An Urban Boychick Takes on the Outdoors

As a birthday present Valerie surprised me with a night at the lovely Ashby Inn in Paris, Virginia. Lovely and historic, I should say, since legend has it that Confederate Generals Johnston and Jackson napped on the porch of the inn on their way to glorious victory over the Yankee invader at First Manassas. Jackson must have gotten a good rest since it was at this battle that he earned his eternal nickname, “Stonewall”. But this was not the town’s first brush with history. It is said that the town was renamed to Paris by a local bigwig in the revolutionary era in honor of the Marquis de Lafayette. While this name change did not entice Lafayette to settle there (which had been part of the plan), it was still a positive change for the town, which had previously been known as Pumpkinville. Anyway, as part of the adventure Valerie offered to go hiking with me at nearby Sky Meadows State Park. This was pretty historic in itself, for usually when I suggest any outdoorsy activity Valeri...

It always seems to start with traffic, even at 6:30 AM on a Saturday. I was out the door at 5:30 in order to rendezvous with Ralph's group in time for the day's kayak outing. For several years now Ralph has taken on organizing the November Chickahominy trip, which was started by Bill Dodge and is now in something like its 13th year. Most of the group camped at Chickahominy Riverfront Park Friday night, but being the world's worst cold weather wimp I opted to sleep indoors and drive down Saturday morning. While I inched along I had time to snap a picture of the brake lights in front of me for Jen's benefit. Jen and I had a long history of getting stuck in traffic together on the way to kayaking. I emailed her the photo with a note saying that I guess the bad karma causing our past traffic delays had been mine. Fortunately the traffic backup was fairly brief and I made it down to Jamestown in plenty of time to meet up with the group - in fact, I was the first one at t...