Thursday, November 22, 2018

More Music

Over time this has become a blog of my musical as well as outdoor adventures, so I figured a post about recent gigs won't be out of place.

A couple of weeks ago my phone rang at about 6 PM on a Friday. "This is Bob - what're you doing tonight?" said the voice at the other end. It turns out Bob was hanging out with Cletus*, the lead singer and rhythm guitarist of a band that was scheduled to play at a local bar that night - but without their usual keyboard player, who was out of town. Bob suggested me as a fill-in. As it happened, I was free, and so a gig was born!

Being an on-time person, I showed up at the time Cletus had said to arrive and found I was the first band member there. I sat down at the bar and ordered a beer and soon enough the rest of the band trickled in. I went up and introduced myself to Cletus (who I recognized because I had seen him play before). We chatted for a little bit but he kept calling me "Joey". I thought maybe he just has a weird sense of humor. Anyway, the band went about their business and a little while later I approached Cletus again about where he wanted me to set up. He seemed a little unclear as to who I was and so I mentioned my name again and that I was the keyboard player. He told me where on that stage their usual keyboard player set up. At that point they were still rigging the PA and drums and so I held off on setting up. A little while later my phone rang. It was Cletus, asking why I wasn't there yet. I walked the twenty or so feet from where I had been sitting to where he was and reminded him that I was there. He apologized. "I'm really wasted," he explained. Well, that worried me - I've played with a lot of people who think they play better high or drunk but in fact most of them, while they may perceive themselves as playing better, actually get sloppy and forgetful. Which reminds me that some day perhaps I should write about the time a band leader showed up for a gig in the midst of a multi-day bender in honor of his 50th birthday. He was responsible for bringing the PA and arrived with this very cool state of the art digital PA system he had borrowed from a friend - no mixing board, everything controlled form an iPad. The only problem was that in his state of intoxication/hangover he had no idea how to set the thing up. And of course he showed up very late. We used what time was available to (unsuccessfully) try to figure the thing out but wound up performing the first set without PA (not good!). In between sets I jury-rigged something to give us at least a modicum of amplification. Not a great show.

Anyway, a few weeks later Magnolia Blue had a chance to share a double bill with Cletus' band at Gypsy Sally's in DC. I don't know what gave the club the idea of combining these two bands - our New Orleans, horn-driven funk and Cletus' more John Hiatt-ish honkytonk Americana; however, while the styles may have been an odd mix, the bands have overlapping fan bases and so a good crowd of people turned out.

Being an on-time person, I showed up at the time Cornelius had said to arrive and found I was the first band member there (the other band was sound-checking). I sat down at the bar and read my book and soon enough the rest of the band trickled in. Playing at a venue like Gypsy Sally's is really nice; they get national acts there and so they treat their performers well (they don't pay well, but that's another story). There's a real green room (backstage lounge for performers), stocked with beer and ice water. No relying on unreliable band members for PA: they have a high end house system which supports separate onstage monitor mixes for the band members (say, for example, I like to hear lots of kick drum to help with timing but the drummer doesn't need to hear his own foot going "boom") and fills the house with nice, clear sound. They have a separate sound person for the house mix (what the audience hears) vs. the monitor mix (what we hear onstage) - that's a real big-time luxury that's rarely available in the kinds of places I play. Once we were finished sound-checking they even provided dinner of pizza and salad. Nice. I ration my pizza intake to once per month for cardiac reasons and had been saving my November pizza for an upcoming trip to New York, but decided to allow myself an extra pizza meal this month and ate heartily.

Sumptuous backstage dinner

Backstage, I ran into the other band. Cletus was there draining quite a bit from a bottle of tequila he had brought along and was smoking something to boot. After he had imbibed a quantity well beyond what would have rendered me unconscious he said, "I better hold off - I don't like to be wasted onstage". I smiled.

Cletus and company do their thing
Anyway, our set went well. Cletus' set went well. A good time was had by all. I felt well taken care of by a venue for a change. And Cletus and I both had a great evening kicking off a week of life events - my birthday, and his wedding.

*Not his real name


Sunday, November 11, 2018

Veterans Day Bike Ride

Let's start by settling punctuation: Veteran's vs. Veterans' vs. Veterans Day. Judd, the leader of today's Veterans Day ride, works for the Veterans Administration and says that according to their official style guide there is no apostrophe. The day doesn't belong to Veterans; rather, it is a day in honor of Veterans. Now you know.

I left home at around 9 AM to bike to Velo Cafe at The Wharf in DC, the starting point of the ride. At that time of the morning it was quite cold - my first ride of the season with temps in the thirties. I dressed warmly and so was comfortable - of course, with the exception of my hands which were cold despite gloves, glove liners, and little chemical warmer packets. I spent about the first half of the trip into DC obsessing about how my hands were going to hurt all day. Fortunately, in the second half of the trip I distracted myself with another train of thought and, since I wasn't focusing on them, my hands didn't bother me as much.

At Velo the earlybirds got coffee while the rest of the group drifted in and schmoozed (note: they don't have brewed decaf coffee at Velo, so I ordered a decaf latte. They have almond and soy milk but not non-fat, so I got my latte with whole milk). Once everyone (about 15 people) had arrived we made a presentation to Bob, a rider who is moving away. Josephine had put out a call for photos and reminiscences and on very short notice put together a really lovely book. My contribution to the book was this photo:

Cardiac Coffee Club (Bob is in the rear)
Just a few weeks after my surgery last year, a group of the morning bicycle coffee clubbers took coffee club on the road and brought it to my house, Bob among them. This was a super nice gesture and was a warm spot of cheer during the tough period of my initial recovery. Bob was also a role model in terms of athletic recovery after serious illness. He had a bout with cancer, after which he came roaring back. He is the kind of rider who can knock off 100 miles like it's nothing day after day after day. Last winter he dropped out of Freezing Saddles in the middle for personal reasons but had already ridden so many miles that he remained in first place for weeks after he stopped riding!

