Frogma

ESB Paparazza!

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Fri, 28 May 2021 02:49:00 +0000

ok the story was, I had morning chemo and an afternoon scan last week Tuesday, so I took the day off from work, took my camera along & wandered the vicinity between appointments. Unftunately the day ended up being really hard on my poor chemo-cranky feet but I did really enjoy roving around and taking pix and I realized today that except for a skyline from the ferry, I haven't shared any yet. Did some editing tonight and here's the first batch - I don't care how long I live in NYC, I will always enjoy taking pictures of the Empire State Building!

A few photos from Green-Wood Cemetery

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Sun, 02 May 2021 02:34:00 +0000

Spring has sprung at Sebago! 3 weeks of flowers at the club.

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Thu, 08 Apr 2021 04:45:00 +0000

Blogger's new interface continues to be broken. If you click on the first photo, hit the back button on your browser, and repeat that a few times (4 or 5 for me tonight), you may get the old slideshow view with thumbnails. Blogger's new interface is actually part of why I haven't been posting as much lately - it's a constant exercise in frustration where the old interface was so simple. In good news, though, these 3 weeks of flowers do mean that I've gotten in 3 weekend paddles in a row. And my fingers are crossed for 4! Crocuses are from weeks 1 and 2, everything else from last weekend. Great time to be getting back to the club!

Harbingers!

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Tue, 09 Mar 2021 04:50:00 +0000

It's been a long winter, and no, we aren't out of the snow window yet, but things are looking up! Click on any photo for a slideshow view.

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(frogma kayak smiley, patent pending)

Coney Island Polar Bears Snow Swim!

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Mon, 15 Feb 2021 21:27:00 +0000

Snow Swim: Brooklyn Offers Winter Magic 2.7.21 from Al Leibman on Vimeo.

I haven't been able to get out to play in the snow we've finally been having this winter, but I've been vicariously enjoying friends' photos and videos. Here's a lovely video from one of the Coney Island Polar bears - enjoy!

The Coney Island Polar Bears are a remarkable crew. A lot of people just think of the big New Year's Day plunge when they see "Polar Bears" but that's actually an event that the Bears sponsor and oversee for the NYC community. It's always a fundraiser for some worthwhile group, and the Bears put in a LOT of work to make sure it's fun and safe for everyone.

The club swims every weekend all winter, plus pretty much any time it snows.

This winter has been a true test of polar bear fortitude - in normal years the Coney Island Aquarium has made their Education Hall available to the Bears for their regular weekend swims, so there's a warm place to gather before and after the swims. That's not happening this year, but the Bears swim on!

Midwood In The Snow, or, Good Heavens, Hi, I'm Still Here!

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 03:44:00 +0000

Hello hello from snowy snowy Brooklyn! Can't believe I didn't post ONCE through all of January - I have been planning to do but not actually doing an update post for a while now, January got so strange I guess I just got a little tongue-tied. Blogger's block? Anyhow, I will try to come back to that pretty soon but today, I got a few nice photos of my neighborhood in snow on my way home from chemo and thought I would share those.

Click on any photo for a full sized view; hope you enjoy!

Escape from Black Friday 2020 - trip report & photos!

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Sun, 13 Dec 2020 04:20:00 +0000

My favorite photo from my wonderful Escape from Black Friday. Click any photo for a slideshow view!

Finally getting back to this after getting a little bogged down after my "Masked Marauders" post. Remember how happy I looked in that post?

This was an extra-special Escape. Other years it's just been a given that I'll get out for something, outside, hiking or paddling depending on conditions, the day after Thanksgiving, but this year, I was still recuperating from my October illness and had conditions been anything but perfect, my "escape" would most likely have been limited to a short stroll in Prospect Park, or maybe the Coney Island Boardwalk. Either of which would have been nice enough but not quite as "escapeist" - so I was just thrilled to bits when the stars (and weather, and a lovely offer from a friend) all aligned so that I was able to get out on the water for the first time since our vacation in September!

And I had OPTIONS! The Sebago Canoe Club traditionally has a paddle & leftover potluck the weekend immediately following Thanksgiving. This year's COVID rules precluded the potlucking but one of our best trip leaders did put out the call for people with winter gear to join her on Saturday.

That was VERY tempting - I hadn't seen folks at the club in so long, and although I do like the Escape from Black Friday theme, I'm not dead set on Friday if something neat presents itself on Saturday. This time I was hesitant to join a club paddle, though. I was at a stage in recuperation from October's illness where if I was sitting in a chair at home, I would feel like I could do anything I ever did, but then I would go out for a walk and be utterly out of gas after a mile or so. So I really had no idea how I would do in my boat, and I absolutely didn't want to be the one who set out from the dock full of beans and happy to be there and then after a mile have to ask someone else to cut their paddle short to escort me back to the club. Someone would have done it and most likely would have been great about it - we do watch out for each other - but I would've felt very bad about cutting into their fun.

