Friday, November 30, 2012

Fish On Friday (plus one more rainbow)

Another exhibit at the Henry Ford Museum. That was a pretty neat thing to do!

BTW, I ended up going over to TQ's last night so I didn't have time for more Sandy-rainbow pictures, but I had put up an album on Facebook. I did end up setting my privacy settings pretty high after a couple of slightly bothersome events early on in my time on Facebook, but click here if you want to see more Sandy pictures - if we're Facebook friends you'll definitely see 'em, otherwise, I'm not sure, but you might be able to.

If not, I'll still probably come back to that over the weekend, but even if I don't, I'd say that by the time I finished expanding the post, it had most of the best pictures - especially if I add in this one, looking at the rainbow past a skyful of spotlight beams from the setup the was being done for a promotional event for a brand of vodka in the Meatpacking District:
And hooray, it's Aloha Friday, no work (except sailboat work) tomorrow!

Thursday, November 29, 2012

Rainbow For The City

Tonight's rainbow-shooting expedition was a success - I think this was my favorite shot of the evening, for some reason, so I'll put this up now as it ended up being a later night than I'd expected (since I knew where I was going and didn't have anywhere I was trying to get to afterwards, I was able to put a little more amble in my ramble). I'll put up a gallery with a few more tomorrow but at least now you see that I wasn't hitting the Balvenie yesterday! Click on the pictures for more detail, as usual.

Oh, wait, I like these ones too - walking down Bleeker Street, and Chaim Gross's The Family.
I basically just re-did last night's walk, except that instead of going down West 4th St to get to Dempsey's, I re-traced my steps to get back to the Broadway-Lafayette subway station, which not coincidentally also sent me right past Kelly & Ping's - I worked up a good appetite out shooting this rare nocturnal rainbow!

Adding one more the following morning, for O-Docker (or perhaps that should be O'Docker?), who mentioned something about some longstanding misconception he'd had about the end of the rainbow. I think a lot of us shared that so without further ado, here's what's REALLY at the end of the rainbow:
An extremely trendy lounge at the top of an extremely trendy hotel. And no, Harry, I don't know if they serve Skittles. I didn't even think of trying to get in although in hindsight perhaps I should have gone up and had at least one twenty-dollar concoction (or heck, even thirty if that's what it would take to get them to add in a smidgen of gin). However, I suspect that the minimum credentials for entry would be "has appeared in at least one international fashion magazine within the current season"!


By the way, for anyone who happens to stumble across this without having read my original post about this night rainbow, the backstory is that I was on my way to my Irish music session when I spotted the rainbow in the sky, and I just couldn't resist going to find it. It ended up being a teensy (ha ha) bit of a detour but I enjoyed tracking it down and decided to repeat my trek the next night, only with a camera this time.

Also, I hadn't mentioned this before, but one rather fun thing about everybody in the world except me having a smartphone these days is that I find that when something unique and unusual comes up, everybody is going to pull out their smartphones to find out what it is and if I just keep my ears open, I'll overhear someone explaining it to their friends. In this case, on Tuesday night I overheard someone say "It's for Sandy", which was enough for me to track down the rest of the story when I got home.

I first found a story on NY1, and a friend later sent me a link to a story with links on Gothamist. The rainbow is an art installation that's been touring this year, and in the aftermath of Sandy, and in a very nice gesture, the artist, Yvette Mattern, decided to bring it back to New York City in honor of those who are still suffering from the storm (so easy for even those of us who live in less-hard-hit neighborhoods to forget that it's still so bad in a lot of places).

Ms. Clark set her lights up on top of the Standard Hotel, the one that straddles the High Line, and for 3 nights this week (tonight's the last, I think), starting at 8 P.M., the rainbow beams out towards the Rockaway Peninsula. I live in Brooklyn, and although it was far too faint to photograph (at least with my camera), I did notice on Tuesday night that I could still see it in the sky when I got off the train in my neighborhood in Flatbush. It's hard to miss in downtown Manhattan, but if you're out and about tonight in Brooklyn or Queens, don't forget to take a look up in the sky to see if you can spot it.