Presentation to Bob (in patriotic jersey) at Velo Cafe
DC is a city that is not short on monuments, even if you limit yourself to a theme, and so we had plenty of Veteran-themed monuments to tour. We visited the American Veterans Disabled for Life monument and the DC War Memorial (honoring DC residents who died in service to their country), where there was a wreath from the "Association of Oldest Residents of DC". I figured this was an organization of centenarians; I later looked it up - their membership requirements are being at least 40 years of age with at least 20 years of residence in DC, which means that if there was an equivalent organization in Arlington I would qualify as an "Oldest Resident of Arlington". In fact, I'm so old that I could qualify as an "Oldest Resident of Arlington" and an "Oldest Resident of Brooklyn".

At the American Veterans Disabled for Life monument
Association of the Oldest Residents of DC wreath
We continued on to the WW II Memorial, then crossed the river back to Virginia and headed to the Merchant Marine Memorial (sometimes known as "waves and seagulls") near Columbia Island. After riding past the Pentagon we went up the hill to the Air Force Memorial. One interesting thing about that memorial is it had a mistake in it - General Billy Mitchell received a Medal of Honor granted by the President, but it wasn't the Congressional Medal of Honor. He was accidentally included in a list of Air Force Congressional Medal of Honor recipients and his name was included in those listed on the memorial. When the mistake was discovered his name was chiseled out and a blank patch of marble put in its place - a very obvious "oops" in the memorial. Mitchell was considered the father of the Air Force, but he was apparently a difficult person - he was promoted to brigadier general then demoted back to colonel not once, but twice! He was posthumously awarded the rank of major general.

The Air Force Memorial
Judd gives a talk
Group panorama
Nadine wanted a picture of Cynthia and me together because we matched (interestingly, she didn't ask for a picture of me with SteveO, who was wearing the identical jacket to mine - see preceding photo)
As the day wore on it definitely warmed up  - into the upper 40's at least, and I went down to wearing only one pair of gloves and put away my balaclava.

We finished up at the Marine Corps Memorial (Iwo Jima), a fitting place to say our goodbyes to Marine vet Bob and head on our way. A subset went out for tacos at the Rosslyn District Taco. Then we all went our separate ways. Four of us headed west so I had company as far as Ballston.

Group photo (thanks, Ricky!)


Sunday, November 4, 2018

PoG End of Season

Just a quick entry to note that the CPA Pirates of Georgetown marked the end of yet another paddling season with a pleasant kayak outing (in sunny but windy-as-heck conditions) followed by lunch at Sine in Pentagon Row. It's hard to believe it, but next year will be the group's 20th anniversary. I've been paddling with the group ever since it was founded as the Georgetown River Rats in 1999. That's a lot of trips up and down the Potomac! It was particularly nice to have some of the PoG old-timers there, including Jen, who was visiting from out of town.

Sunday's group (minus Yvonne)
The original River Rats logo
Photo from 2002. Two of the people in this photo (plus me!) were on Saturday's trip


Quite the Saturday

A bunch of my cycling friends participate in The Great Pumpkin Ride out in Warrenton every year. While the ride, which is always just before Halloween, encourages costumes, in practice most riders come as they are or at most decorate their helmets with pumpkins and such. Not my friends - they go all out, with a group theme every year. Last year it was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which even included someone dressed as a pizza (in case you don't know, the TMNT love pizza). The year before that it was some children's show with gnomes riding foxes - I'm not familiar with the show, but Leo, who is quite artistic, made very impressive cardboard foxes which integrated with the bike frames so it really looked like the cyclists were riding the foxes. This year's theme was the Nintendo Mario Brothers games.

Now, despite the fact that I used to publish articles in game development magazines (back when such magazines still existed - real, printed on paper magazines!), I've never been much of a gamer and so wasn't really aware, but the Mario games collectively have a wealth of characters - which is good when you're looking to outfit a group. We had originally knocked around the idea of Ghostbusters but figured there weren't enough distinctive looking characters. When someone floated the idea of Mario they posted a picture of a group of cyclists at some other event (source unknown) dressed up as Mario characters, including someone in a dinosaur kigurumi. I said, "Hey, I have that dinosaur kigu!" (from a Halloween gig last year) which sealed it for the group - Mario it was! [As an aside, I learned just the other day that the character Mario was named after the landlord of the team developing the original Donkey Kong game - this was in the news because the namesake Mario just passed away).

I also don't usually participate in the Great Pumpkin ride because I almost always have a musical gig that evening (the Saturday before Halloween is a big party night) but this year it was looking like I didn't have a booking, so I signed up for the ride. and then of course, a booking came along. To further complicate matters, the gig was out at B Chord Brewing in Bluemont, Virginia. Warrenton, Bluemont and home form an equilateral one hour of driving triangle. I didn't want to drive an hour home just to turn around and drive an hour back out to B Chord, and I also didn't want to drive 50 miles home late Saturday night after a bike ride and a gig, so I booked an AirBNB in Leesburg to crash before and after the gig.

Saturday morning the weather was dreadful - cold and dumping rain. As I struggled to fit my bike, music gear, clothes and costumes into the car (I resorted to using the rooftop carrier for music gear), more than once I thought to myself, "this is ridiculous. I should just bail on the ride." But after all the planning, I just couldn't. So, off I went to Warrenton.

The one concession the group made to the weather was to switch from the 60 mile to the thirty mile route. That allowed a later start and less time in the rain. And, lo and behold, the rain cleared out just before the 30 mile ride start time! Yeah, we had drizzle here and there, but never real rain at any point, which was awesome - particularly since my fleece dinosaur costume would have been really unpleasant to ride in had it gotten soaked.

The group
Our group numbered about fifteen - some in costume, some not. For the record, in the above photo we have Shira (no costume), Kurt (no costume), Josephine as a Koopa Troopa peeking out from behind Leo as Lakitu, Erin as Princess Peach, me as Yoshi (though people kept asking if I was Bowser), Judd as Mario, Robyne as Rosalina, Chris W as I don't know what, SteveO as a very convincing WaLuigi, Chris (no costume), Jeanne (no costume), and Ken (no costume). Not shown: Rachel and KarenW (no costumes).

