73 hours after pushing off the beach in Fort DeSoto, TwoBeers and Moresailesed arrived safe in Key Largo, completing their 2024 Everglades Challenge. It's been 10 years since that first expedition, when it was the original Frankenscot. These days, with Spawn having been designed FOR this event, I'm less worried about the team arriving alive. But stuff happens, which is why they have 2 hand-held radios, 1 Velocitek electronic compass, 2 smart phones, 1 tablet for navigation, 2 safety harnesses, a packet of paper charts, a personal emergency beacon for each sailor, and 1 personal tracker on the boat. 16 times this year before finishing, they pressed that OK button on their tracker. The Garmin InReach proved itself definitively 4 metric buttloads better than the SPOT personal tracker. SPOT, having but the 1 job, did not track my person. Garmin InReach did, every 10 minutes—without drama, attacks of the vapors, or random skips. Thank you Garmin. I don't think I am going to stop mentioning that for some years. 27 is the number of times the water pump was deployed. This is higher than normal for the trip, and weren't the fellas glad to hear the cheerful little battery-powered pump kick on! Each of the wide wings of Spawn contain a water-tight compartment that ballast the boat. The little pump pushes water into a tank as directed; the tank empties by way of a round port and a vent. It's like having an extra crew hiking on the high side—a big fat crew who doesn't eat, complain, or cut into the supply of beer. It's been handy when the boat is on a long tack, but this year, they found themselves flipping the switch a lot. Even with a quarter-tank of leverage, they maximized power whenever the wind permitted. 13 times in the course of the 300-mile adventure, the wind slicked out. Meaning the Gulf of Mexico or Florida Bay or whatever body of water was like glass, showing absolutely no air movement. Which is not so great for a sailing vessel. Like in the Rime of the Ancient Mariner: "Day after day, day after day/We stuck, nor breath nor motion;/Idle as a painted ship/Upon a painted sea." 2 is the number of oars aboard. Luckily, Spawn was built for glassy conditions as well as sporty ones. My favorite skipper has outfitted the barkey with long sweeps and a sliding rowing seat. They were able to buck the tide at Stump Pass with help of those long oars. It also kept them moving when there was no other power available. Other WaterTribesfolk during this year's challenge converted their sailing vessels into b&b's or Ronco pocket fishing platforms. Unluckily, the team was out of training for rowing. 9 out of 73 is the estimate for the number of hours the Spawnsters rowed or row/sailed during the event. The number of miles is unknown: high math and calculations of tidal flow are beyond us at the mo. 20 is the number of minutes for the rowing watches. That is, first one guy rowed for 20 minutes, then the other guy rowed for 20 minutes. They did this for a perhaps 10 miles off Sanibel, plus many passes, plus just "for a while" off the Everglades. Rowing machines takes on a new meaning. Meanwhile, the kayaking division of the WaterTribe was rubbing hands in anticipation of beating records without having to battle winds and waves. Alas, the tide... 1 is the number of times Spawn took breaking water over the bow this year. While heading toward Everglades City, a Karen on a crab boat decided it was time to teach a sailboat a lesson about using the channel. With headlights on hi-beam, the 35-or-so footer charged at them in the narrow channel, veered across their bow at a prodigious clip, then cut back so that their wake shot green water across Spawn. This while Spawn was hugging the right side of the channel! Like an 18-wheeler swerving into oncoming traffic and then passing on the shoulder. Were our intrepid sailors sporting their drysuits? Were discouraging words bantered about? Did cooler heads later agree that this was yet another reason not to carry rocket-launchers? The crab boat was not sorry, btw. 1 is the number of waterspouts spotted by the team early Monday night. Just as TwoBeers reached for his phone to take a photo (I know, I know, calm down! We are all allowed to evolve and grow, people!), the tornado-shaped whirlysnake slithered back into the cloud bank over Cape Sable, leaving the rowers without even a puff of air to help them along their way... 1,000,000,000 is the number of stars shining over Florida Bay late on Monday night of this year's challenge. A few days of clouds and haze cleared, giving way to an astonishment of spark far from the loom of artificial light. The on-the-water portion of Team Spawn rarely wax poetic, but they reported that the night sky was indeed magnificent. 3 meals of fried chicken were consumed, along with 3 breakfast shakes (2 strawberry-banana and one––so healthy!––Fruit Loop flavored) 3 oranges (but not avocados) and 2 bags of homemade beef jerky 4 or so boxes of Kind and granola bars 2.5 baggies of chocolate bark (pairs well with rowing), and 1 energy-pill jar of mixed jelly beans and Hot Tamales 1 single can of Mountain Dew (on dawn on Tuesday, when the wall was about to be hit) 4 mugs of instant ramen noodles (checkpoints 1 and 3 were the Noodle Kings and Queens) 2.5 jars of trail mix 7 1-liter-bottles of water, frozen and then melted 8 bottles of Gatorade and 1 bottle of sundown beer per day. Leaving, naturally, 2 beers on arrival. 