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Chasing Rainbows In The Dark

The usual route to Dempsey's:


Tonight's route to Dempsey's:
So I walked out of my office well after dark, and there was this rainbow, and I had to track it down! Wouldn't you? And no, I haven't been hitting the bottle of Scotch I was talking about in the comments of the last post. Click here for the story. I'll try for a picture tomorrow, I didn't happen to have my camera along today.

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Help the Sebago Sailors - fill in the blanks!

Oh noes! The Sebago Sailing Co-Chairs sent out a message to all the Sebago sailors, but some silly kayak blogger went and lost a very important word. What do you think the sailors should bring for the work day?

"This has been a crazy fall/winter with the storms etc., and we have yet to put our fleet to bed and prepare for the winter season. Now it looks like we no longer have ______ at the club. Nonetheless we still need to attend to our boats and rigs. So this >Saturday we'll do a sailing workday from 10am - 2pm. >"Many hands make light work". If everyone could bring a bottle or two of ______ we can clean off the spars and finish the rest of our tasks."

Monday, November 26, 2012

Escape from Black Friday 2012 - Picasa album!

From Escape from Black Friday 2012 - By Water This Time!


I think this was one of my favorite pictures from Friday. I mean, would you ever guess that this was in Brooklyn, if you didn't know that this is a Brooklyn-based blog these days? Click the link above for a trip report in photos from a lovely, lovely day. I really don't understand how people drag themselves into malls on a day like we had on Friday.

Saturday, November 24, 2012

Escape from Black Friday 2012

Ha ha, they'll never find me in here!


TQ usually joins me but he's working for parks in the Rockaways right now and they need all of their workers there now. The more they can get done before winter hits in a serious way, the better. I was happy to have him around for Thanksgiving, we weren't sure he was going to have that day off, but he did and since a pheasant only takes an hour, we did get in a nice hike with the dogs out at Floyd Bennett Field. Friday was a perfect paddling day, though, so I decided that an escape by water would be fine. Thought I'd be going solo, but I found a couple of like-minded friends out at the club and joined them.

More pictures from another fine Escape from Black Friday tonight - it was a beautiful day!

Friday, November 23, 2012

Pheasant was Pleasant!

In fact it was downright delicious! Here is my cooking report, as requested by Baydog!

I picked this recipe to use as a general guide, although I did mess around with it quite a bit.

I changed the brine quite a bit (skipped the juniper berries since I didn't happen to have any of those laying around, substituted dry sherry for one of the 4 cups of water, and then added in 3 cloves of garlic, part of a leftover onion that needed to get used up, some adobo seasoning, juice of half a lemon, some fresh ginger and a little worcestershire sauce).

Gave the veggies a little head start with some of the brine while I heated up the oven for the initial 15 minute blast, then poured out the liquid, put in the bird, and oh yes, in another departure from the recipe, bacon was involved.
Went for the temperatures as instructed - and the amazing thing was that at the end of an hour (when the bird is supposed to be done done done, cook no more), I gambled a bit with another 15 minutes with the lid (and bacon) off & at a slightly higher temperature to brown up the skin - the dutch oven doesn't brown that well & although it smelled great and probably would have been fine, it just looked pale when I took it out at the end of the hour. I was terribly worried that I was going to trade edibility for aesthetics, and I didn't go crazy on trying for full golden brown, but it looked much prettier after the extra 15 minutes - there it is, fresh from the oven -
The triple treatment of brine, bacon, and a cast-iron Dutch oven worked so well that even after cooking for the extra 15 minutes, it was still absolutely moist & delicious! And there was enough meat left on the carcass (and veggies on the plate) that I think I'll make a small pot of pheasant soup this weekend.

So it was a great experiment, and another nice thing about it was that it actually left the whole day free for me and TQ to take the dogs out to Floyd Bennett Field for an afternoon walk. Spending the day with him was a great bonus 'cause we weren't sure he wouldn't be working until very close to Thanksgiving day - having a meal that didn't require a whole lot of time let us use that day well! I made the brine and set the pheasant soaking after breakfast, and with sunset at 4:30, and a pheasant only taking an hour to cook, the timing just couldn't have been better. Good stuff!!!

Thursday, November 22, 2012

Mill Basin, Jamaica Bay, Thanksgiving 2012

Pheasant's in the oven, the loon is on the bay
Wishing all my kith & kin a good Thanksgiving day.