We all started together, but not long into the ride Jeanne felt she might be getting a flat tire. I stopped with her to make sure everything was OK. It was, but just that brief stop separated us from the group. I like Jeanne and it was nice riding with her, but I spent a bunch of time in a funk because there I was riding almost solo on what I had thought would be a fun group ride. However, we all caught up at the rest stop - where they provided a cornucopia of food and beer (it was at a brewery). I think turnout for the ride was low because of the weather and so they were over-stocked for the number of riders who actually showed up. After consuming pumpkin soup, quesadilla, PB&J, beer (just a sampler for me) and desserts (none for me) we rode together for the most of the remainder of the ride.

At the rest stop
We got separated again at the end when we came across a cyclist stretched out by the side of the road suffering from severe leg cramps. Some people rode on. Some stayed and helped him. I stayed for a while but realized I was just being a rubber-necker and so ultimately continued on. As a result, I was by myself when I crossed the finish line. Except I didn't really see a finish line. I found myself back where the ride had started where I was puzzled to find ... nothing. Every other organized event I've ever done has had some degree of hoopla at the end, and I seemed to remember that this one had promised food at the end. I walked back to the car, put away my bike and my costume, and checked the information email for the event which said that, "Volunteers will still be at the same location as years past to serve your end of ride meal." Not very useful for those of us who were doing the ride for the first time. The email also mentioned a post-ride gathering at Worthog Brewery (another brewery!). I walked over to Worthog but it seemed pretty quiet, so I went back to the car. As I was about to get into the car and drive off, I said to myself, "let me check Warthog one more time". I walked back and sure enough, there was the group at the bar. Everyone asked where I had been - I missed the food and the group photo at the end of the ride! Apparently there was end-of-ride hoopla after all; however it was off the trail (I never figured out exactly where) and somehow I had missed seeing it.

Anyway, we hung out at Worthog for quite a while. I finally took my leave, knowing that I wanted to leave time for a quick nap and a shower (one gets a little sweaty riding in a dinosuar outfit over rain gear) before my gig. After a pretty trip up Rt. 15 I arrived at my AirBNB. This was the first (and maybe only) time staying in a place where it's not a separate apartment. I was just sleeping in a bedroom in someone's townhouse. There was nothing amiss about - nice place, clean, well furnished. It was just, well, weird. But I did get a quick nap in, showered, and then headed out to Bluemont, stopping along the way at a Chick-Fil-a for a quick dinner. I hadn't really eaten anything except granola bars since the pit stop at 11 AM, and I was HUNGRY.
Magnolia Blue on stage

Our call time was 6 PM for a 6:30 sound check. I breathlessly rushed in at 6:10 to find, well, maybe one or two other band members there and the sound guy just getting things set up. It turns out there was no rush. We didn't sound check until 7:30. And then we played and played and played. We started at around 8 and played almost to 1 AM, with only one break. We had the fabulous Colin Thompson sitting in with us on guitar, and our former guitarist Mike Shade, who was in the area for another gig, played with us too. You may ask how we came up with 4+ hours of music? Well, basically we started with a two hour set and then added two guitarists' worth of guitar solos. 😵 

Oh, and of course there were costumes. I had planned on going as an Arab sheikh. As luck would have it, thanks to the nasty murder of a journalist, Prince Mohammed bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia was much in the news, so my costume morphed from the generic sheikh to something much more specific and timely. Perhaps next year I'll go as the artist formerly known as Prince Mohammed bin Sultan ;)


Prince MBS at the keys

The night ended around 1 AM with some pizza and a last round. Then I packed the car and headed back to my AirBNB, where I got a decent night's sleep before heading home. One day, two costumes, three towns, a whole lot of gear, a whole lot of beer, and a whole lot of fun!


Friday, October 19, 2018

Biking with Petey

I don't write about cycling as much as kayaking because let's face it, bicycling is boring. Or maybe it's just my version of cycling, which is largely confined to a set of trails around my house. It's easy to get lazy when you can roll out the door onto an extensive trail network. I realized this when my old friend Peter (we know each other back to junior high school!) visited recently. Pete's gotten into cycling of late and wanted to do a ride together. When I mentioned riding a trail his reply was, "I don't mountain bike," at which point I had to explain to him the notion of a rail trail. It turns out that where he lives (somewhere in New Jersey) there are no bike trails. All his riding is on the road. Maybe I would find cycling more interesting if I ditched the local trails and went more places.

Anyway, it was great to see Peter - we rarely see each other since we live far apart. We met up at the Rt. 28 parking lot for the W&OD. Unfortunately, I had been hit with sciatica a couple of days prior. I was able to ride OK but didn't really want to push things, which meant we couldn't ride too far. What was really comical was mounting and unmounting the bike. My sciatica limited my ability to lift my leg up and swing it over the bike, so instead I had to lean the bike way over and kind of slide it up under me. Not graceful, but effective.

Anyway, we rode west. A little past Leesburg I started to get some twinges and so we turned around. On the way back we detoured through the historic downtown of Leesburg so he could see it (he was surprised at the Confederate statue, something I'm inured to by now), then stopped at Carolina Brothers for barbeque. Pete had eaten crabs in Maryland the night before, so I figured it was appropriate to give him a taste of another regional food. Which makes me wonder, if I visited him, what are the regional foods of New Jersey?



Along the way we caught up. He was actually in the area because his sister had an art opening at the Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore. To get a feel for Wendy's art it's worth checking out this video. So I got the latest news about his sisters and his brother, and about Pete's life. He's currently contemplating a move from the world of Wall Street to someplace exotic - Thailand or Vietnam. Apparently these countries have active financial markets and a guy with Wall Street IT experience can get a job there and life high on the hog quite cheaply (Pete's finances took a hit in the economic downturns and because of personal life stuff). We also discussed cannabis as a future growth sector (no pun intended) and what the hot investments in that area are (our mutual friend, journalist Lisa Napoli, has written about this topic so I won't rehash it here). Buy low, sell high!



As a last stop on our outing we had a beer at Old Ox Brewery, which sits adjacent to the W&OD trail near Sterling, where Peter filled me in on the aging management techniques he's using (human growth hormone, DHEA, etc.). Sounds interesting, but maybe a little too far out for someone like me who is already running on replacement parts. Then it was back to the cars where we said a long goodbye - if he does indeed pick up and move to Thailand, who knows when and if I'll ever see him again! But it was good to catch up and take our first bike ride together since the "Breaking Away" era of the 70's.

