only there wasn't anything to brace on by the time my blade hit the water, and boop, over I went. And it was shallow, and I could see the sand, and I said "Nope, not coming out of this boat" and I set up and came up with just as comfy a roll as I could want. And there were witnesses as I whooped and hollered like a crazy person. I was SO HAPPY!

So that was fantastic - combat roll does so much to re-instill confidence. So I was all excited to keep going with it at the pool this winter - but then the pool Sebago's had access to in past years has needed a lot of repairs lately & so we were left high and dry this year. Boo.

But Dov Neimand and Julie McCoy have been running sessions at the New York Sports Club up in Dobbs Ferry, though. They started with weeknights, which were a little tricky with work, but they did get some Sunday afternoon time slots last weekend and this weekend. Bit of a hike from Brooklyn but I do looove that train ride up the Hudson. And it really was just what I needed - an hour and a half to just roll and roll and roll and roll and roll some more, with both Greenland and euro and eventually even trying some hand rolling (which is a skill I had once but have lost - didn't get it back but the fact that I was comfortable enough to give it a try and trust in a greenland paddle tucked under the decklines as a backup felt good).dana, sans-serif;"> Dov brought an NDK Latitude for me to try - it's for the "tall thin paddler" so, uh, not quite me these days (tall, yes), but with a little wiggling I was able to squeeze in, and it rolled great. I did not work my way too far up the Greenland list as the space was small and there were active swimmers next to us, and I decided to stick with rolls that I could control well - but just doing the basics again and again and again felt great. And at the end I switched out that slick NDK for a Chatham 17, just to see what I could do with a boat that isn't quite such a "cheater" - well, offside didn't feel perfect but I was able to right the boat on both sides, and then at the end Julie came over to horse around with me a little bit & somewhere in there I fell over completely un-set-up and still didn't even think about ditching, just reset and rolled. Good finished - finished up with just that same spirit of play that that long ago Yonkers session had. So good to feel that again. So that was all fantastic and the ride home along the Hudson with the sun going down was just so much gravy.

I'll take that over a spa day any day.

Florida Day 3 - Myakka River Boat Tour

Photo from 2019 - a quieter day, and a bit warmer too! As always, click on any picture for a better view. 

We'd visited the Myakka River State Park during last year's visit, and I'm so glad we went back this year. I don't think I got around to posting about this place last year, I ran out of steam after the posts about visiting The Ringling Museum at Ca D'Zan, the Ringling's lovely Sarasota estate, but we'd had a terrific day here the next day and I thought TQ would really enjoy it. In 2019 I'd been so blown away by all the birds that I wrote down a list that I did share in FB:

I don't usually keep bird lists but this was just mindblowing... In no particular order, today at the Myakka River State Park we saw: Great Blue Heron, Little Blue Heron, Tricolor Heron, Yellowlegs, Great Egret, Snowy and/or Cattle Egret (not sure which), American Avocet, Sandhill Cranes, Killdeer, Brown Pelican, White Pelican, Boat-Tailed Grackle, Crow, Osprey, Anhinga, Roseate Spoonbill, White Ibis, Wood Stork, Belted Kingfisher, Limpkin, Black Vulture, and Bald Eagle (juvenile).

And I added: "And tons of alligators!"

Here are some of the 2019 alligators. The first picture may be kind of sad - this was a big old bruiser of a bull gator who habitually hung out in the little cove out of which the boat tours are run. The guides on the tour last year had told us they'd had a nickname for this guy which they weren't using so anymore because it was considered to be anthropomorphizing in a way they didn't want to do on a tour that was really trying to give visitors a good intro to alligators. But they obviously loved being able to show us such a magnicent gator right off the dock. 

This year, they told us a very sad story about noticing that one of the big alligators that frequented the inlet was acting unwell, and bringing in a specialist to check it out. The minute the guy approached the gator, he could smell that the alligator's breath stunk to high heaven. Turned out the alligator had eaten some plastic which had utterly jammed up his digestive system ahd was literally rotting from the inside out. Did not survive. The captain was pretty upset telling that story. I don't know for sure that this big alligator was the one that died, but given the affection the tour guides had for him, and the very real sadness and anger in the captain's voice, I'm thinking it may have been. Sad ending for this king of Myakka Lake.  

More 2019 gators:

The gator-spotting out on the lake this year wasn't as good. It was much colder and windier. The birds were hunkered down. 

The humans were bundled up - here's TQ and my sister -


And me and my sister. TQ and I were pretty much dressed in what we'd worn leaving Brooklyn. My sister could've used a windbreaker, it was chilly out on the lake and the wind cut right through that fleece.