2 is the number of large sharks Moresailesed and TwoBeers spotted in Florida Bay. Large being over 4 feet long. 1 a jumper whose splash may have startled our aquanauts out of a solid, head-nodding, drive-over-the-rumble-strips snooze at the wheel. 35 is the number of people who texted or called in the last 30 hours of the race. Thank you for checking in! 754 is the number of times Bookworm clicked refresh and reload on the most excellent RaceOwl race tracker. And not just for me to watch my guys. There's MadMothist, Sailor King, AndyMan and NateDog, Jarhead, Yarddog, and so many more whose progress I checked. It's the sort of tick that will cling for a few days, when I bolt up from deepest sleep and continue to monitor the progress of the racers. 1 is the place our Spawnsters ended up. Officially, I believe Chief awarded them the title of "Slowest Ever First Boat to Finish." Still, on the dusty white beach at the Pelican Resort in Key Largo, the gang of welcomers included Matt and Jody Koblenzer of Key Largo from the 2.4 Meter Class, Keys Realtor and Flying Scotsman Jim Signor, and a few of the Tribe: the Chief, PaddleDancer, Mrs. Bump and Turn, Skip, Mrs. MadMothist, Possum, plus a nice vacationing couple from Alaska who know the R2AK and are checking out our southern-fried adventuring. I can't actually count the blessings. Thank you for following and cheering the fellas on and for giving me the excuse to tell this particular story. Until next time, sportsfans...
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The 2024 Everglades Challenge is off. Around 77 boats pushed off Fort DeSoto beach this morning at 7am (or before 8, anyhow—not all boats were chomping at the bit). This is the annual dash from St. Petersburg, FL to Key Largo by human-powered small craft. The 300-mile course traverses the Everglades and has an 8-day time limit. My favorite skipper, AKA TwoBeers, and his crew Jahn "Moresailesed" Tihanksy made a graceful transition from sand to water. After nearly a decade of complaints about the spotty SPOT coverage, we switched to a personal tracker that seems to be tracking more reliably. Garmin InReach. Hurrah! And Team Spawn even got it working the first try! So far (five hours into the event) the WaterTribe site is glitching, so here's another option if you want to track at home... RaceOwl is the site. Click on the photo below to get to the event tracking page. Fingers crossed for a pleasant event for all the sailors, paddlers, rowers, and those of us on the shore!
A clarion is a kind of horn. Have I heard it (like outside the dubious reality of a Ye Olde Rounde Table movie or two)? Yes. Yes I have. It has a deceptively bovine undertone, as when the annual beach launch of the Everglades Challenge is started by a blast on a conch shell. The Everglades Challenge--again? Yes, why not? My favorite skipper and his Spawnster cohort Jahn Tihansky have been hitting that beach off and on for the past ten years. They start at dawn on the first Saturday of March, pointing the bow of the boat across Tampa Bay and hurrying south. Familiarity has bred something that is not contempt, (we rightly fear hubris) but... anxieties have calmed with the years. A 300-mile unsupported adventure race looks daunting until a team completes it successfully more than half a dozen times. And after their BIG year, when they did the 1200-mile Around Florida Challenge--? Well, ten days of rations, sleep deprivation, cold fronts, and soggy clothing DOES put a 2-day adventure into its place. Someone recently suggested that I should write about TwoBeers and Moresailesed's adventures on Spawn for my next book. Only tell it from my perspective. I don't believe I've ever had a different perspective on the event. In the "READ NOW" instructions for the event, the organizers spell the risks without ambiguity: "You could die." Even more than usual, they mean. When humans take to sea in small ships, it's intrinsically dangerous. The organizers repeat their warning a second time a few paragraphs later, possibly just because my anxiety responds well to a bell tolling. So from my perspective, this is a more-than-usually worrisome event. Yes of course I could obstruct or attempt to gently dissuade my mate from his passion, but where's the win in that? Knock wood we should have a few adventures, all of us, before the curtain drops. So from my perspective, I can aid and abet, organize the ground transport, and pack a bigger medical kit for them. I'll help them get to the beach, knock wood, watch them launch into the briny deeps, and knock it again, meet them at the finish. For 2024, I am low-key psyched to announce I will NOT be complaining about the SPOT. Instead of that spotty old personal locator, we upgraded to Garmin InReach. Nearly every person we know and many we do not know recommended it. And atmospheric conditions (not to mention nudge-nudge "solar flares") willing, we should be able to track our hero's path... As always, the WaterTribe site has a tracking map. It tends to glitch and lag, and you must select the right event to see what's going on. Here's that link: (Sorry it looks rough, my website host has been balking at letting me make it a nice, bougie-looking link.) https://www.watertribe.com/Events/ChallengeGMapper.aspx Here is the Garmin InReach link. It shows only our guys, so it's less useful for checking on the race, but you know, nothing's perfect.
