So long Kabocha!

Oh, kabocha that I started from the seed of a squash that I bought for dinner one day at the grocery store. Look what a fine & lovely thing you've grown to be. Think you're ready to move outside, you and your cherry-tomato sillmates.

Housework today, and packing, and maybe a haircut (once a year whether I need it or not), and prep for the Hudson Valley Kayak Symposium (yay!) tomorrow, I'll reward myself with good day of gardening & paddling with friends.

Wait. I'm confused. Where do I live again? Kerhonksen? No, wait, Brooklyn. I live in Brooklyn.

EVENTS! Much going on! A quick sampling:

Tomorrow, May 6th - 4th Annual Jamaica Bay Fishing Tournament

Stevie's been practicing all winter!

Hey! Do YOU live in Brooklyn (or within driving distance? Curious about my fab new club where the towers of Manhattan are the farthest backdrop? Like to check out J-Bay for yourself? Come to the Sebago Canoe Club Open House! Saturday, May 19th, 10 am - 5 pm, rain or shine. Come on by, meet the gang, it'll be fun!

Unfortunately I won't be there because I'll be teaching at the Hudson Valley Kayak Symposium. It's rough timing for me - I will have JUST been in Hawaii & after a week of swimsuits-and-board-shorts temperature water even the wunderdrysuit that wunderTQ floored me with at Christmas is going to be hard to put on. It's a great weekend though - can't pass on my annual spring trip up to a lovely quiet lake far from the city, teaching with original G-mentor Jack Gilman, and a lot of other people. Love this symposium.

Not going in calendrical order here, this is my blog so I started with the stuff I'm doing - but next weekend, May 12th, the Downtown Boathouse starts their summer paddling programs. Free of charge to walk-up participants as always, it's all supported by donations of goods, money, and (most importantly) many many many hours of volunteers' time.

Also on May 12th - Hui Wa'a will be holding a surf clinic at Maunalua Bay, meeting at the Hawaii Kai boatramp (on Oahu).

Bwahahahaaaa. Guess which one of those two May 12th events I'm going to be going to? Hint: I'm getting NERVOUS!

And to close, here are a few items of local water news, gleaned from the NYCKayaker list:

Where Not to Swim For the Moment:
Yonkers sewage spill - YUCK! My poor friends at the Yonkers Paddling & Rolling er Rowing Club!. Hope they clean that up SOON.

Possibly Cool Place to Swim Starting July 4th
In a swimming pool on a barge in Brooklyn Heights!

MEETING:

I believe I referred to the last Tribeca Waterfrom Meeting as being the last one of the Tribeca Boathouse Redesign Group. That was a mistake. Connie & Noreen (President & EVP of the Trust) came, they listened, they spoke, and although there seemed to be some hedging, they've agreed to the request to work with the CB1 Group. There's another good writeup by Skye McFarlane, who's attended all of these, in the Villager, I'll link to that as soon as it gets into the online version. Anyhow, the Trust agreeing to the request means more meetings. I'm afraid I'm going to have to pull out of these ones at this point - there's a perfectly fine group of paddlers from the area involved, I've been feeling like I've had myself very overstretched lately balancing work, private life & political stuff, and as the Sebago season gets going I expect I'll have more than enough to do out there. I'm glad to have been involved as far as I have been though, and I will keep posting here whenever I hear of progress.

Meeting notice from Julie Nadel -

THE MEETING TO REVIEW AND REVISE THE PLANS FOR PIER 26 IS RESCHEDULED FOR 4pm, WEDNESDAY, MAY 9th (same day, different time). Please tell others of the change in time. This meeting will be held at Trust Offices at Pier 40 at Houston Street, 2nd floor

This meeting will primarily focus upon (1) reviewing the entire plan for the Tribeca segment of Hudson River Park, and (2) beginning to revise the plans for the boathouse. At a subsequent meeting (date TBA), we will begin to plan for the estuarium.