And I did have another option, which in the end I decided was more sensible. One of my closer paddling friends who's been keeping abreast of my medical woes had kindly offered to take me out for some low-key paddles to ease back in; I found out from her Facebook page that she was around for Thanksgiving, and Friday's forecast was actually stunning, with lighter winds than Saturday - perfect for a test paddle! I got in touch with her, and on Friday morning, we headed for the club - where we found a subset of "the usual suspects", the group of friends I'd been doing a lot of paddles with over the summer, arriving at the same time! The group was small because of the club paddle the next day, but what a nice surprise to see them there.

And I had a nice surprise as far as my paddling stamina - I'm definitely not where I was in September, but M. and I set out with them and I was able to keep up (even getting out in front for some of the time) for quite a while, before deciding that I had probably gone far enough after a bit over 3 miles (just to where you hang a right to head out of the inlet). When I was being discharged from the hospital and given recommendations for getting back in shape, they warned me to remember that as I increased my walking distance, I would still need to get back from wherever I went - definitely the case for paddling, too. M. and I had explained what we were doing before we launched, so nobody was worried when we got to the inlet and I decided that would be my turnaround point, and that worked out well. I think having the others turn up gave me a little more energy and confidence, when I'd been feeling a little timid about pushing it, but we did go back to the club in a much lower gear, with a tea break midway back, and I was quite ready to get off the water when we got back to the dock.

In other words - just about as perfect a first paddle as I could've asked for. I'm so grateful!

Unfortunately the next weekend was stormy, and this weekend I've just had a chemo port put in & paddling was definitely not on the list of approved activities for the day after that procedure (I wasn't even allowed to take a shower today) - but I'm really hoping to get in more good paddling over the winter.

And here's more pictures!

Happy Thanksgiving 2020!

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Fri, 27 Nov 2020 00:29:00 +0000

Happy Thanksgiving 2020! Ticked-Off Turkey is still as ticked-off as he was when I made him 10 years ago, but I'm actually very grateful for a lot of things right now, even here at the end of one of the strangest years I've ever seen. Best to all from Brooklyn, NY.

Jamaica Bay swan rescue

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Thu, 12 Nov 2020 01:26:00 +0000

No photos or stories of my own today, sorry (oops, ok, a doodle slipped in at the end!) - I think we've all had a rough week and I just can't resist sharing this really lovely NY Times story about New Yorkers rescuing an injured swan from the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge. Most fortunate swan, to be found by the particular woman who found her - a former animal care manager at Manhattan's Wild Bird Fund. I would be scared to get close to a swan even if it did look injured, I think a lot of us would, but Ms. Cordova-Rojas knew exactly what to do, and found the helpers she needed when she needed them, too. Hooray for these good New Yorkers!

Click here to read the story. Feels so good to share this tonight.

And it's so good to see such good publicity for the Wild Bird Fund - I first learned about them after my own encounter with a bird in need of assistance, a woodcock I found lying stunned on the sidewalk on Broadway after a late night at work. A friend at my kayak club is a trained rescuers for the WBF, and he had a ton of good information about what to do should I ever find another dazed bird lying on the sidewalk. Birds & NYC window reflections are a bad combination, they just think it's sky, and my friend mentioned that woodcocks are especially at risk because they habitually fly low when escaping a threat, and also have eyes set far back on their heads, making it hard to see what they need to in a confusing streetscape of light and reflection.

click here for my blog post about that rather surreal-feeling evening!

Oh, and here is a picture after all - I hadn't drawn in a while before the evening I tried to help that bird, but it was such an attractive bird that I had to try to draw it in happier circumstances later. BTW, woodcocks are also known as "timberdoodles", so this was my timberdoodle doodle! :D

Walking again!

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Mon, 09 Nov 2020 00:40:00 +0000

So remember that time I went to cast my early vote in a wheelchair? Amazing to think that was just 2 weeks ago, especially with all the breath-holding this week - it's felt like a month! Also, if you missed it on Facebook, you may not remember this as somehow it didn't make it into the blog here, I skipped straight from the medical update to that lovely Halloween sail.