share.garmin.com/N9OY8TwoBeers Ah, February. The shortest month. Around here, it feels like the real start of the year, as if January was just a trial run. After taking a practice stab at the year, we line things up and set sail. Literal sail, actually. In February, there are no real free weekends. If we are not racing together on the Flying Scot, my favorite skipper is competing with others, and if it's not a regatta, it's prep time for the Everglades Challenge. Because that's the time of year it is. Mr. Linton went to Lauderdale with the fiercic37class.org/schedule/ic37-winter-series-lauderdale-cup/e IC37 team New Wave (they prevailed! Yay!). https://ic37class.org/schedule/ic37-winter-series-lauderdale-cup/ We made our pilgrimage to Lake Eustis (and the Oyster Troff) to race our mighty Scuppernong at the Flying Scot Midwinters (illness prevailed! Ugh!) theclubspot.com/regatta/NlXOS3p10P/results The Classic Moth Midwinters, which my favorite skipper and I host, launches Saturday. Hoping for delicious weather for my porch-light pals. And in between times, whenever the schedule allows, while I've been working on book promo and (oooh!) writing the next one, Mr. Linton fixes up the Spawn of Frankenscot. The Spawn of Frankenscot is a sloop that Jeff built to a design OH Rodgers and he specifically dreamed up for long-distance coastal adventure racing. In 2014, Jeff and his crew Jahn Tihansky first pushed off the beach in St. Pete and hurtled down the coast to Key Largo in the annual Everglades Challenge human-powered race. www.watertribe.com/events/evergladeschallenge/ Our team of doughty Spawnsters has done very well for a decade: they hold various records in the 300-mile long race, and even, in 2022, won the 1200-mile extended version of the race known as the Around Florida Challenge. www.amysmithlinton.com/blog/and-just-like-thatthe-racers-came-home But with the start of the new year (in February, natch) comes refurbishment for Spawn. What needs replacing in a mothballed sailing sloop after a year? Thanks for asking! This year the biggest piece of new gear: a new storm jib, made by himself with help from Rod "Rappin Rod" Koch using Masthead Enterprises machines. The wires that hold the mast in place (shrouds) got refreshed. All of the velcro that attaches the storage and sleeping quarters (what looks to me like a conestoga wagon tent affair) got replaced. The bearings froze in the sliding rowing seat, the repair of which gobbled up an afternoon seasoned with solvent and elbow grease. Even with an extra day in February this year, whelp, it's flying.
I'm fond of the Progressive ads in which Dr. Rick attempts to keep young homeowners from turning into their parents. They are subversive and sometimes thrum home like an arrow hitting the bullseye. But really, blue hair! Bit of background: we traveled to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan last summer, where I hoped to find yooperlite rocks. These are a UP specialty -- rocks that glow under UV light. I bought a flashlight that included a UV (blacklight, baby) setting. We didn't find a yooper, but we did have a neat-o-keen time discovering that spiders' eyes often glow in blacklight. Not to mention the CSI-style investigatory moments. This fall, however, I heard that opossums will fluoresce pink. It sounded cool, and since the Would-Be Farm comes very well supplied with possums, it was the work of one evening to track one of the dear creatures down and bother it with light. My experiment says: possums show pink-ISH anyhow. Then, because everything looks like a nail when you're holding a hammer, I went in search of other creatures to flash. Enter the porcupine. Blue hair. We all see it.
