An Urban Boychick Takes on the Outdoors

Valerie once said that her ideal vacation wasn't about a particular destination - it was going away with a good group of friends. Not being a people person (to put it mildly), I think in terms of dream destinations, but I guess she has a point. I mean, I don't think Teaneck, New Jersey makes many "Top Ten Vacation Destinations" lists, but the night before my recent Manhattan circumnavigation the group went out and had an uproariously fun dinner at a Yakitori restaurant in Teaneck. It was the people, not the place. So, when Bela's new bride Leigh came up with the idea of a fall getaway weekend, I saw the opportunity to make a couple of days of the group trip thing come to pass. And in a place much nicer than Teaneck. Lavinder house view One challenge for me is that Valerie's not a kayaker, and so is not necessarily going to have a good time on a trip where all everyone does is talk, eat, drink, and smell like kayaking. Leigh is another non-paddler, and so...

It's funny writing this today: it's October 30th and today's temperatures were in the high 70's. I can tell you that last Wednesday it felt like winter was just around the corner. It was in the low 40's and still dark out when I hopped on my bike to ride to Hump Day Coffee Club. It was my first day bundling up for the winter - balaclava, full fingered gloves, long pants. My hands still got a little cold. I got to coffee club to find everyone else similarly bundled up, and the gathering had moved from the outdoor tables to inside. Today's anomalous weather notwithstanding, the cold is coming! Strava:  https://www.strava.com/activities/756421962

As I've mentioned in recent posts, my job is temporarily in a fugue state . I have finished everything I needed to do at my old position, but my transfer doesn't take effect for another three weeks. So right now I go in and do things which are productive for me and for the company long-term (like online training and reading related to my new position) but I might as well be invisible at my current position. I get no emails. No one talks to me. This is quite a change from before I handed off my responsibilities, where I would typically get 20 emails during my ten minute drive home (more when I biked, which takes longer!) and always had a stream of people and phone calls. Anyway, it's hard to get motivated to even show up and I've been doing a lot of working at home. Which no one even notices. I'm going to enjoy it while I can, because three weeks from now things will get busy again. This ride started with a drive in the coffee-themed car I have also been frea...

The end is near! The end is near! The end of our unseasonably warm October weather, that is. I don't usually go to the Friday coffee club (even though Java Shack is very close to my office), but this has been a bad week for exercise and so I decided I needed a little extra time on the bike. I have to admit, I like riding in traffic. Maybe it's the legacy of having grown up in New York City, where bike lanes were non-existent and bike paths were rare (though I regularly rode what has been described as the oldest bike path in the United States - even after my dad broke his hip when he was hit by a car while biking there). When I ride on a bike path I kind of zone out, but riding in the streets requires a continuous mindful awareness. You have to be in the moment, watching the movements of every car and every pedestrian. Every parked car could pull out with warning. Every light could change unexpectedly. So, while I started my ride on the W&OD/Custis Trails, I got off at ...

Good heavens we've been having good weather! The sad truth about life today is that every time I revel in unseasonably warm weather I fear I'm talking up the positives of climate change, but still ... what nice weather! Mid-October in the mid-Atlantic with highs in the 80's. When I was a kid we used to call this kind of weather "Indian Summer", but I'm not sure that term is still acceptable. But, it does raise the point that we had this kind of weather when I was a kid, so maybe the phenomenon I'm enjoying isn't global warming after all and so I can enjoy it without guilt! Which is a long-winded way of saying that this week I kept my usual Wednesday morning coffeeneuring appointment. As I have described in previous posts, the D.C. area has any number of weekly breakfast gatherings of cyclists. Every weekday has at least one. Wednesdays at Best Buns in Shirlington is my favorite, since it features a nice mixture of people - not all hardcore Lycranau...