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Thanksgiving for Two - A Pleasant Pheasant! Plus, return of the Ticked-Off Turkey.

Very excited about Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow. We'd been planning on a quiet Thanksgiving together here in Brooklyn for some time; I think it was originally at my request since I was travelling last weekend, but it's working out particularly well since he started a new job working for the city parks department out in the Rockaways over the summer. As you may imagine, Sandy has left a huge amount of work for him and his colleagues; days off have been a little up in the air, so my plan to stick around Brooklyn for turkey day ended up working out really well. It does turn out that he has tomorrow off, so we'll get to cook dinner together, which we always enjoy.

And since even the smallest turkey is way too much for two, I thought it would be fun to try a pheasant! I've never cooked pheasant before, but we've both had it and liked it, and I thought it would be fun to try! Steve H., aka the "Paddling Chef", works for D'artagnan and was nice enough to order a bird for me when the folks at Dean and DeLuca proved to be oddly clueless about pheasants, and I've had a great time looking up various things to do with pheasants. I'm thinking a brine or a marinade, and then some bacon strips on the breast and roasted in TQ's Dutch oven (which does an incredible job of keeping thing moist).

If I manage to ruin the bird, we should have leftovers from the pot of venison chili I'm making tonight! It's game week here at Frogma's lilypad! And in case I don't make it back online tomorrow, here's my favorite home-made angry bird, stomping around in my foyer to wish you a happy Thanksgiving. Or something.

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Rosa Parks' Bus

Where've I been? Sitting in the seat behind the seat that Rosa Parks wouldn't give up back in 1955, listening to a recording of her telling her story, among other places. Has to be one of the most moving museum exhibits I've ever seen. Click here to read an interesting article about how the bus was saved from the scrapyard and eventually ended up at the Henry Ford Museum in Detroit, where it is currently a central piece of the museum's With Liberty And Justice For All exhibit.

Thursday, November 15, 2012

Mighty Cranky Power Ranger

Actually I'm not sure what that expression is - cranky, grumpy, or just determined? Click for detail - what do you think? Whatever it was, I just loved this picture - funny thing was, I was focused on the kids trying out the steel drum and I didn't see that face until I started going through my pictures! What a mug. Reminded me of that little boy who was sooo serious about the spinach-eating contest at the tugboat races earlier in the year -
and so appalled when the older kid won -- click on this one to really see that expression, the compressed view doesn't quite do it justice.
Anyways, it was a good day at the BBG the day before the day before the storm. Funny, too, I'd actually though about leaving when I'd gotten to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and discovered that they were having their annual Halloween "Ghouls and Ghosts" celebration, they were charging extra admission because of the festival and I usually go to the BBG in search of peace and quiet (I actually sometimes like to go on days when the weather's not so perfect because a lot of people won't) - but then I thought "Well, this might offer some fun picture-taking too". And it did, too - click here for a few more ! Oh, there are a few heron pictures in there, too - just the ones I liked the best, but if you already saw the full series just click through those, there's more Ghouls & Gourds after them.

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Sushi en brochette

Went to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden the weekend before the hurricane. Thought I'd go see if there was any foliage there that I could take pictures of before Sandy blew it all away.

The color hadn't really gotten underway. But the fishing was good!

I got a whole series of pictures of this heron hunting in the Japanese Hill and Pond garden. I think he must live there, I've never seen a heron that was more blase about the presence of humans. The ones I see in Jamaica Bay are usually flying away because they saw me first, they are terribly skittish birds and I'm always pleased with myself when I can spot one and not make him fly, but this one? No way was he going to let some silly people deprive him of his koi kebabs.Click here for "Heron on the Hunt".

Special thanks to Bob Hilscher, who left a VERY nice compliment on that red-tailed hawk picture I'd posted a couple weeks ago. He and his wife Jean had their own unusual chance to get some excellent red-tail pictures when a hawk landed in a tree near them, and they left a link to a photo essay they'd posted on their site (click here for that). Among the pictures leading up to the arrival of the hawk, there was a lovely shot of a great blue heron, and that reminded me that I'd never really done anything here with my heron pictures. Between Sandy, the election, the nor'easter, I'm not sure I would've remembered without the reminder, and I'm glad I got one.

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

North Brooklyn Boat Club Annual Meeting TONIGHT!