So anyways - I had intended to join in the early voting we have here in NYC, but I had of course had absolutely no clue that I was going to be so dreadfully shaky on my pins after 2 weeks in the hospital when the time rolled around! It wasn't that I couldn't walk at all but at this point, one week after my release, I'm seriously not sure I could've made it once around my own block, let alone to Brooklyn College, my early polling location, about 3/4 of a mile away. Also really didn't want to be on public transportation yet, so I asked some friends in the neighborhood if they could help. My friend Gail came through immediately and also had the very good idea of the wheelchair; she has some friends whose daughther has a small theater company and Gail was able to borrow an old but fully functional wheelchair from the prop deck - that worked out so well.

That was the 26th of October. My new chemo was starting on the 27th, and I didn't know how that was going to go, hence my hurry to vote before that. As it happened, the new chemo is going fine and I'm very happy to report that today I actually walked a mile and a half! Still very slowly, but I went up to the Little Free Library up near Courtelyou Road, a few blocks to the north, to drop off some books I was done with, and then I just wandered about enjoying the weather (amazing, 72 degrees when I went out in the afternoon) and the foliage, which is getting lovely. Here are a few samples, click any photo for a slideshow view.

Halloween Sail on the Schooner Adirondack

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Mon, 02 Nov 2020 02:58:00 +0000

Well, what a glorious day. I'm still not very energetic these days, nothing much more than short walks in the neighborhood, but word made it back to an old friend on the Schooner Adirondack that I might want to go for a boat ride. Halloween afternoon turned out to be a glorious day, and I'm so glad TQ and I were able to go! Let's hear it for little birds - thank you!

And in this case I think the pictures are worth more than words - so here you are. Hopefully click on any photo for a slideshow view!

Hello neglected blog! October update!

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Wed, 28 Oct 2020 23:42:00 +0000

Oh, this poor, neglected blog. Can't believe I just dropped the Sept 11th post and didn't come back. September actually did feature a really nice short vacation out in Greenport, we stayed at the same Sunset Motel where we had such a nice stay in fall 2019. We got to go for a sail with our friends Walter and Dottie, and two afternoon paddles, and I got up early one morning and went for a heavenly swim - water was so nice and clear and a beautiful temperature for swimming - much cooler and it would've been too cold, but a really beautiful start to the day.

I also pulled off a "for fun" Grimaldo's Mile early in September (September 12th) in fact; the Coney Island Brighton Beach Open Water Swimmers (CIBBOWS) ran their famous entry-level one mile swim virtually this year - you could swim your mile anywhere and report your time and they tracked the results. Originally the time was during August, and when I got shingles in August, I scratched (ha ha) being able to make it, but when the rash dried up and I went back to swim one weekend, club members let me know the limit had been extended through I think September 13th. I went out on September 12th; it was very rough and I didn't think I would be able to swim the full mile that day, but I decided I'd go see what I could do, and with nowhere I needed to be at any particular time, and all the time in the world for making it through the bounce, I just kept swimmin' for that mile. I hadn't even timed it, it was probably one of of the slowest miles I'd ever swam but I was really heppy to have done it - pretty cool to look at conditions and say "I won't be able to do that" and then pull it off after alll!

Then October just flipped EVERYTHING on me.

There is a bacteria called Klebsiella that is normally a harmless part of your intestinal flora. However, if your immune system is out of whack, it can cause all sorts of trouble. Apparently my immune system was not quite on top of things.

I was working on my month end close reports on Friday the 2nd when I suddenly got tired. I decided to take a nap. Woke up on Sunday morning except for TQ getting me up for food. I was supposed to start my new chemo on Tuesday so I figured they would want to see a covid test - I had taken my temperature at some point and I think it was 102.

TQ was actually more worried than I was, I thought I was fine but he felt I was thinking very slowly. Anyways, he took me to our local CityMD on Monday morning for a covid test, as I asked. The doctor measured my blood pressure once on the in-room device, shook his head, took it a second time, then brought in a portable one. Turned out my blood pressure was super low and my heartrate going like a racehorse to try to keep in.

They put me in a ambulance and sent me to the emergency room at NYU Langone Brooklyn - I asked for them so my oncologist could follow along. NYU Langone has a really good communication system, and Dr. Meyers was able to follow along fine (in fact the Brooklyn doctors told me that everytime they called her to fill her in, she's already seen the report). I had sepsis from that bacteria. It took them 2 weeks to stabilize me enough to go home I made it to chemo last Tuesday. Taxol and I did not agree. That's another story though. About amazing nurses. TK!

This week, they tried me on another type of chemo whose name I can't remember. This one went fine, I was thinking I might be feeling a tiny bit queasy at the end but I was mistaking queasy for hungry - I got home and had a grilled cheese sandwich with good bread, a little good cheddar and a giant slice of this beautiful tomato TQ had gotten earlier in the week. All better, and still feeling good today!

