An Urban Boychick Takes on the Outdoors

This morning I had to decide - kayak or bike - and not surprisingly my choice was the river. I keep saying that I want to do more biking to build up my abilities, but in summer my heart is always with the river. I think that come mid-fall, when the water turns cold and the dry suits come out, I'll turn more to biking. I headed out of Columbia Island at about 7:30 AM and as I paddled up a completely empty and beautifully glassy smoth river I kept an eye on the Mount Vernon bike trail to my left, already crowded with cyclists and joggers. Ahh, I made the right decision, not having to deal with crazy weekend crowds on the trail. Just for fun I yelled, "On Your Left!" to some ducks as I passed them. The river changed as I approached Georgetown. First, in the channel along Roosevelt Island I found myself suddenly engulfed in a swarm of paddle boarders. They looked like a fitness group, as they were all pretty buff and were paddling hard. Mostly young, hunky guys, pl...

Ha, not a chance. But I did something almost as out of character: I started playing Pokemon Go. Not to brag or anything, but I'm already practically at Level 5.  I've never been a gamer. Not even when I was publishing technical articles in Game Developer magazine (a lot of the information sharing technology for Internet games derives from work we did for defense training simulations back in the 90's, and I at the time I wrote some articles about some of our techniques). At one point I was considering moving over to the computer game development world, but the interviews never went well. Interviewer: "So, what games are you playing?" Me: "Well, my kids are playing Sammy's Science House. I don't really play games except with them." Interviewer: "[uncomfortably long pause] ... Thanks for coming in." But, Valerie and the boys are all into it. It's been great for Valerie - it's been getting her to go out and ab...

I was going to write a quick post saying that I paddled to Mallows Bay again, and just hyper-link "again" to the previous post. Done. But then I searched through the blog and realized that there was no entry about Mallows Bay! I pulled out my old kayaking journal from the dawn of kayaking time - y'know, the kind written on actual paper? - and realized I had written about my first trip to Mallows Bay in September of 2000. I've been back a number of times since, but I guess I never wrote about it. Rob and Larry examine the remains of the S,S. Accomac (ferry) Anyway, I'll keep this brief anyway. Mallows Bay is home to over 100 scuttled ships and is a classic story of Defense procurement gone bad. During World War I the U.S. found itself with a shortage of transport ships to bring people and materiel over to Europe. The government placed an order for a whopping 1,000 ships for the war effort. To make a long story short, few of the ships were ever built, fewer ...

When Tom and I did Jerry Blackstone's big Manhattan circumnavigation two years ago, Tom commented that if he ever did it again he'd like to do it on our own as a small group. I thought that in many regards it was certainly doable: the big trip had shown us the basic logistics, the paddling was within our capabilities, and navigation is easy enough (keep the island on your left). The big challenge is timing the tides and current right. If you do it right, you get a significant aid boost from the currents, cutting hours off the trip time. If you do it wrong, the trip becomes dangerous and nigh onto impossible - you can find yourself fighting 5 knot currents and confused, swirling water at Hell's Gate or in "the spider" at The Battery. It seems like it would take a rocket scientist to figure it out. Have I mentioned the multiple times NASA has presented me with awards for my work? Yes, I took on the task of figuring it all out. The first thing I did was the brute...

I have already written about cycling and kayaking in Maine. The rest of the trip was pretty col too. For completeness, here's a summary of the rest of the trip: Thursday: Set off from DC to drive as far as we could. Quite unlike us to not have a planned destination. We made it as far as Lowell, MA. Fri: More driving! We finally made it to Bar Harbor and settled into what turned out to be our favorite accommodations of the stay, the Saltair in. This place was really nice, and the couple who ran it were very warm and welcoming. They did a lot fo the work themselves and had lots of good suggestions on activities, restaurants and such. We quickly discovered that Maine is not the best place food-wise for people who don't eat shellfish. We ate dinner at the Thirsty Whale. I had a haddock sandwich. Sunset at the Saltair Inn Sat: Started the day with a nice breakfast at the inn on the deck overlooking the water. We then headed over to Acadia and biked . Lunch at Jordan Pond H...