Details here! When you click on the link, you'll see the title "A Note to NBBC Members", but they close the memo with "Open to all!" and I bet they wouldn't turn away anyone who turned up and expressed an interest in kayaking, canoeing, or rowing out of the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn. The North Brooklyn Boat Club is a relatively new group, this meeting will review how their first season went, should be interesting! I can't make it 'cause I'm out of the office starting Friday, lost the entire week of Sandy & have a ton of stuff that's got to be tied up before I go, but if that weren't the case, I think I might try to go.

Saturday, November 10, 2012

Urban Wildlife (plus post-Sandy beach cleanup album link)

Oh deer! For more pictures from the beach cleanup at Coney Island at which I joined some of my Coney Island-Brighton Beach Open Water Swimmers friends, click here. Excellent day, glad Ruby's was open for a little post-cleaning refreshment, and boy, am I ever tired!

Friday, November 09, 2012

Fall Colors

Enough storm and politics. Look how beautiful these tomatoes have turned (and the peppers too)! This is sort of storm related in that I did bring home all the green tomatoes before Sandy; I thought I was going to be doing another round or two of fried green tomatoes, but I didn't get to it fast enough! Meanwhile, we do still have a little bit of fall color outside - here are a few pictures from my neighborhood the morning after the nor'easter. That storm was absolutely the last thing we needed, but still, I just couldn't resist taking some pictures of the snow on the autumn leaves the next morning. Click for a better view.

UPDATE on Recreational Boating in NY Harbor 11/9/2012

I didn't make it to hear the call this morning, but I came in to find that Ray Fusco (creator of www.thesafeharbor.us/, a great resource for recreational boaters in NY Harbor at any time) had taken some notes & posted them with a request that they be disseminated far & wide. So here you are. Thanks, Ray (and Nancy Brous, Rob Buchanan, & "Staten Island Steve" Blumling from the New York City Water Trail Association and Scott Keller from the Hudson River Greenway - with those guys on the call I don't feel so bad about missing it) and once again thanks to Cdr. Sturgis & LCDR Morrissey and anyone else at our local Coast Guard station for everything you're doing to help our harbor slowly return from Sandy's beating.

Here are Ray's notes from the morning call:

A special thanks to the USCG for making time to speak with us as a group. Please spread this info far and wide we are a part of a larger recreational community so that means sailors, power boaters, fisherman etc etc.

...

The Port of NY and NJ is open for recreational boating under cautionary and discretionary daylight use only with the following closures and safety zones*:

Command Center** 718 354 4353 - 24/7 open VHF radio 16

1) buttermilk channel - massive clean up and removal of containers and heavy equipment - 2 or 3 days

2) arthur kill - 3/4 is soiled with oil spill - entire arthur kill is closed - majority of the spill is from goethels bridge to kindermorgan - spill is moving with the current and this is why the entire kill is closed. 4 of the bulk oil storage facilities suffered significant damage - primarily marine diesel - 400,000 gallons original number in water

3) sheepshead bay***

4) jamaica bay***

5) great kills harbor***

If you go out the USCG requests you: Use common sense and judgement Exercise caution Do a thorough visual survey of area Steer clear of and look out for debris fields and oil spills

if you go out and see something, call command center and take photos if you can

Safety zone - are to make sure folks go into a hazmat areas The challenges post storm is that all damaged rec boats are polluting the waters Be Aware that any river with a marina is suffering these similar problems

* Please note for folks interested in recreating the water above the GW bridge and the Long Island Sound have NO restrictions and have no reported oil spills but may have debris so exercise cation

** Command center will permit, a boat that is serviceable, to exit the safety zones, permission will be a one way transit out ** Command Center will permit any salvage contractors in to help

***There is a separate environmental restoration/habitat restoration - Incident Command Center - 860 514 4581, 347 748 1086 Call if you want to help, find an oil spill or need information regarding the clean up

Thursday, November 08, 2012

Post-Sandy Recreational Boating Update

Sorry for the rather late notice, but Nancy at the New York City Watertrail Association's been doing a very good job of keeping us updated on the continuing post-Sandy moratorium on recreational boating in NY Harbor and it hit me, just as I was getting ready to shut down the computer & turn in, that today's update would be of interest to any local recreational boaters who are wondering what's going on. Here's the latest from NYCKayaker, which she posted this afternoon, with a link to more detail at the end:

In response to the continuing restrictions on recreational boating in NY Harbor more than a week after Hurricane Sandy hit, there are questions amongst the human-powered boating community as to why the restrictions remain in place and when they will be lifted.