So there's my late October catch up! Been on leave of absence since the start of hospitalization; although I'm thoroughly enjoying lounging around rereading my books (I have been on an autobiography kick, revisiting Pete Hamill's A Drinking Life, Trevor Noah's Born a Crime, and now Esther Williams's Million Dollar Mermaid) but now that I'm feeling good about both my recovery from the klebsiella infection AND my response to the new chemo, I'm thinking it's time to get back to work!

9/11 memories

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Fri, 11 Sep 2020 02:45:00 +0000

Once again, too many work deadlines to write much, but I'll share the usual link to my own story from the day, originally written to share with family and friends the evening of the attack. Click here for that. So glad to have made it out and then to actually have been able to help people even a little bit the same day. The efforts on the water and along the waterfront were amazing. I'll add this short documentary with that story. Wonderful the way people in NYC pulled together that day - this angle of the story just can't be told enough, as far as I'm concerned.

With so many awful things going on right now, September 11th seems so long ago. Dreaming of better days to come - much love from Brooklyn to any readers who are suffering from smoke, fire, COVID, or just missing friends and family.

8/30/20 Courtelyou Road Greenmarket Walk

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Tue, 01 Sep 2020 02:48:00 +0000

So I'm gradually recovering from the shingles. Once it had really set in, the first few days I didn't go outside at all - just too tired and uncomfortable. I think it was Tuesday that I got up the energy to go to the Stuf'd sandwich shop that operates out of the relatively new Rusty Nail bar that took over the old Mama Lucia's space on Foster & East 17th. Their first food attempt was a Korean/soul food fusion thing - some friends and I went to try that & weren't impressed, the sandwich place is WAY better! They're a spinoff from a popular food truck by the same name and I'm delighted they've decided to set up an outlet so close by. Here's their spin on a Reuben, with fries and brussel sprout sides - 2 sandwiches and one of each side gave us dinner and lunch the next day, too, the shop lives up to its name. Reubens were good - barbecue brisket, which was my first purchase a few weeks back, were AWESOME.

So that was one block away; a couple of days later I managed a couple more blocks, going to C-town for chicken thighs for curry. That was the first time I was actually up to cooking for a while - TQ gets home from work pretty late these days so I've generally been doing the dinner cooking for us, but ugh, there was no way that was happening during the first week or so of the shingles.

Sunday was an absolutely gorgeous day here in NYC. I've been going to the Courtelyou Road Greenmarket pretty regularly on Sunday mornings this summer. That didn't happen last weekend 'cause that's when the shingles were just starting to get really unpleasant, but yesterday I was feeling enough better that I decided I would take a slow walk over, and then home again too if I had the energy. It's about 1.6 miles round trip, and there's a train station there so there was an option if I didn't want to walk home.

It went well, I walked there and back again (energy for the walk home provided by a scrumptious apple turnover from the Breezy Hill Orchard stand!), and I'm so glad I had my camera along. Midwood & Ditmas Park are such photogenic neighborhoods.

All photos after this, first one is just a neighbor's beehives, I enjoy just stopping by their fence to watch the bees going about their business, then it's just going through the neighborhood, a few at the market, and then a couple more on the way home. Click on any photo for a slideshow view!

8/19 2nd Evening Paddle of 2020 - and shingles, ugh!

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Sun, 30 Aug 2020 02:05:00 +0000

Bunny at the club! Wasn't that worried about us, either.

This was the evening of Wednesday the 19th; I got another invitation from a friend who was willing to give me a ride. It wasn't a super-long paddle but it was really nice - and then that was it for a while as over the next few days I was fighting a low fever and fatigue that turned out to be the lead-in of shingles! Rash popped up the following Sunday and on Monday I was off to the local CityMD for a diagnosis (rash was absolutely classic). I wish I had gone to CityMD waaaaaay before then to get the shingles vaccine - friends told me I should but did I listen? No! Will rectify that as soon as I'm done with this round as it is possible to get it again - and the chemo I'm on makes one particularly susceptible. I hear the vaccine can make you feel like you've got the flu for a couple of days after - but oh will I take that over another round of shingles!

I went ahead and worked through the bug, I figure I'm working from home anyways and I was going to be uncomfortable whatever I was doing, so no real reason to dump my work on other people. Somehow couldn't muster the energy to do a blog post after the day's work, though, hence the long hiatus here.

I'm starting to feel a little better, though, and it's the weekend, so finally, here are photos from my lovely 2nd evening paddle of 2020. Hoping I might be recovered enough to do this again soon! That's it for the writeup, click on any photo for a slideshow view.