Farming is hard. From the time Mr. Linton and I started this experiment (ooh, here's the first dispatch from the Would-Be Farm), we expected challenges. We welcomed challenges. Neural plasticity, baby! And sure enough, we learned some new stuff. We knew that rust never sleeps, but we found out that weeds will pull all-nighters all summer long in the interest of world domination. Looking at you, burdock. We discovered that even with zillions of established apple trees on the property, it's hard to get them to bear fruit larger than a golf ball. If the frost doesn't nip the bud, or caterpillars devour the leaves, or porcupine eat whole branches, well, then it's some other bug, some other mammal, some other weather phenomenon. And we have stuck by our decision to avoid toxic chemicals, regardless the wormy little apples. So when we have success, it seems the sweeter, and also, paradoxically, the fruits do not seem to be from our labors. Instead, it's as if they show up as serendipity. A gift from the farm. Passive agriculture. We put seedlings into the ground. Three or four years on, we see the first production of plums. Also, this year's single pear (yes: one fruit from the whole five trees), which has not been raided by raccoons yet. Does it count as work if we planted it so many years ago? Currents, aronia, and honey berries produced well this summer. For what it's worth. Tart, tart, and tarter. We have not, as my genteel mother-in-law puts it, developed a taste for them yet. Pro grower's tip: if the description in the nursery catalogue suggests that a fruit is used in jam or compote, beware. Tomatoes and garlic and potatoes are standouts again this year. Likewise those leggy volunteer cousins: fennel and dill, one bronze, the other pale green, popping up everywhere. I picked a bumper crop of blackberries (was it the extra rain? it's a continual mystery why some years do and others don't) but after the first disappointing pie––So seedy! So very seedy!––I set my sights on a cordial. I muddled pint after pint into mason jars of moonshine, which now lurk, dark and powerful, like untested ordnance, in the fridge. At this end of the summer, I tend to wander moodily around with a basket, swatting mosquitoes, marveling. It's a numbers game: we planted more than 25 modern apple trees, and only 5 are currently alive. And we have yet to see a single apple from those trees. We put in 20 hazelbert whips and though a dozen died for being planted in the wrong place, 30+ hazel shrubs flourish now. The eight elderberries I bought and nurtured over the past decade have yet to survive a third year, but the two newest? This year -- THIS YEAR! -- I will foil the deer. The six basket willow are growing by leaps and bounds, and have doubled in number. Of the five hackberry, I know for sure three are still living. The other two might possibly have slunk into the night. It's easy to find them in the spring, but once summer gushes forth––! The abundance of uncultivated food astonishes me. Things we never did a lick of work to encourage. Nanny berries and hickory nuts, big puffball mushrooms and black walnuts, not to mention, though I do, the free-range non-vegan options. So many good fishes! And ruffled grouse bursting from the underbrush would be happy, I can see in their ruthless dinosaur eyes, to dine on me in the rather likely event that they SUCCEED in startling me to death. And then there are chickadees, who chatter when the birdseed is running low. One or two of these lillies of the field are especially bold. They barely need coaxing to land on my hand, where they look me in the eye and take their time picking a seed.
I've really done nothing to earn chickadees. But I'm grateful that the Farm has provided them too. I'm keeping my head down this summer on the Would-Be Farm, trying to get that novel of mine out and about. Mr. Linton, on the other hand, has been getting stuff done around here. We just acquired one of the cooler bits of kit in the barn: a flame-thrower. No joke. It's a chemical-free means to a weed-free end. Need I mention the anti-zombie potential? My favorite skipper built a woodshed (a structure that is both made of wood and designed to contain wood, okay, Lisa?) next to the sauna. We'd had a covered woodpile, but the amount of firewood that got burned since the implementation of the wood-powered sauna led to a step up in the firewood game at the Farm. Constructing a shed sounds a blithe enough pastime, but with neither plan nor drawing? Himself claims to be a rough carpenter, but he is adding skills with each project. I say so despite the sage advice of Sippie and Bonnie both... Between construction/destruction activities, plus the occasional sailboat race (go Team New Wave!), there's always lawn work. Meadow and woodlands surround us, but Mr. Linton keeps the trails and the lawn properly neat by the use of no less than two trimmers, two mowers, and a tractor. Not simultaneously. Yet. Whenever the weather cooperates (growing grass, self-imposed deadlines, and encroaching thorn apples be danged!), we fish.
Going into the 2023 Flying Scot North American Championships, my favorite skipper verbalized his philosophy this way, “I’m going to let the race come to me.”
Well, okay, your highness.
