Magothy Meandering

This has been an odd year for exercise, what with my surgery interrupting just about all activity just as springtime was getting going. I haven't been on an organized CPA paddling trip all year, and so when I packed my car and headed for the put-in I had this weird feeling like when you visit the neighborhood where you grew up - I thought, "This is something I used to do." That little bit of dissociation aside, I made it to the put-in with no issues.

This is the first time I've been on a trip with this trip leader and I quickly learned that he has a loose style of trip leading. He let me join last-minue (that's good) but while he announced that he was going to do a pre-trip briefing he never wound up doing one, and we made it only part-way around group introductions before that effort fell apart. So, I got on the water having no idea where we were going or how long we were going to be out for other than the description on Meetup of "over ten miles".

We crossed the Magothy and went up through some pretty light fog over the top of Gibson Island, then poked into various coves and creeks. Since I like to have a plan, the aimlessness of it got a little frustrating for me after a point - every time I thought we were heading back, we instead turned and headed for another creek. Eventually we all made it back just fine.

And as a bonus, there were three, count 'em three, people on the trip who had coronary bypass surgery in 2017. Rich S., in February, me in March, and another guy who had his in April. I held the winning hand in terms of number of bypasses (my four-of-a-kind beat their three-of-a-kind), but the April dude said that almost a quarter of his heart muscle died - so extra kudos to him for being out on the water so soon!

Strava track: https://www.strava.com/activities/1242534390

Through the fog

Bypass poker winner

Apples and Goat Yoga

We have always loved a fall trip to pick apples. In fact, just today while looking through some old photos I found pictures of us picking apples with my friend Charles back in 1988. I didn't scan the pictures - but trust that I had enormous 1980's glasses and a pitiful mustache. I also found some pictures of us with Teddy & David on an apple-picking trip, probably in the early 2000's.

With some beautiful fall weather on tap (can we still say "Indian Summer"?) Valerie and I headed out to Markham, VA to pick some apples at Stribling Orchard.

This was a great year for apples. We've been going to the Markham orchards for years and I've never seen the trees bursting with beautiful, juicy apples the way they were this year. We picked to our hearts content until our bags were straining with a bushel full of apples.

When we were paying, Valerie chatted with one of the women working the cash registers and, through that amazing ability to instantly create rapport that Valerie has and I do not (I'm jealous of it), the woman took a break from working the register to slice up various apples from the bins so we could taste different varieties.

Taste test

American Gothic

After a quick lunch at Chick-fil-A (I was angling for the salad bar at Wegman's, but took a wrong turn) we continued on to our next excitement: goat yoga! Which is exactly what it sounds like it is. Over the years, the traditional focus and asceticism of yoga has yielded to "fun" combinations - yoga and beer, paddleboard yoga, yoga at The Kennedy Center, and even yoga while getting high (a cousin of Valerie's teaches a "yoganja" class in Washington state). And of course, there are animal variants: puppy yoga, kitten yoga, and (bringing us back to our main topic), goat yoga.

The class we went to was at a farm in Nokesville. It was a beautiful setting alongside the shore of Lake Manassas. As you do your yoga practice, goats, chickens and alpaca wander around through the class. The chickens and alpaca are skittish, but goats are quite friendly, and it's not uncommon to have someone stop their yoga practice to pick up and cuddle a baby goat. In fact, the whole class pauses here and there for goat time.

Goat yoga is a little chaotic - perhaps not for the yoga purist. As this CNN article points out, a goat might come along and pee on your mat (we saw this happen), and your peaceful shavasana might be interrupted by a gentle head butt (or worse yet, a goat chewing on your hair - not a problem I would have), but it sure is a lot of fun. The goats are ADORABLE.

We were among the oldest people there. I guess gimmick yoga is primarily a Millenial thing ...