7/31 - First evening paddle of 2020

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Sat, 15 Aug 2020 01:58:00 +0000

Boy, can't believe this was two weeks ago! on the way home I just couldn't wait to do a blog post, but I didn't get to it fast enough, and this is one of those times of year when work gets a little bonkers and I just didn't have the energy to blog after long days of number crunching. Wrapped up the last of the gauntlet of deadline projects today, though!

I'm just doing a writeup here but of course I took photos - click here to visit my Flickr album from the day.

So this really wonderful paddle was my first evening paddle of the year. I've been getting out on the water pretty regularly, but since I'm staying off the bus and don't feel like I have enough biking experience in the city to be out at night, evenings haven't really been an option - so when clubmates Etan and Andrea got in touch with me, invited me to join them and one more clubmate, Dan, for a Friday evening paddle, mentioning they had access to a car for the evening and could get me and TQ's bike home after the paddle, I was delighted to take them up on it.

It was a beautiful evening, nice temperature, very light breeze, high water and a nearly full moon rising. The plan was to paddle to Four Sparrows Marsh for some evening birding, but our first stop was at the "Jeep Marsh", a small marsh partway between the club and Mill Basin, nicknamed by club members after an engine block in the inlet that's visible when the water is lower (that's urban paddling for you). As we were paddling by, Dan or Etan noticed some interesting activity in the marsh, lots of tips of fins breaking the surface of the water, so we went in to see what we could see. Turned out to be a school of rays, probably cow-nosed - very cool to see! TQ had seen a school once a couple of years ago, so I knew they were out there, but I'd never seen them. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get any pictures, the wingtips would only break the surface for a moment, but they were all over the place in the marsh and it was great to encounter a new critter in the bay.

oof, reminds me I had made a couple of promises about this Inktober drawing from last year that was very popular among the paddling groups with whom I shared it. I had "find a place that can do a really high-quality scan" on my to-do list early in the year - then of course all plans went off the rails. Things are opening up enough now that maybe I can resume that search. We didn't have this many rays, and they were swirling around hunting in the marsh, but still reminded me of drawing this, and I wonder what it would've looked like from above.

We hung out watching the rays for a while, then headed on to Four Sparrows Marsh, where a variety of egrets and herons were settling in for the evening. Etan spotted one very large object in a dead snag at the top of a tree as we were approaching the marsh; I'd brought binoculars along so he asked me to see if I could tell what it was. When I first looked, I thought it might be a very large raptor, but then it wasn't moving, and I couldn't see any details, so I downgraded my guess to Hefty bag or some sort of similar trash, blown up there by the storm earlier in the week. Wish I'd handed the binoculars over to Etan at that point for a second opinion - a moment after I'd said I thought it was just garbage, it turned its big raptorial head and spread its big raptorial wings and flew off to another tree further away from those nosy paddlers.

Still not sure what it was but it looked bigger than our local hawks, and darker then an osprey - really wondering if it was maybe a juvenile bald eagle. A friend and I had seen an adult near Floyd Bennett Field in March, and then during the Breezy Point Light paddle a couple of weeks ago, Dottie had spotted a pair of very large, dark raptors over the Rockaway Inlet (really not too far from Mill Basin, at least as the crow - or eagle - flies); she pointed them out to me and we agreed that they were too big & dark to be ospreys. It's possible we've got some young bald eagles in the area - it would be very cool if that was the case!

Click here for an excellent photo series showing bald eagle plumage from first year juvenile to adult.

We got well into Four Sparrows, the moon was rising, it was absolutely beautiful and we paddled around in there until we started getting chewed up by hungry little flying things. We paused outside the marsh to put on decklights and then headed for home under a beautiful sunset sky. What a perfect evening!

Perfect Weekend Part 3 - Swimming!

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Mon, 03 Aug 2020 02:19:00 +0000

Part 3 of the perfect weekend (now 2 weeks ago) was finally getting in a swim at Brighton Beach! I'd been craving a swim all July and probably going back into June, finally got my act together and went on the 19th.

Subway was somewhat worrisome; most of my subway ventures have been to midtown for doctors' appointments, and on those trips, the subways weren't crowded and almost everybody was wearing masks. The Q to the beach had a lot more riders and I think the festive air of being beach-bound on a hot day seemed to make people a little loosey-goosey about masks - people still had 'em but there were a lot of under-the-nose masks, chin masks, or just held in the hand masks. I was unfortunately just wearing one of the surgical masks I wear for day to day errands - I actually have a couple of N95's, one of which a friend who's a nurse gave me specifically for doctor visits. I have no idea why I didn't think to wear that on the subway but when I posted about this on FB, another friend who's a nurse (thanks Laura!) suggested getting an N95 to make beachgoing a little safer for myself. My response was something along the lines of "Oh, derp. I have one." So that'll help.

