Southern archetypes

Spent the day in Knoxville hanging with some distinctly southern characters. There's the lawyer guy - some combination of Matlock and Foghorn Leghorn as played by John Larroquette. There was Dr. JB the crazy engineer, who looks like they took Jesse Duke (the patriarch of the Dukes of Hazzard, in case you are unfamiliar with the show) and showed up for the meeting dressed in grimy coveralls straight from the wardrobe of Cooter (the mechanic character on the same show). The Boss Hog character in all this was Dr. Bob - not in the evil Boss Hogg sense, but in the sense of being the wealthiest man in Hazzard county. My compatriot RC, while a native of Brooklyn rather than the south (coincidentally, he and I grew up not far from each other) reminds me of Barney Fife nonetheless.

I'm living on a diet of blackened fish, candied sweet potatoes, pecan-crusted chicken and lots of sweet things. I have managed to defy the local culinary norms a little bit and make one dinner and breakfast vegetarian. And the Azteca hot pepper and chocolate gelato in downtown Knoxville? Delicious!

What about the bison?

Thursday only three of us showed up to paddle; everyone else was SK102-bound. Given that we were an intimate little group we had some time to muse as we headed upriver (I won't dwell on the coastal flooding advisory which was in place). What's with the central section of the Memorial Bridge - why is it metal when the rest is stone? And what's with the buffalo head decorations at the apex of all the arches?

A little research revealed that the center span was originally a drawbridge. Over time, as less boat traffic headed to Georgetown it got used less and less frequently. by the 1960's there was basically no longer a demand for passage of tall boats and so when Roosevelt Bridge was built they didn't bother making it a drawbridge. Having a low bridge just upriver was the final nail in the coffin, and so the drawbridge mechanism was disabled and was removed in the 70's.

As to the bison, I couldn't find a story. The bridge symbolically relinks the North and South (connecting the Lincoln Memorial top Rober E. Lee's house at Arlington). Maybe the bison were considered a symbol of the "post-bellum" vitality of America, in particular the American West. Or something.

Anyway, a good paddle. Water was high - the normally poky boundary channel was wide and deep.

Bike to work

First day of biking to work this year. Took a chance, as I had snapped off the top of the pin on the valve stem of my front tire, but the pressure held for the ride out (I bought a replacement tube at lunchtime). As always, an enjoyable eight miles plus one mile of hell through the construction of Tysons Corner. Got to work and changed in the tiny temporary locker room they have set up while the regular ones are under renovation. A little weird sharing this small space with another employee who was quite nonchalantly totally naked for the whole period I was in there. Maybe I should report this incident to one of our senior HR people. Oh wait, he was one of our senior HR people.

Should I be Dead or Something?

Yesterday I read yet another article about High Intensity Training. The idea of HIT is that rather than exercising for a long time at a steady pace, you do a series of short, explosive all out bursts with cooldowns in between - intervals to the max. Well, that seems good to me; less time exercising, and really only a few minutes of pounding on my oh-so-fragile lumbar disks. So today I decided to try it out on the trail. 

My target workout was five minutes of warmup, six intervals of 30 seconds all-out followed by a minute of recovery, then five minutes or so of cooldown - about 20 minutes total. My supposed max heart rate is somewhere in the 170's, depending on which formula you use. They say you shouldn't exceed 80% of that, or the upper 130's for me. However, my usual runs or erging sessions take me to about 145-150. Well, take a look at the accompanying chart. For the first three intervals not only was I above 80%, I was well above my supposed 100% heart rate (note the horizontal line) - the first interval was up over 200 BPM. You could tell I was more tired and not pushing as hard in intervals 4-6.

So, someone with a "max" HR of 174 getting his heart pumping over 200 BPM? Is that healthy, even for a minute or so? Is it normal to like doing this sort of thing? The funny thing is that I used to run this hard when I took the bootcamp class to try and keep up with Glenn and John, the two really fast runners in the class. I never thought anything of it. However, seeing the data on my HR gives me a different viewpoint. Damn quantitative information is gonna make me back off a little bit next time. Maybe.

Muddy Feet, Again

I spent Saturday building a retaining wall in my backyard so I could expand my vegetable bed. The previous day had been rainy, the yard was wet and so over the course of the day everything got muddy. I got muddy. My tools got muddy. David, helping me out, got muddy. I thought that Saturday was going to be my muddy day for the weekend.

Sunday I woke up early to do my first breakfast paddle of the season. Sunday mornings when there's nothing else going on I tend to start my days with a jaunt up the river, usually pausing at my turnaround point to have a thermos of coffee and a snack - hence the "breakfast paddle" name. As always, I felt a wave of happiness as soon as I pulled into the marina. This was also the first day this year that I took out the Shearwater - my beautiful wooden kayak, which only made it more special.

The water is still cold so I donned my drysuit. This suit is really meant for people who paddle with friends (actually not a bad idea when the water is cold). It zips across the back of the arms and shoulders, and so it takes some nearly arm-dislocating contortions to zip the thing solo. In fact, the only way I can do it is by clipping an extension string onto the zipper toggle so I can hold the zipper in place and get a little more leverage. I look like I'm having some sort of seizure when I'm wrestling myself into the thing. But I did it.

Each season on the river has its beauty. The winter brings silence and solitude. Both the river and its banks are pretty wells deserted in the cold weather, the water seems more viscous and the air thinner. Springtime, on the other hand, is all about activity. The marina was busy today as fishermen launched their boats. The paths along both banks of the river were buzzing with runners, cyclists and dog-walkers. Rowers were out in force - singles, fours and eights. And then there was that guy sitting incongruously on a log at the water's edge above Georgetown, reading the Sunday Post Business Section and drinking tea from a thermos, his kayak pulled up beside him, his feet ankle deep in mud. Wait, I know that guy - it was me. Yeah, it was low tide and so the shoreline was all exposed mud. I had to squish my way through it up to solid ground for my breakfast break. Yes, I was muddy-footed again, but it felt good.