To that end NYCWTA had a call with CDR Linda Sturgis of CG today. She provided lots of good info and in an effort to work with this community as a partner she was willing to set up a conference call for tomorrow 8 am for *any/all rec boaters* who want an account of what happened during the storm, where we are today, and what's next.

To view basic notes from today's preliminary call and tomorrow's conference call call-in info visit nycwatertrail.org

nb for nycwta


Thanks Nancy (and Cdr. Sturgis, too)!

Wednesday, November 07, 2012

Waiting for the train, 11/7/2012

Waiting for the train at Newkirk Plaza, post-Sandy nor'easter.

Nor'easter guidance

Ugh, here we go again. I can't quite picture anyone coming HERE for emergency information, but on the off chance anyone does - NYC.gov has a page set up with all sorts of information about what to do and where to go during the Nor'easter that's arrived today, 11/7/2012. Click here to go there. Also, this is getting super-local, but a friend who lives on the lower east side posted info about a settlement house in his neighborhood that's running their own warming center and looking for donations of all kinds of things - figured I would pass it on. Click here to visit their website, but the main info follows:

Hamilton-Madison House, Inc. and Two Bridges Neighborhood Council, Inc. will host a Gathering and Warming Center located at 50 Madison Street, NYC, NY 10038 in the gym from Wednesday, November 7th till Sunday, November 11th from the hours of 8am till 5pm.

Many residents of the Lower East Side are still without power, water and or heat! This warming Center is in need of supplies listed below:
• Water – Both single bottles and the 5 gallon water cooler bottles
• Water Cooler with Hot and Cold Knobs
• Flashlights
• Batteries
• Instant coffee, tea and hot cocoa
• Instant Creamer/Powered Milk Sugar and Sweet & Low
• Instant Soup/Cup a noodle soup
• Non-Perishable Foods
• Any type of pet food (cats, dogs, birds)
• Any type of Cat Litter
• Toilet Paper
• Paper towels
• Napkins
• Hand and Body Wipes
• Hand and Body Sanitizer
• Any basic toiletries and Hygiene Products
• Coats, gloves, hats, etc.

If you can donate supplies, please drop them off at 50 Madison Street.

If you have any questions, you can contact Vicki Mehmel at 212-349-3724 Ext. 9304. vickimehmel"at-sign"hmhonline.org, Work: 212-349-3724, Mobile: 347-728-5277

Tuesday, November 06, 2012

I voted!

And of course I took pictures. Here's one. P.S. 152, my polling place, at 10 am. I was on my way out. Finally.
Catch is, what's outside is only about a third of the line - it continues inside the building, down this hall, around a corner, down another hall and then back again. Mostly kept moving but I'd given myself an hour and it took closer to two and a half. Still, the mood was amiable, with a sort of quiet camaraderie generated by this unmistakeable sense that we'd all turned out to support the same guy, everybody I was near agreed it was good to see such a turnout and as a lady beside me said, "Two hours is a lot shorter than four years".
Forgot to take my cell phone so I had to stop at home to let my bosses know I'm alive & will work late tonight to make up the time. By the time I realized this was not going to be the normal hour-long process I'd already been there long enough that I decided I would stick it out and just be as late as I needed to be to get it done -only be worse tonight, I expect. Figured I'd toss these 2 pictures up since I was here. Off to work now.

Monday, November 05, 2012

A brief political rant.

Political opinion warning. If you've had it up to here, come back tomorrow when I'm sure I'll be back to my usual cheerypaddlebabble, or skip down to the next post (it's about the great cleanup we did at Sebago on Saturday, excellent stuff).

If, on the other hand, you've been wondering how this basically intelligent Froggyblogger can possibly have been oblivious enough enough to just ignore all the politicking of the recent past, well, read on, I haven't been, I just haven't chosen to use it as blogfodder.