Would also probably help if I went earlier - I'd been on the fence between a swim and a lazy day at home, didn't decide until I think 2:00 or so, and then of course it took me longer than I thought to get my gear together.

The beach threw me for a bit of a loop, too - the groups I've been paddling with at Sebago, which have tended to max out at maybe 15, and usually less, have been the biggest crowds I've been in since March. Now, if you know Coney Island and Brighton Beach at all, and you look at these photos, you'll see that this is a very thin crowd compared to normal years - but after all that self-isolation this just felt like THRONGS. I was a little bit freaked out and thinking of maybe going home when one of the CIBBOWS crew happened by and talked me down (ok, it wasn't that hard, but he saw me and said hello at a really good time to get me back into "gotta swim" mindset).

So I joined the CIBBOWS group and went for a fun short swim. It was breezy, and a little bit bouncy, and the current was running pretty hard towards Jamaica Bay, so it was a little bit like swimming on a treadmill, but I had dinner plans involving some greenmarket goodness I'd picked up in the morning, and wanted to be home by a certain time to get going on that, so knowing that I would be swept back to my starting point at Grimaldo's Chair tout de suite when I turned around was actually helpful.

And it just felt great to be back in the ocean for even a short swim, as you'll be able to see from my three releasing-my-inner-mermaid selfies!

In fact so good that I did pretty much an exact repeat, right down to what the current was doing, yesterday. Conditions yesterday were much quieter, I did more crawl and less breast stroke (my fallback stroke when I'm feeling a little challenged) and even some backstroke, enjoying looking up at beautiful fishscale clouds in the blue sky. Sorry, no pix from yesterday, I'd once again taken some time to decide to go, and once again had some cooking plans, so I left the camera home so I would swim instead of float around taking pictures. It was a short swim again but going against the current made it a good workout. I renewed my CIBBOWS membership yesterday too as swimming feels great.

And there was a paddle this weekend too - only thing missing from perfection this time was the peaches, the offerings at the greenmarket really just didn't look ready. But I'm trying plums instead!

That's it for the verbiage - click any photo for a slideshow view.

Skywatch Friday, Midwood, Brooklyn

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Sat, 25 Jul 2020 01:30:00 +0000

I still have one more post to do from last weekend's perfect weekend series - but we've had some dramatic weather here in NYC this week and I thought I would do another Skywatch Friday post. These were from a walk I took last night - I stayed pretty close to home in case the skies opened up; they threatened to do that at one point but after a few enormous raindrops sent all us pedestrians skittering for awnings, the sky said "Ha ha, just kidding" and went back to just being dramatic.

Just pictures after this - click on the first one for a slideshow view. Enjoy!

NYC - Scabby the Rat Says "We're Still Here!"

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Thu, 23 Jul 2020 17:57:00 +0000

Things are still strange in NYC - but hey, where there's giant inflatable rats, there's hope.

I don't have a smartphone, but I always throw at least my little Optio in my bag when I'm heading into Manhattan these days, because you just never know what you might see.

I was really glad I did that yesterday -- what a kick to see these classic symbols of NYC union protest! I was on my way to one of my appointments at the NYU Langone Laura Perlmutter Imaging Center on 34th Street; I'd taken the B train to Herald Square and caught the bus from there* - spotted these outside the Empire State Building and walked back to take a picture on my way home afterwards.

I shared these on FB yesterday and a friend asked about the symbolism and I realized that I didn't really know precisely. You see them in NYC pretty regularly and I did know that they were connected with union protests, but I went looking for more detail and found a very informative article about the history of Scabby the Rat. That's right, they not only have a very specific message, they have a name!

The cat, on the other hand, is a new one to me. The balloon company that created Scabby also offers a Fat Cat balloon, but he's much more cartoony, dressed in top hat and tux, with one fist clenched around a laborer's neck and the other around a money bag. Not sure whether this one is a Fat Cat or the opposite, the union come to catch the rats - he looks pretty benign compared to the obviously nasty Scabby, right?

Anyways, weirdly nice to see this normal bit of NYC weirdness after all the weirder weirdness we've seen here in 2020.

And here's Scabby all ready to go full King Kong on the Empire State Building!

*Notes for friends concerned about me taking public transportation:

1. I wore the N95 mask a nurse friend gave me specifically for wearing to appointments.

2. Neither the subway nor the bus were too crowded, and both pretty clean.

3. Almost all of the other passengers were wearing masks, and wearing them right. Nice!

Perfect Weekend Part 2 - PEACHES!