Let's start with these facts: 1. It's a gorgeous, sunny, 80 degree day in mid-October. 2. I'm basically killing time at my job since I'm about to transfer to a new position and no one really expects me to do much of anything. 3. The Coffeeneuring challenge is underway. 4. I was short-changed on my outdoors time this AM due to yet another aborted run. 5. My son borrowed my car today, which took kayaking off the table (he left me his Miata but that didn't help for carrying a kayak - though I have seen it done). The signs all point to ... #coffeeoutdoors #coffeeneuring! So here's how my day started: After sleeping fitfully I woke up with the intention of going for a run then heading to the office. I'm thrilled that I have been able to run again after a month and a half of some sort of asthma or allergies so severe that it would become painful to breathe after about a minute of running. So I headed out the door and ... wait a minute, ...

In yesterday's post  I lamented that because it was a religious fast day I wasn't able to use a Coffee Club as my coffeeneuring entry. Well, today I decided to do a replacement for that ride, hence the 2.1 designation. Call it a patch release of my second ride. I was looking for some AM exercise and so I decided to head down to the "Whole Thursday Foods" coffee club, known by its acronym "WTF", which meets at the Whole Foods in Crystal City. Crystal City is pretty far out of my way, but that's OK - I was looking for a ride. Trouble is, it was dark and foggy when I left. Out on the bike path, with slightly foggy glasses and no illumination, it was really hard to see anything. I would come up on runners and walkers and not see them until I was right on top of them and I could barely see the path. Fortunately I know it pretty well. I angled my light down pedaled along slowwwly, following the center line or the edge of the path as a reference. I've nev...

All week I had been figurin g that I'd log my second coffeeneuring event by attending my favorite of the DC area weekly coffee clubs, the Wednesday Hump Day Coffee Club (HDCC) at Best Buns in Shirlington. After all, this   coffee/cycling  intersection is a pleasurable regular part of my weekly routine and deserves to be celebrated as a part of coffeeneuring. However, a fatal flaw in my plan dawned on me just last  night – this Wednesday is Yom Kippur, a holy fast day in Judaism. That meant that Wednesday was going to be  really, really poor choice for AM socializing and breakfast. I momentarily thought about riding Wednesday anyway (HDCC starts at 7 AM, and religious services not until 9) and just sitting and not eating or drinking, but since I wouldn't be able to consume any coffee it wouldn't qualify as coffeeneuring. I instead quickly hatched an alternative  plan to replace HDCC for this week with another commuting coffee : a   d...

There are lots of differences between the bike world and the kayak world. For kayakers, the act of kayaking is an end in itself. Cyclists, on the other hand, have an endless number of challenges, ranging from gimmicky to extreme. There's the October Mileage Challenge, the Autumn Hill Climbing Challenge, and the Ride a Prime Number of Miles Between Shrove Tuesday and Arbor Day Challenge. OK, I made that last one up, but expect to see it on Strava soon. While I may roll my eyes at the cycling world's hive mind, I have to admit the challenges are effective; I rode a lot more through last winter than I ever had before, largely because I was participating in Freezing Saddles. And I've already bought bike pogies (which the bike world refers to as bar mitts) for this winter. The cycling blog Chasing Mailboxes (local, but apparently having a worldwide readership!) sponsors a number of enjoyable challenges - and by enjoyable, I mean that they get you out on your bike but don...

I have posted a number of times (going back to 2008 !) about doing the Tashlikh ritual by kayak. For readers unfamiliar with the practice, I present a quote from RitualWell on what Tashlikh is: " Tashlikh , meaning "cast away," is a ritual performed on  Rosh Hashanah  (or during the 10 days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur) as a physical reminder of the human effort to cast away one's sins. By casting crumbs of bread into the water and reciting the verse from Micah—"cast all our sins into the ocean's depths"—we state our intention to return to our true selves. For many Jews, Rosh Hashanah is a time for reciting many words. Through  tashlikh , we use our bodies and actions to do the work of return. Although the rabbinic authorities originally objected to this ritual, Jews stubbornly performed it until it became a "traditional" part of the holiday. " It's interesting at this point to look back at old entries describing past Ta...