Category: Travel

Back at the Washy-Washy

9/16/2021

The laundromat: a hotbed of outrage.

Maybe it's a North Country thing, this expression of grievances. Every day is Festivus and they have a problem with you people.

I've resisted the impulse to post the rather frequent road-side rants –– partly because I have very little access to the web, but also because it seems so unkind to broadcast these beefs or private tragedies any farther.

The farm with the big hand-lettered sign about the "Careless Driver who Ran over our Dog..." or the beautifully manicured lawn with the sign: "Community Propane SUCKS!!!!" or, the one I can't quite read and am afraid to stop for a photo or a closer look, which starts "This is NOT a parking Lot! It's Private Property..." and ends with "Now get OFF my PROPERTY."

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Everglades Challenge 2021 –– It Begins.

3/6/2021

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Crossing the Sunshine Skyway as playful gusts of wind nudge my RV from one side of the lane to the other, I dart a quick look to my right.

Thanks to power-boat riding Robert Hill for this photo of Spawn shortly after the start.

Of course the fleet of adventure racers is long over the horizon. Even knowing that my TwoBeers and Moresailesaid are sporting fine Gortex® waterproofs, I knock wood that they're hauling (dry) butt ahead of the rain.

Rain that is just starting to ping against the windshield.

When my favorite skipper and Moresailesaid push Spawn off the beach for the Everglades Challenge each March, their focus is 100% on getting to Key Largo.

The event is an "unsupported" adventure race, which means the racers carry whatever they expect to need. Preparation is key: for months, I'll find lists of how many AA and AAA batteries, of food ideas, of which things need fixing.

There are long looong phone calls about how best to stow gear.

Before sunrise on the beach, the game is all about stowing gear.

I stay out of most of it. I consider myself a quartermaster rather than a chef d'équipe for the team. I obtain and make stuff in advance of the event.

But when they take off at 7 am on the first Saturday in March, my focus changes.

I'm ground control, so I keep an eagle eye on their SPOT track. And another eagle eye on the weather news.

And another on the WaterTribe tracking page and on the RaceOwl page when the WaterTribe page gets bogged down.

Plus one more on what's shaking on the social networks. Oh, and maybe a peek at the weather radar.

How many eyes is that?

(Whatever you do, do NOT Google "eagle spider." Jayshusmaryandjoseph)

By ten, I've managed the bronco ride home –– despite that fool motorcycle that would decide to nip in front of the big rig as we whoa'd down the exit ramp.

The bumpersticker is right: you DO have to keep an eye out for those things.

I'm emptying one vehicle and repacking another, since tomorrow I'll be conveying Spawn's trailer to Key Largo (knock wood! if nothing happens in the meanwhile! fingers crossed!).

And refreshing my screens and answering texts.

via GIPHY

Among the many management challenges of the Everglades Challenge each year, the only thing tougher than organizing batteries and gear and the boys' socks –– for me –– is keeping a lid on worry.

Knocking wood and crossing fingers and so on.

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Shark's Teeth

1/28/2021

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As anyone who knows my fondness for Archie MacPhee will testify, I am liable to announce a propos of nada: “Sharks have no bones!”

It was a catchy tagline from a catalog some years ago. And true.

Shark are all cartilage and attitude. And, as one might discover on a foggy January wander along a beach – teeth.

Sharks continually shed teeth and grow more. Row after row of them.

Having no tooth-fairy to look after them, these teeth sink to the bottom of the sea.

Once the chompers hit mud or sand, chemistry does its magic.

Minerals from the mud (or sand) shimmy into the teeth, making the once-pearly whites, dear, into something rich and chestnut-colored, or black.

Or, according to the lore, blue.

Of course everyone wants a 5-inch-long megladon tooth, but these are pretty cool too.,

Walk down the right beach and tune your attention to the y-shape, and dozens of teeth will appear.

Which makes sense, because sharks have been swimming about for millions of years. And some grow up to 35,000 teeth in a lifetime.

I suppose someone has done the math, but it’s a lot of teeth underfoot. One might say, the opposite of hen's teeth, even.

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Summmmmmmer time.

