An Urban Boychick Takes on the Outdoors

I go through a cycle of thought again and again when I go paddling in winter. Naturally, it's usually cold as I put my boat onto the car. I feel the sting on my hands when I touch the racks and the cam buckles on the straps. I hate cold hands. "OK, this is it," I think. "Winter paddling has been a unique experience, but it's really unpleasant. I've earned the bragging rights for having done it, but after today I'm done." At the put-in point I wrestle into my cold weather gear. Pulling the tight-fitting dry suit over my head is extremely unpleasant; once in place the gaskets are tight around my neck and wrists. The stiff zipper across my back limits my mobility. Again, my hands are cold. I am cold. "This is ridiculous," I think. "I'm going to be uncomfortable the whole time I'm out. I really think I'm going to switch to something else in winter time. It's crazy to do water sports in freezing weather." I set out ...

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...

Mindfulness has come up a few times recently. Last month I did a paddle with a kayak Meetup group at Mason Neck. It was different than a CPA paddle in that there were a wider range of participants - relative beginners in rented rec boats, a guy in a one-man wooden canoe, up to an ACA Level 4 instructor. As a result, there was less focus on getting-somewhere-fast and more on just being in the moment. On the way back, I took particular notice of this tree stump and cormorants. Being sharply in focus on a slightly hazy day, it somehow seemed extra real. I stopped and looked at it for a while. Being aware of being in that spot at that time was wonderful. Interestingly, this is not my photo - the trip organizer, BayMystic, must have thought there was something noteworthy about this spot too since he took and posted the shot. Not long after, I sat in Yom Kippur services. The rabbi's sermon was about, of all things, focus vs. multi-tasking (things have changed - I don't remember my ...

OK, check one off the bucket list. Valerie and I have successfully completed the basic motorcycle training class and are now duly and officially licensed to drive motorcycles. The class was taught by Don and Mary Ann, who were clearly authentic bikers, but excellent teachers as well. While they were gruff and no-nonsense, they were also supportive. Neither Valerie nor I had any motorcycling experience going in, and Valerie hadn't ever even driven a standard transmission car before, but the teachers were always helpful, never critical, when we goofed up. The class consisted of an evening of classroom time followed by two full days of doing skills exercises on motorcycles in a big parking lot. Let me tell you, the riding part was hard work! We started each day at 7:30 AM. Spending the day out in the sun in August all bundled up in riding gear would be tiring enough in and of it self, but we were doing much more. Like an incredibly bad circus motorcycling act, the group rode in ci...

 Day 8 I'm going to be a little short here, since I've spent so much time writing about Scotland. We arrive in London early Saturday morning having slept somewhat fitfully on the train. We take the tube from Euston Station to Victoria, where we put our bags in the "Left Luggage". Our plan is to spend the day on a double-decker sight-seeing bus but it soon starts teeming rain. We get soaked at our first stop, Buckingham Palace, where they cancel the ceremony of the Changing of the Guard because of the rain (for a rainy country, England is poorly adapted to rainy days). We do a little more sight-seeing on foot but don't feel like waiting on "queues" in the rain and so after lunch (more pizza!) we go to our hotel to dry off. The hotel is quite civilized - bathrobes, TV in the tub, mini-bar. Ted creates an impressive clothesline web in the bathroom where we dry our wet kayaking gear, which has been stuffed into our bags since the day before. Fortunately,...

Day 5 Today we got to paddle without taking a long drive first. Ele promised us 7 minutes to the put-in (the jetty, that is) and sure enough we were there in exactly that. We did a shuttle, starting on Loch Moidart and ending back at the inn. This was our longest day (about six hours on the water) and had a lot of highlights. First of all, the scenery was striking. Second, we stopped off at the ruins of a 13th century castle, Castle Tioram. Like everything in Scotland, Castle Tioram has a link to Bonnie Prince Charlie, a romantic figure from the 18th century who led the unsuccessful Jacobite Rebellion - an attempt to overthrow the Hanovers and return the more British Stuarts to the throne of England. The rebellion met its end at the Battle of Culloden, the location of which we passed on our taxi ride from the Inverness airport. I reckon Bonnie Prince Charlie, a valiant crusader for a failed cause, occupies a place in Scottish hearts similar to that occupied by the Confederacy among ...