Been staying out of the mudslinging 'cause at this point I just don't feel like anything said on a random blog like this one (which started out a little more political, there are some good rants early on, but it really has moved to more just being a blog about being an outdoorsy person finding balance in an indoorsy city) is going to make a SHRED of difference (just piss people off more, more likely), but something Paul Ryan is said to have said finally broke through the political reticence I've been doggedly maintaining on Facebook and what the heck, I'm gonna share that status update here, too. Just this once, before the election. That's all.

This was the headline that sucked me in: "Paul Ryan Says Obama Would Compromise 'Judeo-Christian Western Civilization Values'".

I was actually hoping that the article would somehow put this in a context that would let me let it go, but it sounds like he really actually said that.

So what I said on Facebook is:

When do we get to the part of the movie where the time travellers from 1952 who have come forward to undo five decades of human progress that frighten them so badly are finally unmasked and sent back to their own era?

Really, the 2012 incarnation GOP frightens me. Not that I think they're going to put me, personally, into a nun robe a la "Handmaid's Tale", but they scare me.

I'm saying this now, but it really hit me during the second debate, when I heard Romney talking about how he understands how the problem that women have with work is that they need flexible hours to go home and feed the babies (and sounding incredibly sincere!!!), I thought "This guy does not live in the same century as I do".

I want my country's leader to be someone who does.

I'm pretty square as things go these days, but as an independent single woman who's just for some unknown reason never craved the whole marriage & children thing for myself (although I love my guy very very much, and I support the marriage, with or without children, for anyone who does want it - this is just me talking for myself here), I just feel like there is some group somewhere in the GOP that looks at me and people like me as somehow leading a life that's wrong.

I don't feel like I am and I don't want to wake up on Wednesday morning to find out that that group has somehow been given a new level of influence over my life and the lives of people like me, who just don't quite fall into their version of how things should be.

We now return you to our regular programming. Thank you for your patience.

Sunday, November 04, 2012

Post-Sandy Cleanup at Sebago Canoe Club

The biggest crowd I think I've ever seen at a Sebago work day gathered for post-Sandy cleanup at the club this morning. Many hands really did make light work - there's still much to be done, but we made great progress on putting things back together. I think all of the boats made it through; there's still work to be done, but by the end of the day, we had the grounds looking very close to normal. Click here for more pictures of the day's work.

Thursday, November 01, 2012

Sandy's aftermath 2 - Sebago Canoe Club, Canarsie, Brooklyn

One thing I can say for Sandy is that she at least gave me plenty of time to get over the cold I got late last week. Monday, the day of Sandy, I was feeling like the worst girlfriend in the world because I was at home, TQ works for parks and was out sandbagging things in the Rockaways all day and under ordinary circumstances I would have gone over there before things got too nasty, fixed him some dinner to come home to, and holed up with him for the night, but I just didn't have the energy and I was coughing a lot. Tuesday, I made that turkey-leg soup, came out great & I took him some for dinner, yesterday I got more ambitious, went to his place and fixed him a proper hard-working park worker dinner, pernil (Cuban-style roast pork shoulder, a mutual favorite especially when done in TQ's Dutch oven), baked potatoes (stuck in the dutch oven with the pork, that was good) and broccoli. Better, but still a lot of sitting around inside!

Today I finally had enough energy to actually decide I was BORED (yay!), so I figured I'd head out to the club and see if I could be useful. There's an official all-hands work weekend Saturday and Sunday but I wanted to get a few licks in at the cleanup effort today if I could, just in case power comes back in SoHo tomorrow and the bosses decide to ask us to work the weekend to catch up. Plus I was bored (yay).

B103 bus got me there without too much difficulty. I'd seen pictures of the club, so I was ready for that - the tough part was actually walking through the neighborhood near the club and seeing the heaps and heaps of ruined personal belongings piled up on the curb in front of each home, waiting for sanitation to come collect them. I guess a lot of the neighborhood had flooded basements & ground floors - the houses looked OK outside but the piles of stuff told another story. Again, I feel lucky to live where I do - my neighborhood, it was just piles of tree branches waiting to be taken, not people's things. Certainly put the visit to the club in perspective - it's not pretty, but the club and all the boats are just for fun - plus I bet we'll have the grounds pretty much back in order after a few work days (the clubhouse interior may take a little more doing, and our  dreams of winter gatherings watching kayaking and sailing DVD's on the big-screen TV a member donated are shot, the waterline was about a foot up the screen).

