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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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...
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...
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...
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. 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.
I recently re-discovered this tale I wrote in the early 2000's. This adventure pre-dates the Would-Be Farm (though I was dreaming about it back then!) and some of the principals are no longer with us, but here it is, a retread road-trip... I'd been helping my sister Sarah fix up her first place up North –– after a long break away from the North Country –– when we decided to spend a day away from the project. I was in the market for some land, imagining (perhaps foolishly) that I could purchase a chunk of attractive brush with some water feature that would keep Mr. Linton and me happily occupied for the next few decades of summertime vacation. Turns out, of course, that there are many chunks of brush, some attractive, a few with water features, but almost none in my small price-range offered by anyone actually willing to close a deal. Anyway, it gave me a nifty excuse for pottering around the back roads of rural Northern New York State. A classmate from high school was a real-estate agent, and although she was out of town on vacation that week, she had provided me with a stack of property listings to look at. On our day off, my sister and I set a goal of checking out a couple of those places (disappointing: peaceful retreats are rarely located within ear-shot of Fort Drum’s gunnery range). After the unproductive real estate perambulations, our thoughts turned to something more rewarding. For years, we had heard about the reputed natural bridge over Perch River outside of the village of Dexter.
I was driving down Middle Road. My sister was navigating and she said, "Hey, turn here." A mailbox marked the turn, and I said, "Sis, come on, this is someone’s driveway." Implacable, she repeated, "Turn in."
And we got out of the car with our water bottles and our hiking boots and all we heard was birdsong, wind in the treetops, and the whine of a distant chainsaw. We consulted the map and oriented ourselves toward the river. We were preparing to trespass. She’s like, "Okay, here’s our story: We are here looking for a friend from high school, and have gotten turned around somehow." The sound of the chainsaw drew suddenly much closer. I though, gosh, maybe I should have availed myself of the facilities when we stopped at the library in Dexter. Without even exchanging a look, my sister and I dropped the lie. We explained that we grew up around here, and we heard that there is a natural bridge over the Perch River somewhere nearby, and we were really hoping to find it. The woman said, "Why yes, there is. Do you have a half an hour or so?" Next thing you know, the woman has collected her husband, who pilots a zippy ATV down the driveway to pick us up and they are taking us on a tour all over the 400 acres their son and his wife purchased a few years back. There’s Perch river. There’s the bridge -- a smidge underwhelming, but aha! ––there’s the river emerging again from the other side of the natural bridge. There’s an old stone fence. Maybe the fence butts up to the Hall’s farm ––The Hall’s farm that was probably our Riggs family farm a hundred years ago. Maybe one of our great-great uncles stacked those very stones.
As it happens, the husband is connected to parents of classmates of ours.
And their daughter-in-law? Turns out she is my vacationing real-estate agent/high-school classmate. We trespassed on her land. Hours later, our unexpected hosts raid my real-estate agent’s fridge for beer and my sister gets them to take pictures of the two of us in the ATV, playing with my real-estate agent's dog, and lounging on the porch with our purloined beers. Those photos of us having our disreputable way with other people's porches, off-road recreational vehicle, and beer might possibly have been taken on an early cell phone that was unable to resist water when it went swimming. But maybe one of those images will resurface, possibly on the tee-shirt of one of the great-grand nephews or nieces, who will point to it while trespassing and say, "Perhaps you know these two characters? Our aunts?" And here's hoping it will parlay into a free pass, a tour, an anecdote.
But back to this particular song. Pilot's soaring and incessant declaration ("Oh! Ho! Ho! It's magic!") played in counterpoint to the couple of weeks of prep and racing of the 2019 Transpacific ocean Race –– the Transpac. Because of course, my favorite skipper sailed this 2250-mile-long offshore race aboard the famous Bill-Lee-designed Merlin*.
The boat could hardly have been better prepared for the trip from Long Beach, California to Honolulu, Hawaii: the crew included two fire-fighters among her experienced and talented team; new sails; higher degrees in engineering, MacGyvering, and meterology; a redesigned physical plant and dozens of Pacific passages under her keel; extra duct tape and A & D ointment; and the latest in safety gear and information technology And yet. It's not a safe world and we all need some good luck to get us along. Sailors especially. So while playing brave little toaster on shore, I wasn't about to ignore the encouraging messages of a magical world. Just because it's magical thinking doesn't mean it's not true, right? Like the song says. Oh! Ho! Ho! In a mere 8 days, Merlin's race was run. Several Transpac boats retired because of technical difficulties. One of the catamarans ran into a mysterious nighttime something and tore a hole in her bow. Another boat actually sank (the sailors were rescued by their competitors, naturally, because, well –– sailors). Nobody, thank goodness, was lost at sea. Merlin finished a quite respectable third; their stories range from the sublime (rainbows around the moon) to the ridiculous (anything to do with using the head, also, two people beaned by flying fish). They shredded some sail and lost their electronics for a bit, but it worked out safely in the end. Here's the link to the Transpac YC's amazing images of Merlin. And a brace of BCR for your listening enjoyment:
Interested parties need to pace themselves. Seven days, ten days? Jeesh. That's a lot of click-click-clicking. That's potentially a lot of sleep-deprived calendar days –– even days set near Hollywood or Waikiki.