Sunday, October 7, 2018

Lake Champlain Part 3: The End


Friday
I could tell my neck was still tight when I woke up on Friday. I’ve had this issue before – it’ll spasm and then be hard as a rock and painful for days. In the previous section of this write-up I referred to it as trapezius pain but after a little web searching I think the offending muscle might be the levator scapulae - not that it matters for the purposes of the blog. Whatever muscle it was, it was still bothering me and so I wasn’t up for risking a recurrence of the previous day's stabbing pains. When kayaker Shawn visited he mentioned that Valcour Island was interesting to hike around – like many place that today are parkland, it had been inhabited at one time and there were various ruins around the island. So, we decided to do a short paddle to Crab Island and then come back and do some hiking.

This area played a significant role in the early days of the U.S. I’ve already mentioned the Revolutionary War battle of Valcour Island. Well, the area around Valcour and Crab Islands also played an important role in the War of 1812 (known as that war you didn’t really learn much about in school except that’s how the White House got white and something about the Star Spangled Banner). The British assembled a massive army of 10,000 soldiers to invade the U.S. Their plan was to have their fleet push south first and take out the defending American naval forces, opening up a supply line down the lake for the army, which would then advance; however the American fleet managed to defeat the British, in part through luck and in part through clever planning. This was grisly stuff – the British naval commander was killed during the battle when a cannon on his ship broke loose and rolled over him, flattening him like Wile E. Coyote in a Roadrunner cartoon. The American naval commander emerged unscathed despite being bonked in the head twice: once by a flying decapitated head and another by a large piece of rigging.

Landing at Crab Island


One of the monuments on Crab Island


Honoring the British war dead


Which all got me to thinking: this battle took place on a lake. How the heck did the British get a fleet of ships onto a lake? Well, it turns out the answer is that once they developed their battle plan they built the ships on site on the Canadian side of the lake (some of the parts were shipped pre-fab from England – like our wooden boat kits writ large!). Which shows you how much more slowly warfare moved in those days. More details here, if you’re interested.

We easily covered the three or so miles up to Crab Island. The island, which was used as a hospital during the battles, has monuments to the the men who fought and died in the battle - some of whom are buried on the island. We explored the trails of the rather small island (holy cow, I’ve never seen so much poison ivy!) then returned to the kayaks for lunch.

Reading the historical markers on Crab Island


Walking Crab Island


As I said, I wasn’t looking for a long paddle so Jen, Suzanne and decided to head straight back. Rob and Tom hatched a plan to detour back to the cars at the Peru Dock boat ramp and go on a beer run. We had joked before the trip that we would be so close to the cars that rather than cook for dinner we could go get pizza in Plattsburgh. We never did that, but this was one occasion where did take advantage of our proximity to civilization.

Jen, Suzanne and I wound up taking the long way around the island on the way back and so our “short” paddle was only a mile or so shorter than Rob and Tom’s “long” paddle. We piddled around the campsite a bit when we got back and were just heading out for our hike when Rob and Tom came into view on the water, boats laden with cold beer. Jen dropped out of the hike fairly quickly to return to camp and begin cooking dinner (she had graciously volunteered to take a second turn at cooking, which fended off our traditional last night ptomaine-a-thon, wherein we pool and eat all of our leftover food). It wasn’t easy to find the terminus of the trail near our campsite, but once we did we found a well-marked set of trails and Suzanne and I had a pleasant hike across to the other side of the island. Then we returned back to join in consumption of the hard-won beer.

Hiking on Valcour

Well-marked trail intersections on Valcour

Boy, cold beer a week into a kayak camping trip is a real luxury. Rob & Tom had brought back a dry bag full of ice to keep the beer cold and we all enjoyed kicking back with a couple of cold ones at the campsite on a warm, sunny afternoon. They told us of the adventure they had along the way - rescuing a kayaker who had gotten separated from her paddling partner and reuniting the two. Oh, and Rob brought back some awful desserts – packs of Twinkies and the like – to make up for a missed dessert on one of the previous evenings. 

We ate dinner (Jen’s gado gado), as we had been doing, up at the “½ campsite” which had a commanding view of our cove on one side and the lake on the other. Gado gado is an Indonesian dish of noodles with peanut sauce. The camping version was made with ramen and peanut powder. I cracked jokes about eating gado gado in Walla Walla or Baden Baden. No one laughed; perhaps they could tell that I was actually stealing the joke from a song in the old Fred Astaire musical Bandwagon. Anyway, after dinner we began the process of dismantling camp and then headed off to bed on our final night on the island.

Saturday
Amazingly, we were all packed and ready ahead of our agreed upon departure time and so we hit the water nice and early – into more chop, of course. It seemed like throughout the trip we hit the choppiest water when we our kayaks were heavily laden. Still, it was nothing we couldn't handle, just hard work to move the fully loaded boats through the waves. When we landed back at Peru Dock we executed the familiar dance of unpacking the kayaks into the cars. This is faster and easier than loading the kayaks but still takes a while. After we were all loaded Tom took off for home but the rest of us, longing for a lunch that wasn’t peanut butter or tuna packs, stopped for lunch at a diner in Ausable, NY. One thing about camping – it really makes you appreciate your normal life. It was wonderful to eat fresh food – and we all oohed and aahed over using an actual bathroom with running water. Hot running water!

Heading home in choppy water

My goal was to make it home in one day if possible and so about an hour into the trip (after passing through an unsettling Customs and Border Patrol checkpoint on the highway) I stopped at a Stewart’s (convenience store/ice cream chain) where I bought a vanilla milkshake and a caffeinated Diet Coke. Neither of these things are a regular part of my diet and so the combined sugar and caffeine rush hit me hard and had the desired effect: an energy buzz that lasted all the way to Maryland. Woo hoo! I’m cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs! Unfortunately, the combination also did a number on my stomach. While I was wide awake for the long drive, I didn’t make very good time as I had to make a few unscheduled restroom stops.

Checkpoint: Yo soy Americano, eh?

One last pretty sunset (I95 in Maryland)
It was great to get home and see Valerie, and it was nice to get home – for once – with dry gear that didn’t need to be hung up and aired out. My only gear casualty from the trip was a hole in one of the small lightweight dry bags I had bought for the trip. That’s better than Rob (chewed through Platypus bottles from his Manhattans plus four! other dry bags), Suzanne (chewed through food bag) or Tom (chewed through shower hose) did. I don’t think Jen lost any gear to the critters this time – she got a karmic break after having all her food stolen by a raccoon last year.


