An Urban Boychick Takes on the Outdoors

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 ...

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...

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

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...