There were a few people at the club when I got there but not a lot of cleaning going on. Turned out that the plan today was mostly for some of our clubs leaders to discuss how to approach the cleanup on Saturday & Sunday - they should have a lot of man and woman power, the trick is how to direct it to accomplish as much as possible. As you can see above, there's much to be done. 


There were a couple of exceptions to the "today is for planning" plan. The gentleman above is the club's archivist, Charles Eggleston. The on-site archives got soaked and he's now in a race against time and mold. Wet papers will grow mold, and he said that once's it's begun it's all over. The only hope for these turns out to be freezing - if the papers can be put in plastic bags and put in freezers soon enough, they might be saved. There are professional services that do this but since speed is crucial, for the moment he's just going to ask people who come for the cleanup to bring some papers home to freeze. 


Sad to think we might lose the on-site archives - there's some neat stuff in there (like this old picture of a team of intense women paddling the war canoe, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!). Fortunately, though, these are actually the less-important part of the archives - the bulk of the more genuinely historical stuff is with the American Canoe Association archives up at Mystic Seaport in Connecticut, where they were fortunately moved a few years ago. 


Looking around a bit more at the damage - our walkway is made of that gray imitation lumber that they make out of recycled soda bottles. The water floated them right up out of their beds and left them strewn about at random. Be nice if we could just pick these up and lay them back in their beds, but I've helped move a SHORT section of walkway and that thing was very heavy. May actually have to do some deconstruction and reconstruction, and one of the things that the folks who were gathered there today were discussing was whether there would be an effective way to stake them down so that future floods don't do the same thing again. 


Here are a couple of the kayak racks. Fortunately, we did have warning that this was coming, so a bunch of people did go to the club on Sunday and lashed down most of the outside boats. We've had windstorms much smaller than this leave boats scattered all over the grounds & that's when they really get beaten up.

Look at the wrack that piled up in that corner. And the dock flotation! 


Fortunately, not from our dock - ours weathered the storm quite beautifully! 


Could be from our neighbors to the north, though - big sections of their dock are riding pretty low.


Neighbors to the south have the opposite problem - looks like they had a finger pier out at the end there that floated right off its spud, and then got hung up during the descent. 

Clubhouse was the biggest mess - people have already done considerable work on this, a photo on Tuesday showed our gas barbecue lying on its side on the floor with the refrigerator lying on its side on top of it, and the cabinets on the floor had floated around - water was 5' deep inside the clubhouse. Still a mess, though - very sad, too, the cabinets were a real find from a former vice-commodore who was a contractor, he was installing some new cabinets at a dentist's office and these old ones were just going to be thrown away, so he salvaged them for the club & they've been great, but they're pressboard & just didn't stand up to the soaking. There was a good bit of discussion as to whether they get replaced - they'd been installed here on pedestals that raised them a few inches, in deference to the fact that we do get some flooding in the clubhouse - but between Irene last year & now Sandy, people were thinking maybe it would be better to just do the repairs with higher waters in mind.

Fortunately the containers are up a couple of feet from here, so anyone whose boats were inside containers and not on the floor were fine (my Romany & TQ's Sparrowhawk fall into that category). Boats that were on the floor floated around a bit or if they were stored on their sides got filled with water - those will get emptied & aired out over the weekend. I didn't do a great deal of work today but there was one other person who was there for the same reason I was - bored & itching to do something useful - he'd done some work in the garden container earlier, and we did find one container where someone had put in thick, plush, pink carpet remnants - they  were sodden, they already weren't smelling too good and they weren't going to be pink much longer either, so we moved a couple of boats, took the soggy carpets out and then swept out as much more of the water as we could. Wasn't a lot but it seemed like a useful thing to do. 

And here's the garden. Sigh. We'll see what happens with this - at least it's at the end of the season. I picked the last green tomatoes and jalapenos today, and I'll probably pull the vines & plants out and call it a year this weekend (if I can go for the cleanup) - it will be interesting to see whether the tough plants that usually make it through the winter will recover from this beating. Have to say, the rosemary bush looks pretty darned perky for a plant that got a salt-water bath. For next year, well, we've got a few months before it's time to plant again - maybe if we get some good rains, it'll rinse out the salt? I guess I'll find out!