Day 3 This was our first full day of paddling. The day started with breakfast, both cold (cereals, yoghurt and prunes, of course toast) and hot (black pudding, ham, poached egg and sausage or haddock). We then all loaded into the van for about an hour’s drive to a put-in, including getting mildly lost along the way. Apparently GPS is unknown in the Highlands; the guides did everything the old fashioned way, with big fold-out maps and educated guesses. Our paddle was, like the day before, on Loch Sunart, but much closer to the mouth of the loch – hence the long drive. We spent about five hours on the water, circumnavigating the Isle of Oronsay. Boy, it was gorgeous. Both green and rocky. Surprisingly clear water. And lots of sea life: seals, sea otters, terns, golden herons. While we were closer to the open sea, it was still a pretty calm environment, except when the wind kicked up at the end. We were paddling somewhere around here . Every day our lunch was provided by the inn. ...

We arrive in Inverness to find everyone in a bit of a tizzy. Inverness is playing host to the Scottish Open golf tournament, except for the past two days it has been pouring rain and the golf has been canceled. This seems to affect everyone. Even our taxi driver was supposed to have been marshaling at the tourney but instead found himself behind the wheel like a regular work day. Mrs. McRae, at whose B&B we stayed, reported in her Scottish  brogue that there'd even been a thunderrrrstorrrrm, with forrrrrked  lightening. As a DC area resident I thought nothing of this until I learned that thunderstorms are rare in the cool, high latitudes of the Scottish Highlands. After hearing The McRae's rather long list of rules (don't bump your suitcase up the stairs; no carryout food on the premises; don't leave the bathroom light on all night the way those Portugese people did the other week as the fan noise bothers the other guests, you must pay cash as  credit card machine...

I've been learning to ride a bike. Not the basic part of moving forward without falling down: I mastered that years ago. Rather, with the winding down of my running career I've been looking to cycling as a new form of exercise and have been trying to do some rides of at least moderate length. I have an unrealistic possible goal of riding the metric version of the Seagull Century (100 km, or about 62 mi) this fall; more realistically, I just want to build up my cycling muscles and, um, seat tolerance. At 18.5 mi today's ride was not one of my longer ones, however it offered lots of hill practice. I started from home, peddled up Sycamore St./Williamsburg Blvd./Glebe Rd. to Chain Bridge. This part of the ride has lots of fun ups and downs over extended hills. To give you some idea, the GPS shows my speed alternating between speeds as high as 27 MPH as I motored downhill and as low as 8 MPH as I granny-geared my way back uphill. From studying the map I found a little trick de...

Sunday I sleep pretty well in a tent and so I wake up feeling refreshed even though it’s pretty early and I didn't get all that much sleep. The morning is dry and cool enough for me to put on a light fleece jacket. I whip up a breakfast that’s much like home, save for the Starbucks Via Brew instant coffee in place of my usual cup. Oh, coffee deities, please do not strike me down for drinking instant! One of the great aspects of Clearwater is its link to the river. The festival’s raison d’etre is raising awareness of the Hudson’s ecology and environment. The festival takes place on a peninsula jutting out into the Hudson. You can see the river from most of the park and you can even watch one of the stages from the water. There’s also a “working waterfront” area where people can experience the river directly: row, paddle and go for a sail on the sloop Clearwater. In keeping with the festival theme, I start my day by hitting the water in my kayak. The car-top launch is just down t...

Like too many of my posts these days, this one starts with a nightmarish traffic jam. After an uneventful and quick drive from DC to Croton-on-Hudson to attend the Great Hudson River Revival / Clearwater Festival, it took an hour and a half to exit from Rt 9A and drive into the festival grounds. No matter – I had expected some degree of backup and was mentally prepared. Eventually I made it, set up my tent and headed down to the music. Wow, what a lineup. There are seven stages at the festival and there’s always more to see than there is time to see it. Saturday I caught Janis Ian, David Bromberg, Arlo Gurthrie, Toshi Reagon and Brooklyn Qawwali Dance Party. And just like last year, in this huge sea of people I had no problem finding Sherri and Ken. By the time Arlo’s set ended I was pretty beat – too much so to hang around and see the “generations” set (parent/child combinations such as Pete and Tao Seeger …). Plus I have to admit that this idea is too mushy for me. Instead I headed f...

