Skip to main content

Early morning at Mason Neck

Today is my first Friday off in my employer’s new “9/80” program – work 80 hours in 9 days, get every other Friday off. It’s kinda funny – we all work nine or more hours a day anyway, so it really hasn’t made my other days much longer. As one of my colleagues said, for us it’s a tacit approval to actually take some of those many accrued comp hours every once in a while.

Anyway, as soon as the family was out the door this morning I threw the kayak on the car and headed down to Mason Neck. It was a misty morning – quite beautiful, in fact – the water and sky differentiated only by varying shades of gray. Mason Neck is always a great place for bird life. This morning, the wonders started before I even got on the water. As I was unloading my boat a bald eagle swooped by and grabbed a fish out of the water. I stood transfixed by this scene, realizing only after a minute or so that I still had my sixty pound kayak slung over my shoulder. The rest of the trip was equally enthralling, birdwise: lots of eagles, ospreys, blue herons, geese, and the occasional cormorant.

I paddled for about two hours. After celebrating the (finally) warm water with some rolling, I first headed out to Conrad Island. The water was as high as I had ever seen it, so I decided from there to poke up Kane’s Creek. I stopped where the Sensitive Wildlife Area warning signs are posted across the creek.. This was the first time in quite a while the water level had been high enough for me to make it even that far. After paddling back out of the creek I did a little loop around part of Belmont Bay then headed to shore.

I have been focusing on improving my stroke this season, and today I did something I have never done before. I put my GPS receiver up on deck, set to show speed, then I monkeyed with my stroke mechanics to see what worked best. I also did some sprints, trying to keep up higher speeds (for me, this means in the 5-5.5 MPH range) for extended periods. I was even able to break 6 MPH a couple of times, but I can’t hold that speed for very long. The use of the GPS was very enlightening and offered me a challenge to keep a steady pace. I think I’ll be doing that again.

I got off the water just as the clouds were burning off and it was starting to get hot. All in all, a very pleasant morning.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Apostle Islands: Gordon Lightfoot Warned Us

This entry is part of my write-up of a September 2024 trip to The Apostle Islands. The story begins  here . Thursday 9/5 Thursday morning we drove the roughly 20 minutes to our launch point at Little Sand Bay in The Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. Upon our arrival we were met by Ranger Angel (it makes sense that the Apostles have a guardian Angel, right?), who directed us as to where to launch, checked our permits, gave us useful information about the weather, and told us how to describe our location ifwe needed to call 911 (!). She also gave us a once-over and declared that we appeared to be "shipshape". It is not her responsibility to evaluate people's ability to paddle in the open waters of Lake Superior, but by her own admission if she detects that people don't have the appropriate skills or preparation, she'll gently steer them to safer courses of action.   Loading the kayaks at Little Sand Bay Many people are familiar with Gordon Lightfoot's song The...
Post a Comment
Read more

Visiting Charles in Upstate New York

Looking back, growing up I was friends with a lot of the weird kids. It makes me think - maybe I was a weird kid too? Let's table that line of thought for now, but along those lines, let me tell you about my friend Charles, who was a textbook example of ADHD before ADHD was even in the textbook.  For the record, ADHD was added to the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders (DSM) in 1968. Coincidentally, that's the same year Charles and I met, and yes, he's an ADHD dude. A smart kid, he nonetheless never paid attention in class and typically spent class reading a comic book he had hidden inside whatever book we were supposed to be reading - when he even bothered to sit in his seat and pretend to pay attention. During our college years Charles attended something of a party school, where he focused more on party than school. As a live-at-home commuter student, I loved that I could visit Charles and get a taste of the ov...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Guilty Pleasure

I have to admit that I feel guilty doing it. It's just not something that people like me do. In fact, I have spent years looking down on people who do it. I'm talking about powersports. Activities which involve using a motor to have fun. I have always been a people-powered person. On the water I scowl at jet skiers and water ski boats. On the cross-country ski trails I shake my head at people who ruin the pristine winter wilderness with snowmobiles. Being something of a car guy, I go a little easier on the pleasures of motorized vehicles on land. I don't expect car owner to be a super-miler in a Prius, but I also give a pretty wide berth to ATVs and dirt bikes. But now I'm motorcycling. Over the summer I fulfilled a "bucket list" item by learning to ride a motorcycle (Valerie took the class too). For the last month or so I've been tooling around on a borrowed Kawasaki Vulcan cruiser, and I must say I'm enjoying it. Riding a motorcycle is ridiculous...
Post a Comment
Read more