We will also continue the discussion at the next meeting of CB1's Waterfront Committee on May 21 at 6pm. The two documents produced by the Pier 26 Task Force, on boathouse design and defining the elements of an estuarium, will form the basis of our review and discussion. These two documents are available at the offices of Community Board One.

thanks for volunteering your time on this,

Julie Nadel

additional note from Villager article;
Wednesday’s meeting is open to the public, but those who wish to attend should R.S.V.P. with the community board at 212-442-5050.

A couple of meetings, and PlaNYC

evening note #2: I was browsing the PlaNYC2030 site & found that they have a weekly OPINION POLL. This week's should be answered by as many people who like boats as possible!

The Question Is: What would you like New York City to do with its waterfront?

Head over here to cast your vote, and please - spread the word! Only takes a second!



evening note...oops. Sometimes linkage suffers when I do these quick lunchtime posts. As Sitemeter stats tell me that a few people have already discovered, I had the wrong link for Peter Ponders Picking Paddles, I linked to the Braca site instead I've fixed the link in the original post, too. Sorry! BTW, the link will land you in the comments, just scroll up to the top for the post itself, which is a fun read.

Just a quick lunchtime post with some information that will probably be of interest to locals.

For non-locals - oh, I had an exchange with Peter in Denmark the other day that made me laugh, and I'm going try to work in an excerpt or two from his post on his new Braca IV in that "How to Pick a Paddle" presentation Stevie (who's the one who got me into this in the first place) & I have been working on. I've been spending a lot of time thinking about that presentation, and browsing links that one or the other of us have found, and generally Taking It All Very Seriously, and then I went over to read Peter's blog one day and it just made me laugh. I loved it. It's so funny how the more you learn about paddling (heck, boating in general), the more you realize you don't know. I wouldn't have the temerity to advise more advanced paddlers on picking paddles, but I'm aiming it at beginners, and if I do my job they won't walk out of that room knowing what paddle to buy, but with a good list of questions to ask that will help them go to work on narrowing down the choices. Anyways - here you go, Peter ponders picking paddles in his own very entertaining way.

Meanwhile, back in the Bronx (and NYC in general) and Manhattan -

This was posted to NYCKayaker today - it's a little on the last-minute notice side, but it sounds interesting & I do see "Bronx" in my sitemeter every now & then so in case any Bronx people are reading - check it out (thanks SC!)!

PLANYC2030 Town Hall Conversation: Bronx
Date: Monday, March 5
Time: 6:30 PM - 9:00 PM
Location: County Court House, 851 Grand Concourse, Bronx
Transit: Subway B/D/4 to Yankee Stadium
For more information: PlaNYC2030

Let the Mayor's Office know how important the water is to you! The
Office of Long Term Planning and Sustainability will be holding Town
Hall Conversations throughout February and March for you to put in
your two cents. Whether your passion is kayaking, ferry transit, or
blue herons, your input can help make NYC waters cleaner and healthier
places for decades to come.
**********************************************************************

Now, that PlaNYC2030 is a really interesting initiative, and includes a waterways component! Yes, very exciting, finally ALL the shorelines & waters of NYC are being looked at as a valuable part of the city not just for commercial uses, or as a pretty backdrop (which was the park role to which many of us feared the Hudson would be relegated even before the Hudson River Park Trust existed) but as an underutilized, underappreciated recreational & ecological resource, not something to be carefully fenced off & made difficult to access. The stated goal is "to open 90% of our waterways to recreation by reducing pollution and preserving our natural areas". They're looking for ideas of how to do that now! If you've got any, here's the form to leave them on! Comment period closes in March, so hurry!
**************

And the last Tribeca Boathouse Design Task Force Meeting is on Monday, March 12th. Probably at 6, probably at 49-50 Chambers St. I'll update before the meetings. These are the ones I've been all sort of excited about, and the organizer, Julie Nadel, sounds pretty excited about it too. And determined. Yay! At this one, they'll be reviewing the recommendations they've come up with from all the input, and if everybody likes it, that will probably then get presented to the trust as a formal recommendation from Community Board One. I hope to post a copy of those recommendations here, and they'll probably do the rounds on the listserves as well.

Here's hoping the Trust listens!

And that's all I've got time for now.

Happy Friday all!