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, ...
One man's journey into the great outdoors of Washington, DC and its environs.