8/27/2020

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Each year, I find myself taking photos that I hope will catch the visual essence of the sweetness of the season.

This year, of course, I've snapped any number of pictures of the farm, but really, summertime in the North Country?

It's about cottage life, boat-rides, and the Water (whichever body of water, it's always capitalized: The Lake, The River, The Beach).

For over a hundred years, my family has spent weekends or weeks or the whole season on the granite shores of the St. Lawrence River.

The scent of old life-preservers and clean seaweed.

Sleeping porches. The "whap" of a screen door pulled shut by a long spring.

Pine needles. Lichen.The lapping of water under the wooden dock.

And the inexorable march of Labor Day...

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The Would-Be Farm: Jonquils or Daffodils?

6/14/2020

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It's a very good Scrabble day when I can play "jonquil."

In the world, I rarely call these flowers anything but daffodils.

Be that as it may, my sweet mother-in-law calls them jonquils, and when she proposed a big honking field of them at the Would-Be Farm, I said heck yeah!

Pat is a wonderful gardener, and even in her early 80s, she can out-shop, out-weed, and out-sew me pretty much any day of the week. So when she said she wanted Jeff and me to be reminded of her each spring at the Would-Be Farm, I enlisted her actual aid.

Long story short, we ordered something like 200 bulbs from Holland last fall. Thank you John Scheepers. We hopped a plane (back in the days when people did that kind of thing without thinking about it much) once the package arrived in the North Country.

We made a girl's weekend of it, staying at my sister's civilized house, eating yummy meals, and playing dominoes at the end of the day.

And we flew South, happy but full of anticipation and the usual worries: Would squirrels eat the bulbs? Would the plants freeze to death? Would deer eat the bulbs? Would an early thaw fool the plants?

Springtime is brutal on hopes. When bright flowers do indeed rise from the cold clay -- oh glory.

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What I Miss Most Today

5/27/2020

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Okay, so everything has changed.

More or less.

Less in some states.

But for many people, especially those with a healthy respect for both the science of infectious disease and the preservation of our elders, this summer seems like the start of a not-so-brave new world.

So here's what I am missing.

In photo format, because nobody wants to hear that tone of voice.

With vintage photos, because it does seem like a long time ago since we went out dancing, or hung out without a care with multiple generations of the family ––or not-family –– or planned a trip, or hugged people, or shared aprés-sailing stories...

But all this aside, please be sensible and gentle with one another. We're all trying our best –– even when it's not that great, it's likely all the effort we can manage.

That is all. For now.

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Art Safari in the Big City

3/12/2020

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For those hoping for an overview of the 2020 Everglades Challenge...that story is still coming. The team is safe, which is the main thing, and engaged in their next adventure. I hope to post a report early next week.

Meanwhile, something completely different from that...

My sister Sarah, an actual working artist, invented a thing we do called "Art Safari." I've written about it before.

We grab our cameras and drive or walk around some downtown or another.

It's all rather silly. We look at stuff through the viewfinder and laugh a lot.

Still, the physical act of focusing encourages a metaphoric focusing on what's right in front of us.

It's an exercise in seeing rather than just looking. A useful practice for a writer as well as an artist.

There's stuff to see if you just keep your eyes open.

We spent a long weekend in Manhattan recently –– summary: a bunch of us were were going to Italy to celebrate Sarah's birthday. Along comes Covid19, and poof! Manhattan it is!

The gang took taxis and subways, saw shows and shoes, walked Times Square and wandered museums. It kind of felt like every activity was going to be retold with the preface, "Back before the Pandemic, you could..."

Anyhow, wandering at will through the chic-chiciest of boroughs, especially wandering with artistic types like my companions, made me look twice or three times.

A few highlights of what caught my eye...

Frankenbarricade?

Elmo say "Please don't collide with delivery bike!"

No, please don't wake!

I looked.

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Everglades Challenge: On Line

3/3/2020

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Not unexpectedly, Twobeers has his hands full with plumbing and physics: the core elements of any last-minute boating design challenge.

One asks oneself: How many pounds of foot pressure is required to move a gallon of water up a pipe of diameter x?