Sneaky Biking

We have this alternate schedule thing at work where if you work 80 hours in 9 workdays, you can take the final Friday of the period off. I try and take advantage of it, but somehow I rarely seem to succeed. Either personal things rob me of hours during the week (school meetings, doctor's appointments ...) or something comes up which requires my presence on what otherwise would have been a day off. This past Friday was no exception. I had taken a sick day earlier in the period to try and recover from bronchitis, and I had a meeting out in Sterling pop up for Friday morning. It was going to be another beautiful, unseasonably warm day - in the 70's in mid-March! - and so I was determined to take at least a little advantage of it, even if I couldn't get a full day off.

What's this? Our Sterling office is not far from the W&OD trail?! And there's a new, large W&OD trail parking lot nearby just off of Rt. 28?! Too good to pass up. Before I headed to the office Friday morning I threw my bike and gear into the back of my car. My Sterling meeting was done around lunchtime, and I headed over to the W&OD. For the second time in as many days I found myself using my car as a changing room to wriggle into exercise clothes. I'm pretty good at this by now - I once completely changed from a business suit into yoga clothes while driving down Rt. 7, thanks to a lot of red lights and traffic.

I headed west on the trail. Out past Rt. 28 the trail is much more open than the section by my house. It has almost a rural feel. Riding was a pleasure, even though there were plenty of Lance Armstrong wanna-be's out and about. I may sound old and curmudgeonly for saying this, but these people make me laugh (except when they're pissing me off). When I was growing up cycling was something you did for transportation and maybe light recreation. It wasn't a Sport with a capital "S". Certainly, no one donned special outfits for bike riding. Nowadays, though, you feel quite under-dressed if you venture out on the trail without your matching cycling jersey, tights - or better yet, singlet - and little bike socks and shoes. I admit to owning the most functional parts of cycling clothing: shorts with paddling and hard-soled bike shoes. I do not see any reason to adopt the rest of the costume. And I certainly see no reason to adopt the selfish view some of these folks have - that they own the trail and slower cyclists are unwelcome obstacles in their way.

Make no mistake - I am a slower cyclist. No one would mistake me for Lance Armstrong even if I took to wearing the bike racer outfit. No one would mistake me for Lance Armstrong even if I was dating Sheryl Crow (an idea I must say I find less objectionable than wearing the bike racer getup). This was the first time I had been on a bike in a long time and I was slooooow. According to my Forerunner I pedaled about 20 miles at an average speed of about 12 MPH. Admittedly, that included a bathroom break and a stop at the quarry overlook (!), but I think it's still a pretty accurate speed. I felt good though despite my slowpokedness - I pedaled 20 miles without feeling sore in the least afterward, I enjoyed the ride, and I look forward to more cycling this year.

After my ride I headed over to the nearby Wegman's shopping center looking for food. I was about to go into some chain food place when what to my wondering eyes should appear but the Sterling branch of Moby Dick House of Kabob! I ordered a felafel sandwich and powered up my computer to approve timesheets, something I had forgotten to do in the morning. The felafel was awesome - really hit the spot after my ride. I must admit to feeling some affinity for the folks who run these felafel-serving joints, though I'm not sure the semitic fraternal love would be returned.

Alas, I felt compelled to make good on my commitment to work the rest of the day, so at the conclusion of my little adventure I wriggled back into my work clothes and headed back to work.

St. Paddles Day

The first Thursday after the beginning of Daylight Savings Time was St. Patrick's Day. Sunlight for paddling and unseasonably warm temps - plenty of reason to raise a glass in celebration.

It's that swing time of year when dressing for the water temp means schvitzing in the boat, however dressing for the air temperature would have put me at risk had I wound up in the water. I'm reading a book written by an ocean rower, from which I've learned that while out at sea ocean rowers often row naked, particularly on the bottom, to avoid salt water rashes. I certainly wasn't ready for that. So I put on my drysuit over just a t-shirt (and pants, I was wearing pants!) as a compromise.

It was a small group: just Rob, Peter, Jen and I showed up at the marina. We were joined by Annette and a friend of hers who paddled down from Washington Canoe Club in OC-1s (outrigger racing kayaks). Suffice it to say, a good time was had by all. The group headed upriver to accommodate Annette and Pam, who ultimately needed to head in that direction to make it back to the Canoe Club. As expected, we got pretty warmed up. I wound up doing some sculling braces cool off - got my torso and the back of my head into the water, which was indeed cold. However, once the sun set it cooled off quite a bit and by the time we neared the marina I was glad for my drysuit.

After paddling we had our typical Noodles and Company dinner, then we crossed the Pentagon Row courtyard to Sine Irish Pub. The place was hopping, crammed with bleary-eyed revelers in green. In addition to the usual bar area they had set up extra keg coolers throughout the place serving green beer. Peter availed himself of this holiday-themed beverage, while the rest of us ordered Irish whiskeys. I usually don't drink after our Thursday night paddles, but the proximity of St. Paddy's Day and Purim (the one Jewish holiday when one is supposed to get drunk) was enough to convince me to deviate from my usual practice. I mean, two drinking holidays in one!

We made a toast of "Sláinte" to our good fortune for having had such a nice evening, and then we were on our way. Sometimes you don't even need a rainbow to feel you've found a pot of gold.