An Urban Boychick Takes on the Outdoors

This has been an odd year for exercise, what with my surgery interrupting just about all activity just as springtime was getting going. I haven't been on an organized CPA paddling trip all year, and so when I packed my car and headed for the put-in I had this weird feeling like when you visit the neighborhood where you grew up - I thought, "This is something I used to do." That little bit of dissociation aside, I made it to the put-in with no issues. This is the first time I've been on a trip with this trip leader and I quickly learned that he has a loose style of trip leading. He let me join last-minue (that's good) but while he announced that he was going to do a pre-trip briefing he never wound up doing one, and we made it only part-way around group introductions before that effort fell apart. So, I got on the water having no idea where we were going or how long we were going to be out for other than the description on Meetup of "over ten miles". ...

We have always loved a fall trip to pick apples. In fact, just today while looking through some old photos I found pictures of us picking apples with my friend Charles back in 1988. I didn't scan the pictures - but trust that I had enormous 1980's glasses and a pitiful mustache. I also found some pictures of us with Teddy & David on an apple-picking trip, probably in the early 2000's. With some beautiful fall weather on tap (can we still say "Indian Summer"?) Valerie and I headed out to Markham, VA to pick some apples at Stribling Orchard. This was a great year for apples. We've been going to the Markham orchards for years and I've never seen the trees bursting with beautiful, juicy apples the way they were this year. We picked to our hearts content until our bags were straining with a bushel full of apples. When we were paying, Valerie chatted with one of the women working the cash registers and, through that amazing ability to instantly create ...