My great-grandfather was said to have a particular knack for getting into and out of businesses at the wrong time. For example, shortly after the turn of the 20th Century he moved his family to New York City where he bought a pushcart rental business. In the late 19th Century, the streets of New York teemed with pushcarts from which vendors sold food, clothes, and other merchandise. Akin to food trucks today, it was a way for people with little investment capital (typically immigrants) to get a retail business started. My great-grandfather's business was a step up the food chain. Rather than selling stuff from a cart, he rented carts to the pushcart vendors, which was a pretty good deal in that he got to profit without having to handle inventory and spend all day hawking merchandise. The problem was that by the time he bought that business, New Yorkers were getting tired of the congestion and mess caused by endless swarms of pushcarts,. Responding to citizen pressure, in 1906 the city cracked down and put stricter regulations in place, leading to a shift away from pushcarts and into indoor, flea-market-like markets (I imagine whomever sold the business to my great-grandfather had seen this shift coming). I picture the demand for pushcarts dropping off day by day, with rentals slowing to a trickle, until one day no renters showed up at all, and there was my Grandpa Ike, left sitting all alone in his warehouse full of pushcarts.
Which is how I've been feeling about the Pirates of Georgetown (PoG) lately. I started paddling with the group right when it formed during the waning years of the Clinton presidency (!), and in those early years attendance was quite robust; on any given week it wasn't unusual for the group to draw a dozen or more paddlers. When we were forced to decamp from Georgetown to our present digs at Columbia Island the group lost some energy, and then the pandemic took a further toll. Last year I lost my two co-leaders to illness, and attendance dropped to where the group would be maybe three people.
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| PoG in a busier era (2002) - check out Nelson and Caroline, Yvonne, Cyndi, David M., James, as well as Barb, designer of the CPA logo |
This year we got off to a very slow start. First of all, we've lost the natural feeder or SK102. Our weekly paddles have historically started up the week after the big SK102 training weekend in the spring, and we've usually picked up some enthusiastic new paddlers from that event. However, last year SK102 didn't happen, and this year it was changed to a one day event in June.
Then, the weather didn't cooperate. Our first Thursday was a chilly evening in May, and only one person showed up. Interestingly, when I asked him what was new he told me that he had gotten married four days earlier. OK, PoG is fun, but it's not what I'd choose for my honeymoon (it turns out that the new wife is a teacher, and they'd be taking their honeymoon after the end of the school year - a scheduling constraint I know well). Following that we had a rainout week. Then there were a couple more unseasonably cool weeks where either one or two people showed up.
So I was quite happy this past Thursday when I actually got six people out on the water! All of the people who had trickled in over the preceding weeks (Hunter, David, Jeff), an old-timer who still shows up when he's in town (Al), and me. Oh, and Rob even showed up! He's recovered from what kept him off the water last year but his time is now swallowed up by a packed travel schedule. This was his one week in town until late July. Fingers crossed that these people keep coming back. Plus, by happenstance I ran into Steve J. at a restaurant the other day and encouraged him to come out too - so maybe we're back in business.
Needless to say, as soon as I get some momentum going I'm going to have to pause for a week, as I'll be off at Ralph's Rappahannock camper (where I expect to have the opportunity to cajole another of our former regulars, Karen, into showing up), and it remains to be seen what restrictions lie ahead as we get close to July 4th. My understanding is that they'll be anchoring barges in the river for the planned massive fireworks show planned for the 4th and that there'll be restrictions on river traffic around the holiday weekend, but no specifics have been published so far. I hope that doesn't mean more weeks of coancellations.
In any case, I'm happy that people are returning and I'll be thrilled if I can get routinely get even 3-4 paddlers (including me). If I do the group might even resume hanging around for chatting and beverages after paddling.
Special note to CPA Leadership: Ignore that "3-4 people" remark. For the purposes of computing our piracy stipend, our attendance averages 10 people per week 😉.
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| PG paddlers pass the Lincoln Memorial this past Thursday |