We did see some birds. Here was a lovely flock of black-necked stilts flying by.

Here was the only shoreline alligator of the tour. I did see one in the water for a moment, but it went under before I could point it out to Karen and TQ. We learned a new fact in this year's tour - alligators like to go dig themselves into the mud at the bottom of the lake to hide from the cold weather. 

Here was our captain,

And speaking of captains, there's my dad and Belle the dog coming to meet the boat. Dogs aren't allowed on the boat, so TQ and Karen and I had gone early to go on that tour. And here you can see how breezy it is! The other pictures here were taken over on the far side of the lake, where we were somewhat in the shelter of the treeline. This side of the lake was all whitecaps.

Back in the inlet, looking back at the lake

Tricolored heron getting a little fishing in despite the cold

And then here was a real treat - this Roseate Spoonbill was hanging out right by the kayak launch, spoonbilling away. No kayaks going out on this cold & blustery day, the bird only had the paparazzi to worry about - and it didn't seem at all concerned about me and the couple of other people taking pictures of it. Gorgeous, isn't it? 

A few more Monday in Florida photos (1/20/20)

Just sharing a few more pictures from January 20th on and near Anna Maria Island - I didn't want my Robinson Preserve post to get too unwieldy.

Starting off with the Great Blue Heron who hangs out at Peter and Valerie's condo. Last year he was actually perched on the mangroves just above our heads as we went out for a paddle, I got some great pictures of him. Again, this is pretty amazing to me because although we have plenty of Great Blue Herons in Jamaica Bay, they are pretty skittish about people. No such issues with this one. 

And there he goes (if we're FB friends you'll recognize this as my current cover photo). 

Here's another fun local bird. Meet the Official Welcome Duck of the Robinson Preserve. Or at least that's what the duck thinks.

Hi! Welcome to the Robinson Preserve!

OK actually we were leaving at this point, but the duck had been greeting people (and getting them to give it drinks from the dog water fountain, clever bird) when we arrived, so this is apparently just what it does.

Peter had a pretty serious discussion with the duck. There was a moment when Valerie was thinking they were going to have a new pet.

Checking out some creative kayak storage at the preserve, made out of lengths of drainpipe with lockable chain link fence gates. One or two kayaks in each, and one person had 3 stand-up paddleboards in one. The sun shade fabric was a recent addition, probably a really good idea with Florida's intense sun.

This is a gumbo limbo tree, also called a Tourist Tree for its red and peeling skin. Ha ha!

It was well on into the afternoon by the time we finished up at the preserve, and Peter and Valerie suggested a late lunch at a favorite spot of theirs, the Tide Tables restaurant in Cortez, a fine old-fashioned Florida fishing village. The name is very punny and the seafood was fabulously fresh (after lunch, my sister got to talking to a guy who was cleaning a cooler full of beautiful fresh grouper on a pier adjacent to the restaurant, and it turned out the fish were for the restaurant - can't get much fresher without catching them yourself). I had grouper tacos; the tacos on the menu are corvino, a mild white fish, but I asked about grouper and our waiter said they could absolutely do that switch (with a substitution charge).

They made the tacos with a sort of teriyaki sauce, an unexpected Asian spin for a Florida taco but delicious with the fish, I would have those again. If I'm remembering correctly, my sister then asked for the grouper sandwich with corvino, and we swapped samples so got to try both very popular local fish. Valerie and Peter also let us try some of their conch fritters, which were great - I've tried those once or twice at street fairs in my Brooklyn neighborhood, which has a lot of Caribbean influence, and been a bit underwhelmed because they were way more fritter than conch; the Tide Tables rendition involved a lot more mollusk and was absolutely delicious.

Here's the bar - 

The view from our table. The pelicans were putting on a good diving show but I never quite got a picture. And that's another Great Blue Heron on the dock. 

On the way back to Peter and Valerie's place, we stopped to take a look at one of Anna Maria Island's beautiful beaches. I wonder how much I would swim if I lived someplace with a beach like this? Lots more than I do in NYC, that's for sure.

After that, we headed back for "home", with just one more stop for a beach sunset. Glorious!

