An Urban Boychick Takes on the Outdoors

Jews of my parents' generation were obsessed with knowing which celebrities were Jewish. In an era before people flaunted their ethnic roots and when anti-Semitism was a real concern, they relished a quiet pride in those Jews who had "made it" in the greater world (the actor Tony Curtis was born Bernard Schwartz!). My generation was clearly influenced by our parents' habit: Jewish celebrity name dropping is one of the main elements of Adam Sandler's execrable Hanukkah Song. I even have to admit I'm a little guilty of playing this game myself (Scarlett Johannson, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and of course Natalie Portman - if you are reading this you are welcome to come over and study Talmud any time. And bring Mila Kunis too). Which brings me to Boris. I bumped into Boris when I was launching from Columbia Island Marina with a couple of friends on a cool December morning. Our goal was to paddle up to Fletcher's Cove Marina and rendezvous with a Meetup Group outing...

How did I want to spend the day of my milestone birthday? Well, I happened to have the day off, and Ted was home from college for Thanksgiving break and so the question almost answered itself: out for a hike (with some geocaching, of course) with my favorite hiking partner followed by dinner with the whole family. Before Thanksgiving break I had scoped out some new hikes between Arlington and JMU, figuring that I might actually drive down and pick Ted up and then go hiking on the way home. As it happened it didn't work out that way as I had to run to NY to help out my dad, whose house was significantly damaged by Hurricane Sandy. We decided to stick with one of the hikes we had researched, even though it meant driving about half way back to JMU - a little crazy given that Ted had just come from there. Our destination was Signal Knob, an area at the very north end of the George Washington National Forest. This area is close to but distinct from Shenandoah National Park and Sk...

Yvonne, Tom, Cyndi, Me, Dave, and Rob (photo by Suzanne) My half-century birthday is not being observed in one big bang party. Rather, it's being celebrated through a series of events: a dinner party at home, dinner out with my brother and dad, dinner with my family, and the subject kayaking outing with my kayaking friends. Mason Neck State Park has become the traditional location for my birthday paddles and so I invited a group of my friends out for a trip from Mason Neck to Leesylvia Park . The group wound up being eleven people - quite a nice size, and at that was down a few at that from the original count due to some last minute drop-outs due to the weather (not everyone has full cold weather gear, and conditions were right on the edge in terms of needing it) and personal reasons. As always we got a punctual start despite some folks coming from as far away as Baltimore. It's that time of year where it's impossible to dress properly: if you're dressed warmly...

My outdoor activities were dealt a forced pause about three weeks ago when I took a tumble while out for a morning run. I had just started the return leg of a roughly 5K outing and decided to detour over to the Bluemont Park restroom (my habit of slugging down a cup of coffee just before heading out sometimes brings about a desire for such a pit stop). I tripped over something while jogging across the gravel area around the restroom and went flying into a skidding belly flop across the gravel, twisting the heck out of my foot along the way. I got up and examined myself as best I could in the dim light. Both palms were scraped up; one palm and one knee were bleeding and my foot felt like someone was attacking it with a branding iron. I was so shocked that I didn’t even think to check whether I had torn the brand new running shirt I was wearing; if you know me you know that means I was pretty distracted. I dragged myself over to a nearby park bench where I sat for a couple of minutes col...

The Adirondacks: a vacation destination from my youth and an iconic location not just for New Yorkers but for all Americans. The rustic architecture and furniture styles, cabins by a lake, and canoeing. It was with great excitement that I joined onto a trip my friends Steven and Jim were putting together to kayak camp in the Bog River Flow area of the Adirondacks.  Day 1 (Sat) ===== I arrived at Steven's house at 6:30 AM to meet my friend Yvonne, with whom I'd be carpooling on the way up to the Adirondacks. Steven's house in Owings Mills, MD is being used as the meeting point because not everyone is coming and going at the same time and it's a central point for our Baltimore, DC and Virginia-based group to leave cars for pickup on the way home. I checked my phone and found a text from Suzanne saying that she, Steven and Jim headed out about 5:30. Yvonne pulled in immediately thereafter. I have heard that Yvonne is a light packer and sure enough, she h...

Sometimes the easy things are hard and the hards things are easy. Imagine a group of 9 people converging from almost as many different cities over two days all hoping to meet up with each other in a wilderness area based only on the knowledge that the first arrivals had plans to make camp somewhere near the intersection of two particular trails. Finding each other turned out to be easy. Now, imagine a backpacker picking up a pack and hiking down a trail. Or, imagine experienced campers making sure they had the basic gear that they needed with them for the trip. Those turned out to be harder than one would have thought. Here's the story: My kayaking friend Peter H1 (there are two Peter H's in this story) raised the idea of a backpacking trip into Dolly Sods and got a very positive response. Personally, I was a little hesitant because it had been many years and several orthopedic injuries since I had been backpacking, but after some hemming and hawing I decided to join in. Th...

As is usually the case when I stay at my mother-in-law's in NY, I took the opportunity to go for a run in Central Park. As I walked over to the park I noticed a pair of crutches abandoned against a tree. Had there been a miraculous healing on 79th Street? Like the single abandoned shoes one sees on the streets of NY, it is a mystery. The streets of New York were quiet at 7 AM on a weekend day. I have lived so long in Washington's early morning culture (it's the military/government influence) that I'm no longer used to the late-to-bed, late-to-rise schedule of NY. My run was uneventful. I started out heading downtown, keeping my eyes open for signs of an outdoor Zumba class that was scheduled to be held in the park that day and that I knew my friend Alison would be attending. As I expected, since it was two hours before the start of the class and it's a big park, I didn't spot anything. The park's main roads are reserved for pedestrians on weekends, so wh...

Last Sunday I participated in another kayaking trip with the NoVa Kayak Meetup. This trip was led by two of the organizers of the group, Randi and James, who it turns out are husband and wife. Both seem like competent kayakers, however the group as usual contained a range of paddlers from someone in a Tsunami 12 (one step above a rec boat) on up. The first part of the trip involved a roughly two mile crossing of the Potomac in somewhat choppy conditions - nothing dangerous, but enough to keep you on your toes. The woman in the short boat had a slightly hard time of it but perservered and made it across. Once on the Maryland side we headed into Mattawoman Creek where we met up with another trip from the same Meetup. This group, headed by Andy (the Meetup's other organizer) had taken a shorter route starting on the Maryland side. The two groups stopped and chatted for a while then parted ways. We continued on to a park where we took a lunch break; Andy's group headed towards ...

The 2012 Hippo Group The day started early with the umpteenth check of Tom's car. Yeah, Volvos are super safe cars, but we're doing what we can to counter that aura of safety by overloading the roof rack with kayaks: one right-side up on the passenger side, one on its side in a stacker in the middle, and two more stacked on top of each other on the driver's side. We were on our way to Brunswick, Maryland to do a two day sojourn down the upper Potomac, covering the same ground as the previous year's "Hippo Paddle". The trip had acquired this name because the weather had been incredibly hot and as a result the participants had spent a lot of time just lounging in the water, like hippos. This year's weather was totally different. It was an unseasonably cool day (seventeen degrees below normal, according to the robotic text-to-speech voice of the National Weather Service, delivered via our marine VHF radios). We were doing a one way trip down the river, ...