But we never got even a glimpse of Champ the sea monster.

Seeing Champ (artist's rendering) 


Sunday, September 30, 2018

Lake Champlain Part 2: Plattsburgh to Valcour Island


Tuesday
Suzanne and I are early risers in the group so it was no surprise when I bumped into her at the stroke of 6 AM at the coffee pot in the hotel breakfast room (my kind of camping breakfast!). Jen followed close behind and I soon found myself engaged in a scintillating conversation about their cats – and how to steal the bananas back from the table of Germans who were monopolizing them. Eventually Tom and Rob joined us and the Germans left, solving both our conversational and fruit challenges. We made plans to head to Peru Dock, from whence we would launch to Valcour Island.

“Ahh, Valcour Island,” you say. “Isn’t that the site of a Revolutionary War naval battle?” Why, yes, it is. American forces under the command of Benedict Arnold (still a good guy at this point in the war!) managed to get shot to pieces by a superior British fleet before limping away. Like many Revolutionary War battles, the Americans didn’t exactly win but managed to do damage to the British by slowing and wearing them down and making the Brits chase them around endlessly. My favorite Revolutionary War general, Nathaniel Greene, is most famous not for a great military victory but for a masterful strategic retreat across the breadth of North Carolina. The way a rebel insurgency beats a superpower’s military is through this kind of slow attrition rather than decisive victories, unless of course you can figure out a way to blow up their Death Star. But I digress.
Valcour Island has some gorgeous rock formations

The crossing to Valcour was short but had the roughest water of the trip to that point. We made the roughly one mile crossing and proceeded clockwise around the island to survey the available campsites. By the time we made it from where we started  around the top of the island, past Spoon Bay and Sloop Bay, through a narrow, surf-pounded passage between two islands, and into Smuggler’s Harbor we had travelled around most of the island and were ready to be done with the waves even though we had paddled only five miles. We declared that we had found the best possible campsite – which indeed, we had! Smuggler’s Harbor, which we alternately referred to as Snogger’s Harbor (though no snogging took place) and Schmuckler’s Harbor, was such a desirable site that even though it was during the work week in the off-season we found it to be frequently visited by other boaters looking for a place to hang out, party or camp. One day we returned from kayaking to find a power boat in “our” harbor, with the owner stark naked on the nearby shore. He quickly pulled on clothes (shirt before pants, I am told – I stopped looking his way after a first glance) and took off.
Smuggler's Cove
Now, here’s where we were bad campers. Schmuckler’s Harbor contained three campsites – well, two and a half: our campsite, another picnic table and fire ring up on an adjacent bluff (this site had no outhouse, no access except through our campsite and almost no place to set up a tent, which is why I label it a half campsite), and a completely separate campsite at the other end of the cove. In all fairness, we could have shared the cove another group but were worried that power boaters would disturb our peace with their seemingly inevitable partying and loud music, so we scattered our gear around enough to make it look like all the sites were occupied. I mean, we were five people with five tents, so we could lay legitimate claim to multiple sites. We wouldn’t have been so territorially greedy in peak season, but the island has twenty-five campsites and in our paddle around we had seen only one other tent and so we felt that even in monopolizing the cove we were leaving plenty of campsites for everyone else. When we were in camp we always left one kayak over at the other site. One time when some power boats came into the Tall Tom went over to the far campsite and plopped down in his chair and glared at the boaters. This wasn’t partial exposure to Tom’s glare – rather, it was full exposure. The boaters left.

Camp craft

The rest of the day Tuesday was consumed with setting up camp and general camp craft. One of the enjoyable things about these trips is tweaking gear and procedures each time. For example, before the trip I sewed a loop of elastic onto the deck of my spray skirt allowing me to keep my GPS right in front of me in my lap rather than having it a foot and a half away on the deck of the kayak. This was a success – it really helped in navigating to be able to continuously consult the GPS. In camp, Tall Tom set up the latest iteration of his camp shower – this time with a battery-powered showerhead! Previous years' iterations were gravity-fed, which meant very little water pressure and the need to hoist heavy bags of water up high. In this version, the bucket of water stayed down low. The handheld shower contained a pump which drew water up a hose from the bucket. I used it only once (I would rather be stinky than cold – my apologies to my fellow campers – and so don’t like getting wet unless it’s pretty warm out), but it was, in fact, very cool. I’m just amazed that Tom had room, even in his big 18 foot boat, for tarps and showers and collapsible buckets. I'm something of a minimalist and still barely fit everything into my kayak. I respect people who hav eth etime and interest to fiddle with stuff like the shower.

Dinner on Weds was Suzanne’s beloved penne with tuna, olives and feta. When the storm passed on Wednesday morning it left behind warmer weather – we all slept comfortably.

Campfire at Smuggler's Cove

The privy at Smuggler's Cove
My tent (center), Rob's and Suzanne's


Wednesday
The weather for the remainder of the week got better by the day. Wednesday was quite a nice day – still breezy, though. We decided to head south to paddle the two mouths of the Ausable River. As the river wends its way towards the lake it splits into two branches and so in essence the river has two mouths. This trip was sort of a two for one: from the island (labelled “almost one rock” in the Revolutionary War map below) to Ausable Point (labelled “Pointe au Sable” on the map) was big water on the open lake. Then, entering the river the feeling totally transformed into the intimacy of small creek paddling – the mouth of the Ausable is small, peaceful, pretty and calm. We paddled up to the junction of the two branches and a bit beyond. As I mentioned earlier, the lake level was low and so we had to get out and walk the boats here and there, and not far beyond the junction the river ceased to be navigable, with some small rapids. At the top of the navigable section we took a snack break and then headed out via the other fork, which required a little fortitude because the transition from the junction to the fork was a small rapid with rapidly moving water and a sharp curve – not ideal for sea kayaks, but not as bad in execution as it looked going into it. We all made it through just fine and had an uneventful trip back to Schmuckler’s Cove. It was my turn to cook dinner, and my two bean and chicken white chili was a success.
The Battle of Valcour Island