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Wed, 22 Jul 2020 03:25:00 +0000

I started off Sunday with a trip to the Courtelyou Road greenmarket. I have been jonesing for peaches for a couple of weeks now, and yesterday, one of the stands finally had Jersey peaches!

You aren't allowed to touch things at the greenmarket these days, so no picking up the peaches to feel whether they have a promising bit of give to them, but I was there pretty early and the vendor picked 6 splendid-looking peaches out for me, and then threw in a bonus one after he'd weighed them.

They weren't quite ready to eat on Sunday, but by Monday morning, this one had softened up and begun emitting a luscious scent. I set it on a silk pillow so that I could photograph it like the precious thing it was - ahhh, the first peach of 2020!

And then I cut it up and had it for breakfast. With, uh, yogurt. That's right, peaches and yogurt, a healthy summer breakfast.

Because what kind of frivolous person would ever have peaches and ice cream for breakfast? The very idea. Hmph.

Perfect Weekend - Saturday: To The Lighthouse!

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Mon, 20 Jul 2020 02:47:00 +0000

OK, circumstances are still far from perfect, but hey, it was a fine, if hot, summer weekend and I absolutely milked it with paddling on Saturday and the greenmarket and my first real swim of the summer on Sunday.

I was absolutely delighted with Saturday's paddle, because in addition to it being a good day to be on the water and a very nice group of folks to paddle with (grateful to the friend who's been pulling so many of these together, I've been utterly disorganized about planning paddles myself, so it's great to have things to jump in on at the last minute), this one finally broke out of this weird 6-mile paddle thing I was complaining about in my last trip report.

Saturday's destination wasn't really clear when we set out, except that because it was hot we knew we wanted to head out to the Gil Hodges Memorial Bridge (aka Marine Park Bridge) to get to some cleaner water to play in. We ended up going pretty close to 14 miles and despite the health issues that have me not feeling quite at 100%, I still felt good all the way through and even had the energy to run after some of the surfable wakes. I was absolutely delighted, I wasn't sure how I would hold up for a longer paddle.

We launched at 9:30 am and had a fine ebb-assisted paddle to the bridge. We took a nice leisurely snack break with much floating in the water without our boats at Riis Landing, just past the bridge on the Queens side (Rockaway Peninsula). We got back on the water around noon. Flood was going to start around 1 so we decided to paddle a little further down towards Breezy Point.

At one point the paddle nearly turned into a restaurant paddle when one of our group recognized Kennedy's, a waterfront establishment where he'd had some really good mussels. He suggested stopping and getting a couple of orders to share. I'd actually packed myself an unusually good box lunch of fruit, cheese, crackers, and prosciutto, and had grazed pretty heavily at Riis Landing, and there were a couple of others who were also not ready for more food. It also turned out that one of the latter group was really interested in paddling on down to the "lighthouse" - she's a strong paddler and has been a club member for years, so I was surprised she'd never been, but that sounded like a perfect destination! So we agreed to skip the mussels, go on to the tower (just a little ways further on), and then come back and meet the others for the paddle home. I went in to let the diners know what our plans were -- just in time to see a resident walk up to them to let them know that this was a private beach.

That wasn't really surprising. The Breezy Point communities are protective of their beaches - no problem with paddling by, people in boats will say hi (oh, and everybody out in boats yesterday was SO happy to be out in boats that the greetings were even more friendly than usual - we all agreed that on the water was the only place to be and we wished we could stay there all week), but they don't want non-residents landing there, even if it's just to run up to Kennedy's for a couple of orders of mussels. So the disappointed diners rejoined us, we went on down to the "lighthouse", got there right at slack water, and then turned around for a good flood-assisted ride back to the club. We couldn't have timed it better if we'd actually planned it - darned good winging it!

The "lighthouse" is an interesting piece of local history. It was actually built as a fire control tower for the Fort Tilden gun emplacements - click here to learn more about it. That's an old, old, archived web page and doesn't look very pretty but it's the most informative thing I've found about the tower.

All pictures after this, more than I would usually post but it was fun getting out of the bay, and it was another really photogenic day. BTW the thing that looks like the top of a clay pot is actually a "sand collar", which is a thing that a certain type of snail (moon snails) make to protect their eggs, which are embedded in the sand/mucus construction. Interesting thing to find!

And although I didn't get any photos, we may have seen two young bald eagles flying over the inlet - they were bigger and much darker than the distinctively-marked osprey that we see on almost every summer paddle. Oh - and the fishing chatter on the VHF channel we were using said that there were sharks, dolphins, and a whale in the area! Busy waters out there!