But I am happy to say there's a super-cool tracking site that shows all the boats in the several fleets. Okay, super-cool –– but with a 4-hour delay, and the updates seem to come only every hour or so. So perhaps medium-cool. Anyway. It allows those of us watching the race to follow the track and to guess at the weather. Plus, the class leaders get a little crown over their name. Which is nice. Here's the link. It's an unconscious thing, a tick. A habit. Take a phrase, parse it, divide it, recombine it, look for entertaining results. As I beetle around trying to restore order to the large pile of salty gear, slightly used batteries, marine electronics, and ziplock bags of snacks, I find myself turning over the wordy options: The Everchallenge Glide. The Everyglades chalice. The Challenger Everglading.
The boys on Spawn –– my favorite skipper and his pal Jahn –– are never-say-diers. They keep swinging for the fences. Always aiming higher. All sporty metaphors apply. The additions and refinements they make to the boat are all designed to eke a bit more speed, a touch more performance, a sliver more of whatever it will take for them to get to the finish line faster.
Mr. Linton installed a system of long sweeps, racing oarlocks, and a nifty sculling seat on the original boat, and has continued to refine it as time passes. The oars are a boon when the boat is bucking the current and needs a little extra oomph. It's also handy when navigable waters get too narrow for actual sailing.
Rowing kept Spawn out of the fog that socked in some racers farther north. From Sanibel to Cape Romano, they'd row a mile to reach a puff, sail for a bit, and then row through another lull. Chasing zephyrs, balancing patience with strategy in connecting one patch of wind with another.
With help from the awesome Jim Signor, the boys packed Spawn onto the trailer, stowed things for highway travel, and we made our ways North. Moresailesed had a pressing engagement with the US Naval Academy, where he coaches sailing.
The Linton-mobile cantered home across Aligator Alley, meeting up with the nasty line of weather that Spawn had managed to outrun, but which lambasted the majority of the fleet. We dodged the inexplicable traffic that plagues I75 between Fort Meyers and Sarasota and as always were grateful to arrive alive at our house. We parked and hustled bag after bag up the stairs and then stood looking at one another. Jeff spoke the immortal words, "Is it over already?" Well, for now it is. The middle of the state. The middle of the night. The middle of a large pile of gear. From the middle, ground-control for my Everglades Challenge team seems like a way of life. It's probably sleep deprivation (I write this at midnight, over a bowl of dairy-free frozen dessert, in between reloading various tracking pages and checking the social media), but here I go again, blearily worrying, along with a clan of like-minded folks as we follow the progress of the 100 or so boats as they paddle, sail, and row down the left side of the Florida peninsula. For those who haven't been following, here's the overview: The Everglades Challenge is a 300-mile unsupported expedition race put on by a gang called the WaterTribe. Competitors get a WaterTribe name. My favorite skipper –– AKA TwoBeers –– is racing with his childhood pal, the offshore sailing coach for the Naval Academy, Jahn Tihansky (tribe name Moresailesed). They set sail on the first Saturday in March at dawn from Fort Desoto in St. Pete, aboard a boat called Spawn designed by OH Rodgers (Ninjee). As expected, the WaterTribe tracking site is experiencing some kind of technological version of the vapors. Raceowl.com is doing better, but it means translating four-digit numbers back into familiar names. Spawn of Frankenscot is 3092, Safety Dance is 2969, Spongebob is 3072, the German guy, Schappi, is 3068, Jarhead is 3154, Puma is 3134, SeadogRocket and BermudaBoy are 3104, Ccock 3043. Et cetera. Yesterday started for the Spawn team at o'dark thirty, when Jeff and Jahn and I piled into Charlie Clifton's van with yet more piles of gear, and made our way to the beach at Fort Desoto. Where we were met with a whole tribe of people wearing head-lamps and lycra-enhanced fitness clothing toting bales of stuff out to their various watercraft. The Challenge begins, fiendishly enough, with the competitors needing to push their boats from the high-tide line into the water at the signal at 7 am. Some folks have wallowed in the sand for seemingly hours. Not my fellas! The launching of the fleet was relatively slow this year –– not much breeze. Still, the moment passes in a twinkling of the eye. At seven, the beach is packed, by a quarter after, only a lonesome boat or two and spectators are left on the beach. I don't know what other ground-control people do, but given that Moresailesed was shedding virus and coughing like a consumptive, I cleaned up with a vengeance. Seven loads of laundry, autoclaving the dishes, a possibly unhealthy number of Clorox wipes, followed by a quick nip around to the non-dairy frozen dessert section of my local grocery and a nice cat-nap. My phone is buzzing more than usual: Spawn has a following, and even with the light wind there's an element of nail-biting suspense. Moresailesed send along a photo from onboard –– roughly, I am thinking, from the spot where they spent some time last year recovering from a bit of excitement. Evidently the mosquitoes are making an appearance on board Spawn –– last year, the poor devils couldn't make headway agains the wind. Each Challenge is different, I suppose, and a new test of the competitors' varying skills.
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