Rob stopping to take a photo on the Ausable River

Coming out of the Ausable River back into the main lake
Cooking

You may wonder how we do dishes on these trips. It’s a three step process. First, we dip everything in the lake to scrub off any major residue – leftovers and the like. Yes, the first step in cleaning the dishes is to coat them in giardia, cryptosporidium, motor oil and whatever else might be floating around in the lake. Then we take some hot, soapy filtered (potable) water and use that to really scrub the dishes. We generally use the same water for the whole meal’s dishes so the first dishes get nice and clean while the last dishes not so much. The third step is to sanitize the dishes by dipping them in potable water to which a bit of bleach has been added. Dishes which have been dipped in lake water, washed with dirty wash water and then been given a coating of bleach may not meet everyone’s idea of “clean”, but we’ve generally stayed healthy on our trips, so it must work! In any case, the cook doesn’t clean so I was happy not to have dish duty.
This is what dish duty looks like

I don’t remember whether it was Wednesday or not, but the critters on the island started attacking our stuff big time. One night Suzanne’s dry bag of food was gnawed through while hung from a tree. The next, Rob’s Platypus bottle of Manhattans was gnawed into. Perhaps it was foolish to have left the bottle out on the picnic table overnight, but we got a kick imaging the drunk chipmunks who drank Rob’s Manhattans. The darn critters even chewed through the shower hose, which was totally inexplicable because in no way was that associated with the smell or taste of food. Maybe it was the drunk ones who did it.

Another 12 mile day.

There are too many pretty sunset pictures to post


Thursday
This was a great weather day. We awoke to find the lake like glass, quite the change from the heavy chop of a few days earlier. The smooth conditions made this the perfect day for some more open water, so we decided to head east and do the crossing to North Hero Island. As seemed to be the case every day, conditions kicked up a little bit as we got onto the water and so we had some chop as we covered the three miles across to a protected bay at the southwest corner of South Hero Island Along the way we passed a rock known as Carleton’s Prize. Apparently, in a dense fog during the Revolutionary War battle referenced earlier, British commander saw what he thought was an American ship and had his ships pound it with cannon fire for some time before realizing that it was just a rock protruding from the water. There is some local lore that the Americans had hoisted logs on the island to look like masts in an intentional act of deception, but it may just have been that General Carleton was clueless – certainly it might have occurred to him sooner to question why the ship was neither returning fire nor fleeing.
Playing with trucks at White's Beach
Jen, Tom and Suzanne at White's Beach

We landed at White’s Beach (one of the places pointed out to me in my pre-trip conversation with a local paddler) for a lunch break. We chatted with a local retired couple who were sitting in lawn chairs enjoying the view of the bay on a splendid day. They insisted that we go see the dinosaurs. Despite always keeping an eye out for Champ, the lake’s answer to the Loch Ness monster, we hadn’t seen any dinosaurs on our way in, but we had noticed a large number of brightly colored birdhouses dotting the shoreline. Like a zillion of them. It turns out that a local resident is a prolific birdhouse builder and, according to Atlas Obscura, the birdhouses have a purpose – to attract swallows which in turn gobble up the otherwise troublesome mosquito population. Apparently the birdhouse guy is something of a character, since in addition to creating the birdhouse forest he has dotted it with large scale replicas of dinosaurs. We got a kick out of it.

Part of the birdhouse forest - with dinosaurs
There’s a skinny 3 mile long causeway connecting South Hero to mainland Vermont – almost. The causeway was built as a railway around the turn of the 20th century, but railway service was discontinued in the 1960’s and the causeway has since been converted to a bike trail. Alas, a chunk of the causeway collapsed at some point in the past and so it no longer completely connects South Hero and the mainland. I understand there’s a tiny ferry that runs people across the 200 ft. gap in the high season – it wasn’t running when we were there. While a dead end for runners and cyclists, the opening in the causeway is a great boon to boaters who would otherwise have to go all the way around South Hero Island (upwards of 25 miles) to get into Mallett’s Bay and its environs. We paddled down the causeway and through the gap, took a peek in the direction of Camp Skyland, a commercial campsite we had considered as a backup location, then turned around and headed back to camp.
Paddling through the causeway gap

On the way back my left trapezius muscle started to painfully spasm and so the haul back to camp seemed longer than it was. I pride myself on not being particularly achy (I have written before about being the sole abstainer in the daily ibuprofen feast that is the norm for these trips) but today was an exception. Upon returning to camp my first act was to was to wash down a couple of Alleve with a shot of bourbon, which helped somewhat.

It was a warm, sunny afternoon and so we all took dips in the lake followed by showers (separately!). I have a rather 19th century level of modesty (certainly in comparison with my male companions) and so I did what for me was a rarity – took off my shirt and lay down on the warm stone along the shoreline of our cove. The warm rock and the sun further helped my shoulder.
In the later afternoon two kayakers, Shawn and Karen, paddled into the cove to chat. Since they weren’t power boaters and weren’t looking to make camp we didn’t run them off. Rather, we chatted. Strangely, while the Burlington side of the lake has an active kayaking community, they said they were among the few kayakers on the Plattsburgh side of the lake. Jen was quite interested in talking with them – she lives less than two hours away, which counts as close by in these parts, and so was happy to meet some other “nearby” paddlers. They said they would leave their contact info on Jen’s windshield back at Peru Dock. I should mention that in talking about choosing kayaks it came up that Shawn was 6’ 8” tall, and so he and Tom got to commiserate about how hard it is for the big guys to find kayaks that fit them. I should also mention that kayaking is a very small sport – we all knew people in common from the kayaking world, and not just celebrity kayakers like Dubside.

Back in camp it was Tom’s turn for dinner: massuman curry (based on those little cans of curry seasoning from the Asian market), naan, canned hummus (in case you’re keeping score, that makes three types of hummus – Jen’s dehydrated real stuff, my instant hummus kit, and Tom’s canned stuff), and the crème de la crème, Cheese Whiz (no refrigeration necessary!) and crackers. I thought I was going to be the junk food king on the trip for having brought the organic version of Pringles to accompany my dinner, but Tom’s Cheese Whiz and (later) Rob’s Twinkies took the prize.