What is the likelihood of the West Marine store producing a promised y-valve?

How long does it take to drive from Davis Islands to St. Petersburg and back during the tourist-enhanced afternoon rush?

These are not particularly difficult questions, but add the element of time tick-tock-tick-tocking to the starting line only four days hence...

Times like this, nobody knows how tempted I am to rush up to my favorite skipper and exclaim, "No man, the BLUE wire! The BLUE wire!"

Of course, he's the hero. A single drop of perspiration may slide down his face as he hesitates with the wire-snips, but he manfully clips the red one and saves the world regardless.

But be that as it may.

Here's a link to the Watertribe Challenger Tracking site (or just click on the picture!).

The event starts Saturday morning at dawn. Charlie "Gaajii" Clifton will be official shoreside support, chasing the team by land as they sprint down the state.

We keep our fingers crossed...

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Volcano, Iguana, Finch

2/17/2020

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According to Henry Nicholls in The Galápagos: A Natural History, part of Charles Darwin's inspiration for his Theory of Evolution came out of bad accounting.

Back in the 1800's, standard operating procedure for a naturalist was to capture and kill any number of small creatures. Pack 'em in salt, pickle 'em, pile 'em into boxes to ship home. All in the interest of scientific study.

So young Darwin, circling the globe as the resident naturalist aboard The Beagle, harvested hundreds of animal specimens and squirreled away crate after crate of fossils and plants.

But there were so many. As it happened, he neglected to properly label some carcasses from the Galapagos.

No doubt he'd never expected there to be much difference between, say, a dark little finch from Floreana and that other one from nearby Isabela.

Poor guy: back home in chilly England, unpacking box after box of corpses and he discovered the awful truth: his sparrows weren't labeled very well.

Or maybe not.

The story varies.

In any case, Galápagos mockingbirds are also distinctively different from mockingbirds on the mainland. And they are different from one Galápagos island to another.

Which leads, step by painful step, to Darwin's theory of evolution and the eventual publication in 1859 of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. Phew.

Sidebar drama: Interestingly enough, as a Christian, Darwin was troubled by the implications of what he discovered. However, when a naturalist pal of his, Alfred Wallace, came up with a parallel theory, Darwin's misgivings subsided enough for Darwin to polish up his own manuscript and send it to a publisher. It became an overnight sensation.

While we were doing our own exploration in the Galápagos (zero collection of specimens, thousands of photos, great guides, and a tidy ship thanks to AdventureLife), we stumbled across a little mockingbird family drama on Floreana.

I've got a theory or two (as usual) about this scene. It might be a long-held rivalry between the matriarchs who were born sisters but grew to their own greatest rivals. It might be a fresh incursion between an upstart gang and the Boomer family they rejected.

Or maybe it's a daily show staged to entrance the tourists –– 14:00-15:20 beached walrus pups, 15:20-15:40 mockingbird display, 15:40-whenever tortoise crossing.

References
lwww.aboutdarwin.com/voyage/voyage03.html
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.0014-3820.2006.tb01113.x/full

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Where We Live...

11/5/2019

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I moved to Florida after a quarter century of blizzards and farm animals and bumblebees. Ah, never will I forget my first enormous cockroach –– when it flew at my head. The size of a Medjool date with wings and a heft like a badminton shuttlecock.

And fireants and that steep steep learning curve about the volume of living creatures armed to the tropical teeth with venom! Never even mind the gators, crocs, and invasive serpents. Black ice? No, black widow. Rabid skunk? No, rabid drivers, smouldering muck fires, New Year's Eve gunplay.

Anyhow, the charms outweigh the hazards most of the time. For instance, the lowly gecko –– also a transplanted resident –– with her suction cup fingers and translucent belly, who appears on my bathroom sink to remind me of the old proverb:

A cat may look at a king.

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Back at the Washy-Washy

Everglades Challenge 2021 –– It Begins.

Shark's Teeth

Summmmmmmer time.

The Would-Be Farm: Jonquils or Daffodils?

What I Miss Most Today

Art Safari in the Big City

Everglades Challenge: On Line

Volcano, Iguana, Finch

Where We Live...

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