Florida Day 2 - Robinson Preserve, Manatee County

Kayak and canoe launch at the preserve

On Monday (Martin Luther King Jr. Day), my sister and TQ and I all headed up to Annamaria Island, where some friends from the NYC kayaking community spend the winter. We didn't kayak this time; instead Peter and Valerie took us to explore the beautiful Robinson Preserve in Bradenton, just back on the other side of the bridge to the island. This is a very interesting conservation effort, made up partly of former farmlands that are being allowed to return to a natural state, with data being collected and records kept of the process. With development being such a force in Florida, it was great to learn about this effort, and hear Peter and Valerie's firsthand observations on the progress they've seen in the years they've been spending time in Florida in the wintertime.

We didn't walk too far as unfortunately one of the reasons tentative paddling plans for the day had been called off was because Peter had hurt his back, and walking wasn't entirely comfortable either, but we got a good sampling of what the preserve had to offer. There are easy hiking trails, a tower you can climb for wonderful views, a boardwalk that wound through more mangroves, and so many birds! If you're on Facebook, and you like bird photography at all, you will love checking out the Robinson Preserve Facebook Group (thanks to Valerie for sharing that with me). Amazing photos - makes me hope to maybe have a chance to spend a little more time there sometime!

Here are more of my photos from the day. Click on any photo for a slideshow view. Enjoy!

Goodreads Review: Desert Queen by Janet Wallach

Preface: Once again, I'm going to try keeping track of the books I read this year. I was doing pretty well at this last year until October or so when I lost the notebook where I'd been writing them down. Argh. I'm on Goodreads but haven't really used it much except to look up possible reads - although it's not quite as easy without a smartphone, I'm going to give that a try this year. And maybe take a shot at talking about the ones I like. This one, for starters. 

  Desert Queen: The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell: Adventurer, Adviser to Kings, Ally of Lawrence of Arabia by Janet Wallach
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

An excellent book about a really fascinating woman who completely sidestepped the expectations of her time (partly by choice, and partly by circumstances, and to her joy and sadness both), and also an excellent look at the process that produced the modern Middle East. I knew that the countries we see in the news now were somewhat of an artificial creation dating to the decline of the British Empire, and I'm sure a poor history teacher or two tried to get some details into my skull at some point, but that was all a long time ago so I was quite ready for a review.

Does require reading with relativism filters on - as a modern reader, the paternalism of the British/Western attitudes - even those of Miss Bell herself - made for some uncomfortable passages, but this is how it was done (and maybe is still done today - and certainly the oil that was a key driver in proceedings then absolutely continues to be - that part wasn't any shock) and the read is well worth the occasional gritting of teeth in which you may find yourself engaged.

Also fascinating to read the final chapter of this 1996 book, knowing what was yet to come, including, so sadly, the looting of the very museum that was one of Bell's lasting achievements in the newly-minted county. In fact, my next stop after this is going to be Wikipedia's article about the museum, just to refresh my memory of what happened, and find out how it's doing now, and that's always one measure of success for a history for me - if I put down the book at the end and then start doing additional reading, just because it sparked curiosity, it was a good one.

View all my reviews

First Paddle of 2020 - Florida Mangrove Tunnels with Adventure Kayak Sarasota, January 19th

Photo by TQ. Look, Ma, no drysuit!

As usual, click on any photo for a better look - "x" in the upper right hand corner brings you back to the post.

So the neither-Kansas-nor-Brooklyn place mentioned in the last post was Florida, where TQ and I met up with my folks and my sister for a very nice winter vacation in the Sarasota area, staying in a VRBO in the same Gulf Coast town my folks had introduced me and my sister to around the same time of year last year. Not quite the complete thaw-out you might think - Florida has its winter cold snaps too and an early look at the weather forecast had me wanting to get in a paddle on Sunday the 21st, as that day was going to be in the high 60's/low 70's and not too windy. After that it was going down to the 40's for a couple of days, and although it was eventually going back up to around 70, the wind was looking like a potential issue for the entire stay.

Longer-range forecasts can (and very often do) shift as you get closer to the days involved, but I didn't want to count on that so I really lobbied for paddling on Sunday -- I haven't been able to get out on Jamaica Bay at all in January, we've had some lovely days in NYC but all on work days. Bah! So after my December full of paddling fun, I was really itching to get out in a boat at least once while we were down there.

My dad had been quite intrigued by things he'd heard about paddling tours that took you into mangrove tunnels. A little Googling and we'd found Adventure Kayak Sarasota, offering just the sort of tour we'd been looking for, launching out of the Ted Sperling Nature Park on Lido Key. I called in the morning to make sure they were doing trips that day and signed us up for the 2:00 tour. Unfortunately my mom and dad decided not to go because their little dog Belle was not being her usual laid-back self to the extent that they were concerned (she's gone blind from glaucoma and being in a strange place is trickier for her than it used to be, but she was tense beyond normal travel anxiety - she ended up being fine but at the time we were getting ready to go she was still stressed out to the point we were worried she was unwell), but I made reservations for TQ and my sister and me and at 1:45 we'd met up with our guide and the one other couple who were the other attendees.