Another 12 mile day.

Sunday, September 23, 2018

Lake Champlain Part 1: Pre-trip to Plattsburgh


Pre-trip

Every trip starts with a trip to get to the trip. Sometimes we travel together, but this time each and every one of us drove separately. I was held up at work and so my journey started a little later than planned which led to me having to slog through afternoon rush hour. I covered only 50 miles in my first two hours of driving – ugh. Eventually the road opened up and I cruised through the forgettable landscape of central Pennsylvania. I had hoped to make it to New Paltz, the site of many fond if fuzzy memories from years ago, but given the traffic delays I made it only as far as Scranton, which left me five hours of driving to do on Friday. I got an early start and had no problem making it to my planned rendezvous with Jen (describing it that way sounds more suspicious than it was) on Friday at Peru Dock on the New York side of the lake. The plan had been that we’d leave my car at Peru Dock and another car at Kamp Kill Kare in Vermont so that in case of bad weather (which we’d heard was a significant possibility on Lake Champlain) we would always be near a car.

Notice that past perfect progressive tense in the last sentence? There’s a famous quote that no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy.* Well, no kayaking plan survives very long past the beginning of the trip. While Jen and I were dropping a car at Peru Dock Rob and Tom met up to deposit a car at Kill Kare. They called the park office to inform them that they were going to leave a car there for a few days and, despite our having checked it all out in advance, were informed  it wasn’t appropriate for them to leave a car at Kill Kare since the islands on which we planned to camp were closed! Apparently, it had something to do with letting the islands’ ecology have a break after camping season. This was pretty perplexing – the web site for the park didn’t mention this closure and neither had anyone we had spoken with on the phone. We half suspected that the information we were getting was coming from someone at headquarters who wasn’t really in touch with what was going on.

Rob and Tom started investigating alternatives. One option was car camping at Grand Isle State Park. As it happened, Jen and I had to pass by this park on our way to Burlington and so we stopped in to check it out. The employee we chatted with at the park was worn out from the season – cynical, a little punchy, and ready to be done with the season’s tourists, but she did give us a key nugget of information, which was that it was possible to launch at the privately owned Hero’s Welcome store on North Hero Island, from which it was an easy paddle across to Kn1t3 Island (note - Kn1t3 is not the real name of the island - I have obscured the name to protect the guilty).

Out and About in Burlington
All of us met up at our Burlington AirBnB, which had the feel of low budget off campus housing (clean, but low budget). After settling in we headed out to Foam Brewery, recommended by my craft brew obsessed neighbor Steve C. Foam turned out to be an excellent recommendation – interesting brews, an in-house magician who circulated among the tables doing impressive card tricks, a great view of the lake, and friendly customers (we got an overview of the Revolutionary War history of the lake from the history teacher at the next table). Rob had made a dinner reservation for us at Hen of the Wood, an upscale restaurant which was conveniently just a few blocks from Foam. Hen of the Wood is a Burlington kind of restaurant – locavore, sustainable, organic, blah, blah, blah. The web site has an image of a guy hauling a freshly killed deer on the back rack of his mountain bike. I guess the goal is to have fresh local venison while maintaining a low carbon footprint. Anyway, the meal was fabulous. I had halibut. Other entrees included beet pappardelle and rabbit. This was shaping up to be my kind of camping! We skipped the desserts at Hen in favor of walking over to Ben & Jerry’s** for ice cream. Along the way we got distracted by a large outdoor store – we browsed, but our wallets survived largely intact.

The group enjoying a drink at Foam
Foam's staff magician shows his stuff


Not the Ur Ben & Jerry's, but close enough

Over dinner we agreed on a nefarious plan - that we were going to launch at Hero’s Welcome and sneak our way onto Kn1t3 Island. If we got kicked off, we’d deal. If we didn’t we would have the place to ourselves!

*This quote is often misattributed to Nazi Field Marshal Rommel but it was Prussian General Helmuth von Moltke the Elder who said it. I don’t sprinkle my writing with Rommel quotes, OK?
**I had thought that this was the first Ben & Jerry’s, but it turns out the original shop was a couple of blocks away in a building which has since been torn down. Close enough.

Part II: Kn1t3Island

Saturday
The day started off in a leisurely fashion. We strolled through the remnants of a street festival down to Handy’s, an old-fashioned (founded 1945) lunch counter sort of place. The crowd at the U-shaped counter was a mix of college students, artsy types, and general locals. From there we went to the supermarket (Jen and I had shopped there the day before but others still needed some things) and made another outdoor store detour – this time to the Sierra Trading Post across from the supermarket. Sierra Trading Post is a well-known online discounter of outdoor gear and we just couldn’t resist peeking inside – particularly one of our group, who we joke has platinum status there.

Lake Champlain has its own Loch Ness monster, named Champ

Alas, all of us including our Sierra Trading Post super shopper were underwhelmed by what was available at the store – STP has gone downhill as a bargain-hunter’s paradise since their acquisition by TJ MAXX. Having fulfilled our shopping needs we continued on to Hero’s Welcome.

Hero’s Welcome is a popular stopping point for both cyclists and boater and so the place was hopping. They were game to let us park there for a few days and made no mention of any restrictions on camping on Kn1t3 Island. As expected, they’re not park rangers and so really didn’t care what we were up to as long as we paid our parking and launch fees. I will mention that we had an interesting role reversal going on within our group dynamics. Usually Tom is the rule-breaker among us, Suzanne and I are the cautious ones, with Rob and Jen wisely staying on the sidelines while Tom, Suzanne and I argue things out. This time, though, for whatever reason it was Tom who was worried while Suzanne and I were the ones wanting to go for it.


Getting ready at Hero's Welcome

Packing the boats for the first time on a trip always takes a long time and it was 2 PM by the time we set out on the short, choppy paddle to Kn1t3Island. It’s always something of a shock to paddle a loaded kayak, as the boats feel really different loaded – hard to get and keep moving, but super stable. We chose a campsite on the east side of the island, as far from civilization and the ranger station (!) as we could get. The rest of the day was spent setting up camp. The Kn1t3 Island campsites were quite nice. Ours had a clean outhouse, and a lean-to shelter with a picnic table in it. The two nights we spent on Kn1t3 Island were chilly (lows in the 40’s) and breezy, so having the shelter was great in that it helped us stay warm while we ate and hung out. Dinner was Jen’s excellent polenta with goat cheese, spinach, almonds and raisins, accompanied by and followed by consumption of wine.