OK, now on to the photos - click on the first one for a slideshow view. Enjoy!

Floral Friday

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Sat, 18 Jul 2020 00:16:00 +0000

Another quiet week of working from home for me, so no new adventures, but here are some of the flowers that are blooming at the Sebago Canoe Club here in July. Chicory (grows wild all over the club), Queen Anne's Lace (the garden plots, left untended, have become a field of lace), milkweed (we have a pretty good bed of this in hopes of encouraging monarch butterflies), purple coneflower, and, uh, something pretty in the bed in front of the clubhouse. Anybody know what that is?

Lilies have had their time, as you can see in the last photo. But the club's still blooming.

7/12/2020 - After Fay

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Tue, 14 Jul 2020 00:01:00 +0000

Tropical Storm Fay hit town on Friday, giving us a thorough drenching and high winds. One of the Sebago "usual suspects" crew had hoped to have a birthday paddle on Saturday, but that and the all-level paddle also planned for the day both got shifted to Sunday, as Saturday's weather was still pretty skittish.

Sunday was beautiful but still pretty breezy - in fact breezier than the forecast had shown. I think the forecast had been for 10 to 13 mph and the actuals (I just looked at the 3-day history to make sure I wasn't imagining this) got up to 18 or so while we were out, 20 after we got off the water. It was also supposed to get pretty warm, with a high of 89 in the afternoon.

I'm honestly not sure I would've gone if I'd known about the extra wind. I'm not feeling quite at 100% right now, and a hot day gets me huffing and puffing pretty fast, and with all the rain we'd had, a cooling roll or high brace or a bit of a swim during a shore break wasn't an option. The NYC water treatment - including sewage - system dumps straight into the waterways when overwhelmed by heavy rains, things get pretty gross after a storm; you can still paddle but you want to keep your contact with the water to a minimum. So I'd been looking at that high of 89 and feeling a little bit on the fence about going.

I'm glad I did go, though, because it ended up being a really nice paddle - in fact the only problem with it was that it was kind of short, there were time constraints for the group and we kept it to around 6.5 miles. I'm starting to feel like the 6 Mile Paddle Princess these days and one of these days I would really like to see how I hold up to a longer distance -- but this was a lovely little jaunt on the bay.

The wind ended up being a plus instead of a problem because although it was pretty shifty, for a good part of our paddle it was out of the southwest, asnd we decided to paddle against the incoming current down towards the inlet, following the western shore of the bay. That gave us enough protection from the breeze to keep boat handling from being annoying, but we still had enough of it to provide some good cooling. A hot and windless day where you can't get in the water can be some of the hardest paddling - this turned out to be quite delightful. We paddled down to just before you turn the corner into the inlet, pulling out for leisurely snack/leg stretching break at a nice quiet beach where TQ and I have stopped for lunch a few times, then we had a nice ride back to the Paerdegat Basin on the incoming tide.

Definitely could've kept going, but I'm not going to pretend that a shower and a nap in the air conditioning didn't feel good when I got home, either.

It was a photogenic day out there too - all pix after this, click on any of them for a slideshow view.

Random Florida 2020 - 2nd Paddle Of The Year

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Sat, 11 Jul 2020 21:21:00 +0000

It was back to work for me this week after 2 weeks' furlough; all work and no play made Bonnie a boring blogger, so today I thought I would look back to January. Remember January, when everything was normal and we could fly places and visit people we love? Yeah, that was nice.

This was my 2nd paddle of the year. I think it was the same day as TQ and my sister and I went to see manatees. The VRBO where we were staying (click to see)was on a canal and came with 2 recreational kayaks and a canoe. It was a quiet evening and I decided to take one of the kayaks out for a spin - nobody else wanted to come this time, I think everybody was feeling unenergetic after the day's other adventures, so it was just me, my camera, and a whole lot of birds settling in for the evening. Not long, trip log says just shy of 3 miles, but just lovely.

I did get a few more takers when I proposed an evening paddle the next day, but for some reason I did not take my camera - but we pretty much saw the same thing. Spectacular, these Florida birds! Click on any photo for a slideshow view. F

"Recreate This Selfie"

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Fri, 10 Jul 2020 00:15:00 +0000

So my college friend Robert Haynes Peterson shared this today. I absolutely loved those clever recreations of famous paintings people were doing earlier in the COVID lockdown - didn't have the time or the attention span to pull off one of those but I saw this, looked around my desk, and said "Yup, this one I got."

Been a long time since I used the "Just Plain Silly" label anyways!

:D />