I think our guide's name was Dan, although I'm really bad at names and they do have another guide, Phil- I'm just going to call him Dan for the rest of the post just for simplicity's sake . He was a relaxed young Florida local who knew tons about the area and the creatures who call it home. The fleet was Pungos and the like, very decent recreational kayaks. Karen and TQ and I were all in singles, with the other couple taking a double. Ended up being a nice group, everybody had done at least a little paddling and the guide was able to lead us around at a reasonable yet unhurried pace, with plenty of time for looking around and taking pictures. 

Kayak launch at Lido Key

The website talks about the possibility of manatees and dolphins. Unfortunately, the charismatic megafauna was nowhere to be seen on this trip. Dan told us right at the start that the manatees had already made their seasonal move up into to warmer water and that although it wasn't completely outside the realm of possibility that we might stumble across one or two lingerers, that was highly unlikely. He did try really, really, really hard to find us some dolphins, taking us to a couple of spots where he said they would usually see them, but no luck.

However, the cormorants just about made up for the missing mammals with some very amusing and surprising behavior that the local birds have taught themselves! As we were setting out, Dan pointed out a couple of cormorants that he described as "hanging out with those kayaks out there" (not part of our tour). TQ and I weren't that excited by that, cormorants are a common bird in our NYC waterways and I just took "hanging out with those kayaks" as colorful-Florida-guide-dude-speak - until a minute later we had our own little fleet of companion cormorants!

This totally startled us because in NYC, cormorant attitudes towards kayaks range from utterly indifferent at a distance to something to run away from if a paddler gets too close. They might pop up by your boat after a dive in the bay's murky water, but they look very startled to see you there and they go right back under and get as far away from you as they can in one dive. This particular Florida population, however, had worked it out that kayaks make fantastic fishing cover in the area's clear, shallow waters! So they come right up to you, dive under your boat, and come up almost every time with a fish. Clever birds! They're super fast, so I didn't get any really good close-ups, but here are a couple with our guide - 

here's one diving under my boat, zip zip

and here's one following my sister. So much fun to watch!

Here's the whole tour heading for the mangrove tunnels

In the tunnels! Dan told us that these channels had originally been cut into the mangroves as a mosquito mitigation project, I think he said starting in the 1910's or so. They didn't end up working the way they were hoped to, but they do make for some really neat paddling. I was glad to have a guide, I felt like I would've gotten totally lost on my own, although the company does offer rentals and supply a laminated map of the tunnels with those. 

There was some interesting wildlife in here - this egret retreated up on the mangrove roots while we went by, going right back down to the water as soon as we'd passed by.

Dan was very observant of all the little critters that live in and around the mangroves. Over the course of the paddle, he pointed out a big hermit crab, a decorator urchin (a sea urchin that sticks shells and stuff on its spine to add camouflage and maybe additional armour - he showed it to us as a really good reason to stay in our boats even though the water was mostly not more than four feet deep, if that, but it was also neat to see), upside-down jellyfish (which actually lie on the bottom with their tentacles sticking up looking for food instead of floating around like most jellyfish), oysters encrusting the mangrove roots, and the little black mangrove crabs that go down among the roots at low water and then climb up the trees as the tide starts coming in. All sorts of stuff to observe!

Oysters on the mangrove roots

Mangrove crab heading aloft

TQ leaving the mangrove tunnel

Lots of ospreys! 

Back by the parking lot, one more wildlife sighting - two young raccoons. This was kind of sad - there were a number of outfitters running tours here and the guides knew this pair and hadn't seen Mom Raccoon in a couple of weeks, were guessing something had happened to her. Good place to be a raccoon, though, the guide we got talking to about them said he'd seen another adult hunting the mangrove crabs by putting its face against the trunk with its mouth open, then reaching around the trunk and grabbing at the crab with its paw from the opposite side - the crab would see the paw reaching for it and run right into the open mouth, mistaking it for a safe hidey-hole, and the raccoon would have its snack. All kinds of good things for a raccoon to eat here.

Sounds like the guides here get to see some really neat stuff, and they clearly enjoy sharing it. Dolphins would've been the cherry on the sundae but even without, it was a really interesting and fun place to kick off my 2020 paddling season.