When we pulled the boats up on Saturday we all agreed that it was too tight an area for us to all load at once in the morning. We’d have to pull one boat out at a time, load, launch, and repeat. Needless to say, 6 AM Sunday found us all crammed down in the launch area at once, busily loading gear while tripping over each other and the kayaks. A brief but intense rain shower rolled in while we were finishing up, causing us to dash about in a yet more manic fashion. Amazingly, this comedic ballet did not result in any mishaps, nor (as far as I know) did any of our slapstick maneuvers in an area thick with poison ivy yield any major rash problems. Against all odds, we actually got under way exactly at 0700 - ten minutes earlier than on Saturday. I wondered if the shower was going to mean a day of paddling in the rain, but fortunately this was not to be. The shower rolled out as quickly as it had rolled in and conditions were dry the rest of the day. On this wider section of the river we ...

Setting Out, Day 2 I would have bet against it, but 7 AM indeed found the group on the river ready to go. I had popped awake at 5 AM, having slept (or at least having been horizontal in bed) for longer than any night in recent memory. The night had been cool, in the high 50’s, and quite conducive to sleep - at least for those of us with sleeping bags. A few people had packed for summer weather and felt the overnight chill. Suzanne wound up sleeping bundled up in all her clothes and paddling jacket to stay warm. As light dawned I stumbled out of my tent and wandered down to the boats to get my breakfast. I had left my breakfast food in the kayak, figuring it was as safe from critters in the hatch as in the tent. Pausing to take in the scene, I reveled in the glow of water in the dawn light, punctuated by puffs of mist. Back up on the bluff, Ralph had coffee up. The early risers gulped down a quick breakfast and then we shook the laggards awake. I’m glad I had test-packed my boat be...

This is the first of three segments about a weekend kayaking trip following the Patuxent River Water Trail for 50 miles from Queen Anne Landing to Solomons, Maryland.  ------------- The trip started inauspiciously. Jen and I set out carpooling from Arlington to meet up with the group at the Queen Anne put-in but found ourselves stuck in a hideous traffic jam before we even made it out of Virginia. We got increasingly frustrated as the minutes ticked on, eating up the extra time we had built into our schedule, then the minutes required to get to the launch under the best of conditions. Well, actually I’m speculating when I say Jen got frustrated, since she displays that mid-West equanimity I find so perplexing. I grew up in a complaining culture. The New Yorker’s version of the Goldilocks story would have only two bears. “This porridge is too hot!” I get that. “This porridge is too cold!” I can sympathize with that. “Just right”? Never. Don’t people in Iowa know the meaning of t...

I really need to sit down sometime and get a better understanding of how waves form in the river. Some nights a fairly strong wind will kick up nothing but some small swells. Other nights a moderate breeze will somehow stir up serious wave action. Last night fell into the second category. From conditions on land I really wasn't expecting any significant when I got on the water. But boy, it turned out to be a fun evening. We headed across and downriver, always the roughest of our paddles and quickly ran into two foot swells with occasional whitecaps. Nice! In cold weather these kind of conditions freak me out because of the serious implications of capsizing, but once the water warms up (it's now in the 70's) I love a choppy evening. Downriver we paddled straight into it. A lot of kayaks have a very buoyant bow and so they go over top of the waves when you paddle into them. That keeps you dry but pounds you every time you drop down into a trough. The bow of the Shearwater cut...

The experience of growing up in New York City in the 70’s indelibly etched certain weird ways of thinking into my brain. Principal among these is the assumption that you always have to expect that people will act in malicious, even psychopathic ways. So, after securely locking up my bike at work (making sure to lock both wheels and the frame against theft), I take my water bottle with me. Why? Well, first, the water bottle isn’t locked to the bike and so I assume there’s a high probability that someone will steal it if I leave it unattended. Heck, I assume that even a passerby who had no intention of committing theft might steal it just to teach me a lesson for having left it there unprotected. Worse yet, someone might poison it – add a little battery acid or something – and put it back on the bike. Now, I admit this is pretty paranoid stuff, particularly since this particular bike rack is under video surveillance and is located inside a parking garage in a high traffic area directly n...

