An Urban Boychick Takes on the Outdoors

On my upcoming trip to Maine it is likely that a majority of the kayakers will be paddling Wilderness Systems Tempests - certainly it will be a plurality. It's just a nice, well-balanced do-it-all boat. It's the Honda Accord of kayaks*. Not the fastest, not the most maneuverable, not the roomiest, not the easiest to roll or the most playful in surf, but just a good balance of every characteristic. The other nice thing is that it comes in three sizes, so it can fit just about any paddler: there's a sixteen inch height range among the Tempest paddlers in my circle. Test Drive at PoG I own a Tempest 165 (the "Baby Bear" size) in plastic. Great boat, but being plastic it's heavy, slow, and has developed a serious "oil can" dent in the bottom. I always keep my eye out for good deals on fiberglass 165's, but they don't come on the market too often. More often you see the "Mama Bear" 170 size, which is tooooo big for me. So, when...

Another SUP outing with Ted today. We made from Key Bridge Boathouse up to Fletcher's Cove. The roughly two mile trip took us about and hour, at least twice as long as it would have by kayak. Admittedly, it was into the wind and only my third time on a Stand-Up Paddleboard, but still ... Ted has been doing a lot of SUP-ing this summer and definitely showed me up in terms of speed, balance and skills. I still feel that stand-up paddleboards would make sense only in a world where canoes, rowing craft and kayaks hadn't been invented, but they sure are popular! While there was no wait at KBB for kayaks, we had to wait on line for paddleboards, as the whole fleet was in use. The line was even worse by the time we got back - I'm glad we went early. Well, even on a goofy non-kayak watercraft it was a nice outing on a beautiful summer day. Eighty degree August days is a kind of climate change I could get into!

An outdoor gig counts as an outdoor adventure, right? I had a great time sitting in with the wonderful band JC & the Hepcats last Saturday at Westover Beer Garden in Arlington. JC arrived a little late, and so for the first set we were just The Hepcats (or perhaps Jesse & the Hepcats). I think I played well; however given the mixture of 5 Hour Energy and IPA in my system, I may not have been judging things clearly. I had never tried those 5 hour energy things before. Holy cow - I didn't even drink the whole little bottle and was buzzing for 12 hours. This was fine for the first eight hours, but the midnight to 4 AM part was a drag.

New York is a city of extremes. On the one hand it is America’s truly world class city, as evidenced by the many metonyms associated with the city: finance in America is “Wall Street” and advertising is “Madison Avenue”. On the other hand, New York is also a chaotic Mad Max world where everything is jury-rigged, broken, the place is over-populated, everyone is trying to scam you, and behavior seems flat-out crazy. I wasn’t sure which of these New Yorks I would encounter when went up to participate in Jerry and Steve’s Manhattan Circumnavigation. Certainly the eleven pages of instructions indicated a high level of organization. Still, I expected a motley flotilla of fishing kayaks, canoes made from hammered out hubcabs, and who knows what else when I showed up early Saturday morning. The launch site at the end of Dyckman Street in Inwood (a.k.a. Tubby Hook) is not in itself particularly remarkable – it just looks like a spot along the river where someone forgot to build a building;...