An Urban Boychick Takes on the Outdoors

I love posting wildlife pictures on Strava because my cycling friends are always amazed at how much wildlife I see out on the water. Sorry, wheelmen - kayaking is the way to go if you want to get up close and personal with nature (though I do see deer pretty regularly when I'm cycling). Here are a few recent pictures from my Strava feed. Osprey in the Boundary Channel Turtles, Roosevelt Island Heron and geese, Fletcher's Cove Cormorants, Fletcher's Cove

Tall Tom's moonlight paddle was a fine example of the difficult challenges a trip leader can face when things don't go according to plan. Every year Tom leads a full moon paddle out of Columbia Island Marina. It's pretty spectacular paddling on the darkened river and watching a big spring moon rise over the monuments of DC. This year a group of about eight of us headed upriver in the early evening, figuring we'd catch the moon on the return. As we approached Georgetown we began to see lightning north of us over Montgomery County. Now, the water is a terrible place to be in a thunderstorm. I always think of my former co-worker Chad who survived a lightning strike on the water but was left with permanent hearing loss. I wasn't looking to subject my ears - or my ticker - to that kind of stress. Suzanne and I, who were the unofficial sweeps of the group, along with other experienced paddlers, started to grumble. Tom responded by putting into shore at Roosevelt Is...