Some days really bring home the meaning of the term "force of nature." Over the past week everyone has been shocked by report of the record flooding of the Mississippi River, with farmers' fields inundated under ten feet of water. Of course, we're all still reverberating from the Japanese tsunami. Now, we have our own small-scale version close to home. Admittedly, the Potomac at flood stage pales in comparison to these other cataclysms. But look at the sharp "hockey stick" rise in the Little Falls gauge height over the last couple of days. Wow. After a long email exchange on the subject, most of the kayaking group bailed (so to speak) tonight.. Just Rob, Peter, the back-after-years-absence Mike V and I showed up. The four of us made our way to a shoreline vantage point through the construction area of the humpback bridge. The river was high, and it was cooking. Big logs, trees and other debris were flying down the river as if motorized. The river was just ...

Spent the day in Knoxville hanging with some distinctly southern characters. There's the lawyer guy - some combination of Matlock and Foghorn Leghorn as played by John Larroquette. There was Dr. JB the crazy engineer, who looks like they took Jesse Duke (the patriarch of the Dukes of Hazzard, in case you are unfamiliar with the show) and showed up for the meeting dressed in grimy coveralls straight from the wardrobe of Cooter (the mechanic character on the same show). The Boss Hog character in all this was Dr. Bob - not in the evil Boss Hogg sense, but in the sense of being the wealthiest man in Hazzard county. My compatriot RC, while a native of Brooklyn rather than the south (coincidentally, he and I grew up not far from each other) reminds me of Barney Fife nonetheless. I'm living on a diet of blackened fish, candied sweet potatoes, pecan-crusted chicken and lots of sweet things. I have managed to defy the local culinary norms a little bit and make one dinner and breakfast...

Thursday only three of us showed up to paddle; everyone else was SK102-bound. Given that we were an intimate little group we had some time to muse as we headed upriver (I won't dwell on the coastal flooding advisory which was in place). What's with the central section of the Memorial Bridge - why is it metal when the rest is stone? And what's with the buffalo head decorations at the apex of all the arches? A little research revealed that the center span was originally a drawbridge. Over time, as less boat traffic headed to Georgetown it got used less and less frequently. by the 1960's there was basically no longer a demand for passage of tall boats and so when Roosevelt Bridge was built they didn't bother making it a drawbridge. Having a low bridge just upriver was the final nail in the coffin, and so the drawbridge mechanism was disabled and was removed in the 70's. As to the bison, I couldn't find a story. The bridge symbolically relinks the North and ...

First day of biking to work this year. Took a chance, as I had snapped off the top of the pin on the valve stem of my front tire, but the pressure held for the ride out (I bought a replacement tube at lunchtime). As always, an enjoyable eight miles plus one mile of hell through the construction of Tysons Corner. Got to work and changed in the tiny temporary locker room they have set up while the regular ones are under renovation. A little weird sharing this small space with another employee who was quite nonchalantly totally naked for the whole period I was in there. Maybe I should report this incident to one of our senior HR people. Oh wait, he was one of our senior HR people.

Yesterday I read yet another article about High Intensity Training. The idea of HIT is that rather than exercising for a long time at a steady pace, you do a series of short, explosive all out bursts with cooldowns in between - intervals to the max. Well, that seems good to me; less time exercising, and really only a few minutes of pounding on my oh-so-fragile lumbar disks. So today I decided to try it out on the trail.  My target workout was five minutes of warmup, six intervals of 30 seconds all-out followed by a minute of recovery, then five minutes or so of cooldown - about 20 minutes total. My supposed max heart rate is somewhere in the 170's, depending on which formula you use. They say you shouldn't exceed 80% of that, or the upper 130's for me. However, my usual runs or erging sessions take me to about 145-150. Well, take a look at the accompanying chart. For the first three intervals not only was I above 80%, I was well above my supposed 100% heart rate (note the...

I spent Saturday building a retaining wall in my backyard so I could expand my vegetable bed. The previous day had been rainy, the yard was wet and so over the course of the day everything got muddy. I got muddy. My tools got muddy. David, helping me out, got muddy. I thought that Saturday was going to be my muddy day for the weekend. Sunday I woke up early to do my first breakfast paddle of the season. Sunday mornings when there's nothing else going on I tend to start my days with a jaunt up the river, usually pausing at my turnaround point to have a thermos of coffee and a snack - hence the "breakfast paddle" name. As always, I felt a wave of happiness as soon as I pulled into the marina. This was also the first day this year that I took out the Shearwater - my beautiful wooden kayak, which only made it more special. The water is still cold so I donned my drysuit. This suit is really meant for people who paddle with friends (actually not a bad idea when...