Being strictly honest, however, I knew exactly what he meant. After lo these many years of racing together, we've come to share this sense of regatta destiny.
Here’s what we know as fact: You can lose a regatta from not preparing.
But the only way to win a regatta is to have at least one helping of good luck. Preferably many helpings.
Corollary truth: While you can be ready for good luck, you cannot force it to show up. In a word: destiny. It was the usual Flying Scot good fortune that met us when we pulled our camper and the mighty Scuppernong into the spacious grounds of Lake Norman Yacht Club. Locals Tim Porter, Steve Shaw, and Dave Rink and our fellow road-show gypsies –– the Cliftons and dear Henry Picco –– had saved us a prime parking spot overlooking the swimming beach and the hoist.
Before long, more Florida teams joined in –– Donna and Jon Hamilton, Dave Helmick and Caroline Chapin, Jennifer and Michael Faugust, PJ Buhler and David Ames, Laura and Scott Marriott, and Jim and Pam Burke.
Measurement was as neatly organized and well-thought-out as any we remember. Preparation being key. The weather looked promising: aside from haze from Canadian wildfires and the occasional pop-up thunderstorm, we looked forward to good sleeping temperatures and peaceable breeze in the range we like the best: 7-10 knots.
In actual fact, we sailed under beige, smoke-darkened skies, and the predicted winds –– not unexpectedly, given how regattas go –– did not quite appear as promised. Still, even after a drifter of a single qualifier race, the future looked pretty bright. After all, the race organizers fed us morning and night and provided any number of adult beverages (plus a bourbon tasting!).
Once the wind filled in on Tuesday, we headed out to the racecourse to start the actual competition. We checked the current (yes, it’s a lake, but one whose levels are carefully managed) by tossing our sponge into the water by the starting buoy and counting to one minute. During the qualifier, current set us away from the start at one boat length per minute –– try charging that line! On Tuesday, it was far less dramatic, giving us just a nudge away from the starting line. The four-legged race showed us a little of Lake Norman’s tricksy, lakey quirks in decent 7-knot-ish conditions but we managed to win the first one.
On Wednesday, we packed our apple-and-peanut-butter stacks, our salami-and-cheese rollups, our Gatorade, and our beer for the day. I fondly remember once sailing to the starting line on a Lightning racecourse in Ecuador and having the guys in the boat next to us look –– and then with comedic exaggeration look at us again before exclaiming to one another: “THEY’ve got BEER!” Indeed we do. So there.
The story-telling highlight of the day involved a pontoon boat trailing an inflatable laden with children. We were sailing at a pretty decent clip along the right side of the windward leg, close to shore, with Tyler and Carrie Andrews. the boat builders and speedsters, just behind us and two other lines of boats to leeward when, like a tugboat with a barge under tow, along comes the pontoon boat. Crossing right in front of our bow –– I mean, a boat-length or so in front of the plow-like bow of the mighty Scuppernong. It's a fact that nobody looks stupider to a racing sailor than Johnny Powerboat Driver taking a leisurely tour of the racecourse. And to be fair, it’s a free country. But as Carrie and I agreed, these pontoon people must have had it up to HERE with those kids.
Belatedly noticing the fleet of pointy boats, each driven by a fierce-eyed competitor, and possibly heeding the suggestions of said competitors, the powerboat driver punched the throttle and made an abrupt left turn. The float whip-lashed over the wake, and, as night follows day, it caught air and landed with a breath-taking wobble. But good luck (and possibly preparation) allowed the youngsters to hold tight. But jeesh.
Intense, focused sailing (is that a puff? can we connect? Yes, trim a touch.) gave us a 3rd and a 1st at the end of the day, leaving us a decent lead. No lead, however, is safe, especially on a lake and with competitors like anyone in this fleet.
Cue Thursday, when we set sail in conditions where everything seemed magnified. Puffs were bigger. Shifts were bigger. Holes were bigger. In the space of a few minutes, we’d go from fully hiked and vang-on to me on the low side, struggling to keep moving, while boats all around us were experiencing wildly differing conditions.