Hanging out in the lean-to on Kn1t3 Island


Kn1t3 Island "Ironwood" campsite
That whole first evening we continued to work ourselves into a lather figuring that a platoon of park rangers was going to swarm our campsite at any second. 

After a long day we retired to our tents. My major gear acquisition for the trip was a down sleeping bag, which was able to be compressed down into a really small size but which kept me nice and warm, even on those coldest nights.

Sunday
Each member of the group contributes some set of special skills, kind of like The A-Team. Rob and Tom are our experts at purifying water – their fancy gravity feed water purification system easily satisfies our water needs. One of my specialties (besides being exceptionally charming) is in route and map planning. While I am not formally trained in map reading, I always scrutinize the charts and Google maps to get a feel for where we’ll be traveling and camping. I also scope out places to explore and send out a set of GPS waypoints for key locations to everyone in advance of the trip. As part of my research prior to this trip I had gotten in touch with a member of the local Lake Champlain Kayak Meetup, who had mentioned several things to me, including that there was a “sometimes navigable” culvert under a road that allowed you to cut across a narrow part of North Hero Island and access protected paddling on Carry Bay on the west side of the island.

We awoke to continued breezy weather and choppy conditions, so we decided to go in search of the Carry Bay cut-through to find some non-choppy water for our day’s outing. Needless to say, I had calculated a waypoint for where I thought the culvert might be based on my examination of the satellite imagery, and it was pretty spot-on. What we found when we got there was a roughly eight-foot diameter by eighty foot long pipe passing under a road. The problem was, we couldn’t exactly paddle through it. What we didn’t know yet was that due to drought conditions the lake was about five feet below its normal level. As a result, the pipe was above the water line. After some consultation we decided to go for it and carried the kayaks up the slope into the pipe. The pipe had a few feet of standing water in it and so we easily floated the boats from one end to the other and then we carried them down a slope into the bay. It was daunting when we first saw it, but pretty easy in execution.

In the culvert


Passing boats into the culvert

And it was worth it. Carry Bay is quite protected from the weather and so once through the culvert we were treated to smooth, nearly windless paddling through the bay and up a channel between North Hero and a peninsula. We had thought we might paddle a loop - go all the way around the top of North Hero, but at our lunch break we decided it was too far (would have been a total of 20ish miles) and so we turned around and did the whole culvert thing again back home. We were relieved upon our return to camp not to find any angry rangers or eviction notices.

Sunset on Kn1t3 Island

The scheduling of this year’s trip presented something of a conundrum to me since the major Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashonah fell during the week of the trip. Only once before have I been away for one of the Jewish high holidays (Yom Kippur in Korea!), but I decided I would go for it. In advance of the trip I downloaded a מחזור (holiday prayer book) onto my phone and I figured I would skip paddling on Monday. Sunday late afternoon I settled into the lean-to to read through the evening service, but I was tired from paddling and started to doze off (which is not atypical for Rosh Hashonah services!) and so went to my tent and took a quick nap. After dinner (packaged Trader Joe’s Indian dal curry over farro) while the rest of the group chatted I sat in the back of the lean-to and read through the rest of the service. 

Monday
Remember that part about my not kayaking on Rosh Hashonah? Well, it didn’t exactly work out that way. Because we were (maybe) breaking the rules by camping on the forbidden island we figured we better not risk more than two nights there. Plus, the forecast called for a cold, rainy period from mid-day Monday to mid-day Tuesday, including really rough water. Camping in the rain stinks. Setting up camp in the rain is worse. Spendign the rest of the week with wet gear would have been really bad. We’re in this for the vacation, not as some sort of Spartan endurance test, so we decided we would skip the 24 hour rainstorm by spending Monday night ashore. Using the miracle known as the Internet Tom booked us a couple of rooms at the Plattsburgh, NY Fairfield Inn. We broke camp (on Rosh Hashonah), kayaked back to Hero’s Welcome (through beaming waves which had already built to 2+ feet, on Rosh Hashonah), and drove to Plattsburgh to the hotel (still Rosh Hashonah). So yeah, I didn’t exactly do that “not kayaking on Rosh Hashonah” thing. I didn’t skip the holiday entirely though – in addition to reading through the service Sunday evening I managed to sneak in performing the Tashlickh ritual while we were unloading at Hero’s Welcome.
I look pretty happy for someone who is going to burn in Hell for kayaking on Rosh Hashonah (wait, we don't exactly believe in Hell ...)

We ate lunch at Anthony’s, an Italian restaurant in Plattsburgh recommended by a woman we spoke with while unloading at Hero’s Welcome. From the name I was expecting a third-rate red sauce Italian place but it turned out to be quite excellent and not strictly southern Italian. Since we had gone straight from Hero’s Welcome to the restaurant we were way too bedraggled lookiong for what turned out to be an upscale kind of place, but we pretended we looked decent. I ordered pastrami-seasoned smoked salmon on a baguette with horseradish aioli, but exercised a little self-control and eschewed the desserts - though everyone else indulged. Bourbon pecan pie. House-made carrot cake ice cream, etc. Yum!

At the hotel we got adjoining rooms and spent the evening sorting and repacking gear (it seems like much of the time on these trips is spent unpacking, packing and schlepping). Rob, Tom and I shared a room. Since I had gotten the best bed at the AirBNB back in Burlington I was consigned to the worst one in Plattsburgh: a wheel-in cot, a throwback to the vacations of my youth where as the youngest I always got the crappiest sleeping arrangements. No matter – after a couple of nights on my camping cot, the hotel cot felt like heaven.

Oh, I forgot to mention – after a perusal of the Yelp! Reviews for Plattsburgh restaurants (during which we somehow decided that Duck Biscuits would be a great band name), we had dinner at a Greek place downtown. Food was OK, but no match for Anthony’s.

A Tale of Four Jess's

 Jesse is not all that common a name, and so unlike the Toms, Davids, and Bobs of the world I don't run into much name confusion. So it ...