An Urban Boychick Takes on the Outdoors

We have this alternate schedule thing at work where if you work 80 hours in 9 workdays, you can take the final Friday of the period off. I try and take advantage of it, but somehow I rarely seem to succeed. Either personal things rob me of hours during the week (school meetings, doctor's appointments ...) or something comes up which requires my presence on what otherwise would have been a day off. This past Friday was no exception. I had taken a sick day earlier in the period to try and recover from bronchitis, and I had a meeting out in Sterling pop up for Friday morning. It was going to be another beautiful, unseasonably warm day - in the 70's in mid-March! - and so I was determined to take at least a little advantage of it, even if I couldn't get a full day off. What's this? Our Sterling office is not far from the W&OD trail?! And there's a new, large W&OD trail parking lot nearby just off of Rt. 28?! Too good to pass up. Before I headed to the office F...

The first Thursday after the beginning of Daylight Savings Time was St. Patrick's Day. Sunlight for paddling and unseasonably warm temps - plenty of reason to raise a glass in celebration. It's that swing time of year when dressing for the water temp means schvitzing in the boat, however dressing for the air temperature would have put me at risk had I wound up in the water. I'm reading a book written by an ocean rower, from which I've learned that while out at sea ocean rowers often row naked, particularly on the bottom, to avoid salt water rashes. I certainly wasn't ready for that. So I put on my drysuit over just a t-shirt (and pants, I was wearing pants!) as a compromise. It was a small group: just Rob, Peter, Jen and I showed up at the marina. We were joined by Annette and a friend of hers who paddled down from Washington Canoe Club in OC-1s (outrigger racing kayaks). Suffice it to say, a good time was had by all. The group headed upriver to accommodate Anne...