We didn’t find a pattern to predict the shifts: oftentimes, the wind will oscillate at a regular interval, or a cloud will indicate a puff, or wind will touch down in such a way that the initial header modulates into a lift. These conditions were like what bull riders call a "honker." No telling which way the beastie was going to buck and twist. After deciding not to hit the middle of the course, we found ourselves in the middle of the course on the first leg. When we might have tacked and ducked a bunch of our competitors, we hung left and got hung. We passed boats and we got passed back again. It was one of the most frustrating hot-and-cold days of racing I can remember. We clawed our way into 5th for the fourth race of the series, watching our comfortable cushion vaporize. Heading into last race of the series –– a 3-legger to finish us closer to the club –– we did not talk about the stakes. We never do. The conditions continued to span the spectrum, with puffs as high as the mid-teens with drifters in between. We went left and, as the phrase goes “got smushed.” We sniffed out a puff or two and made some gains downwind, noting that the wind was tending –– inconsistently –– to go left. Halfway up the last leg, we had a clear lane to go left. Leaving a lake-smart team like John Eckart and Ryan Malmgren, who were bee-lining for the right-hand shore, took some nerve. Not my nerve. But as we got closer to the left side of the course, we could see the flags on the finish boat showing a 30 or so degree shift. A favorable shift, at that. When the puff came to us, we eased first for speed, and then took the lift (Ding! Ding!) all the way to the finish line, sliding into fourth place behind local skipper David Rink. With that, by a single lucky point, we won that shiny belt-buckle of a trophy.
We’ve notched that belt a few times, but it’s always a thrill.
Thanks to the excellent organizers headed up by Tim Porter (and Jennifer), the steely-nerved race management under Matt Bounds, and the amazing Florida Flying Scot District, whose competition (six of us in the top 15 of the Championship, with two top 10s in the Challenger Division) that make us all faster and better sailors.
There's a theory about value called the "IKEA Effect," whereby people over-estimate the value of something they have themselves made. We got to test it out this spring at the Would-Be Farm. From Estonia by way of New Jersey, thank you BZB Cabins for a pallet's worth of parts, 24 pages of instructions, and a very helpful expert only a phone-call away. I grant you, we poured quite a bit of effort into this longer-than-any-danged-weekend project. If the value increases as a result of how long it took, and how many new neural pathways it encouraged, and what fresh language it encouraged (is that hangy-downy part of the roofing shingles called a "fang" or a "bump"?), well, all to the good. And the refresher on metric measurement? Nigh on priceless. But regardless the IKEA effect. Fer reals –– this thing is hella neat-o. And so toasty!
The suspense builds as we hike the big loop around the Would-Be Farm –– which trees are down? Which bulbs are up? Are the beavers still damming around? What happened while we were gone? As we hike, marveling at the frost-heaved rocks, the exquisite timing of the grouse that explodes from underfoot at the exact moment we are least prepared, the wide expanse of northern sky, the tracks left by deer, coyotes, skunk, mystery beasties. This year, on the first 500 yards, we spotted hoof prints. "That's a big deer," Jeff said. "That's an enormous deer," I said, then, hope springing eternal, "Oooh, maybe it's a moose!" Moose used to roam these woods. They, like the bobcat and the bear and what-not might also return. One can hope –– seriously, the biggest cervid, back again?! Goofy and majestic creatures, sporting dingle-berries and draped with stringy green plant material, near-sighted and not suffering of fools –– that's a great wild life. We followed the tracks until the next game camera, where we got distracted checking batteries and removing the memory card. We have a bunch of game-cameras. They are back-up security, entertainment, and animal-spotting tool all in one. Admittedly, there's always one that we misplace. Sometimes it appears, just where we left it, after we've passed it dozens of times. Ocassionally, it gets dragged away by varmints. Anyhow, on this first circuit, we go from camera to camera, pulling batteries and collecting memory. Back at the cabin, I fire up the trusty card reader and begin the uphill slog: 8000 images on this disk. 5300 on this one. Oooh, only 1430 on this one! 6000 on this one. 7600 on this one. I do not exaggerate on this issue, there are thousands of images, some triggered by actual animals, others by the whim of the camera, and not a few by the movement of branches in the wind. So I am approximately 12,000 images into the winter's story when I discover –– Eureka! –– the large-hoofed maker of the tracks that we hoped might be moose. Cows on the run. Oh, I have questions. Will I get answers? We'll see, once the great dumpster debate (oh! neighbors!) of 2023 is settled. (Two neighbors, one actively squalid, the other just trying to raise a few cows. Add dumpster full of trash, stir until state cops arrive...) Meanwhile, here's a few of the winter's highlights. Understand that I have selected these from a pool of zillions, and I DO find it amusing that so many are butt shots. Quick novel update: things are moving along. I've been gathering publishing intel while the manuscript spent time at the editor. Details will follow on this page here.
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