Biking and Hiking and Kayaking: Be Careful Out There

Multi-mode Memorial Day

Memorial Day is one of those three day weekends that seems to last about 3 seconds. Friday I managed to take the boat out onto the Bay and around the Thomas Point Light. I was kinda low on fuel, so I headed up the South River to the Bikini-girl gas pump dock, but before I got close enough to behold the bathing beauties, I realized I had forgotten to take my wallet on the boat. So, I turned around and sped back to the marina and will let the next sucker fill up the tank.

Saturday morning I did a 35 mile bike loop from the Earleigh Heights renovated rail station on the Baltimore Annapolis Rail Trail, out to Annapolis, then out to Sandy Point State Park on the Western Shore of the Chesapeake Bay. I thought I would be out early enough to beat the Memorial Day picnicking crowds, but the charcoal barbecue grills were already going full force - ah, there is nothing like the smell of napalm   lighter fluid early in the morning. I don't have as many miles as usual in on the bike this year, so I only managed to average 16.7 mph in the increasing heat - but I did it non-stop, if you don't count a few red lights.

That night we met up with Jim and Jacqui for Indian food at Akbar in Columbia, followed by being first-nighters at Men in Black 3. I give the restaurant 4 stars, the movie 2 stars. Being dainty, girlie eaters, Carole and Jacqui didn't finish their food and the waiter offered "to go boxes" (no one seems to call them "doggy bags" anymore - maybe the dog lobby finally won, after years of pointing out no one actually gives restaurant left-overs to Fido) but it didn't seem like a great idea to leave food in a hot car while we watched the movie. The owner of the restaurant said "just come back after the movie and we'll give you your food." I've never run into that before and when we actually did come back they gave us two huge "to go" boxes of food that was a lot more than the original leftovers - Lauren had a feast when she raided the refrigerator that night.

The next day was a brief return to radio nerd-dom, as Jim, Carl and I hit the Maryland FM Association hamfest at the Howard County fairgrounds. Carl and I followed that up with a 4 mile hike in the Marriottsville branch of Patapsco State Park, shorter than usual but I was renting a roto-tiller at 1pm so had to cut it short. Of course, the tiller didn't become available until 4pm, so I spent the early afternoon playing round in the WPX CW radio contest and the late afternoon wrestling this monster tiller around the backyard as exercise, instead.

On the actual Memorial Day holiday, I decided to honor our military by shuttling 4 hot Biker Chix around on a kayaking expedition to the Jug Bay area of the Patuxent River. I put two kayaks on top of my Subaru and three more kayaks on the trailer I'd been using to haul the rental roto-tiller around. On the way down to the river I stopped twice just off the Washington Beltway to re-tie down the kayaks on the trailer - to paraphrase an old Yiddish saying: "Man ties kayaks down, God laughs."

But we managed to get down there with all 5 kayaks intact, hit the eco-friendly restroom and we were on the water by 10 am or so on a beautiful sunny morning. We headed up the Patuxent a bit, past the remains of the bridge abutments that once carried the North Beach Rail line across the river, and then turned onto the Western Branch.

There you have a great view of the 1800's Calvert House, where there will be lots of activity as Maryland celebrates the bicentennial of the War of 1812. We continued upstream, saw an otter swimming across the river, many turtles and a heron or two. The river continued to narrow as we paddled upstream, the water lightened in color and we began to smell that minty fresh aroma as we neared our turn-around point - the water treatment plant that filtered nasty stuff into crystal clear, hopefully much less nasty stuff.

We paddled back, seeing several more otters (or the same one several times - I know it is probably species-ist to say this, but all otters look alike to me.) Back at the start we all got to use the very cool kayak un-launch ramp to get our boats our of the water, and enjoyed a Biker Chix-provided picnic in the shade next to the visitor center. Andie ran into someone she knows, besting Carole and Sue in the "Mayor of..." contest.

Much sweating loading the kayaks up again (sweating by me anyway, the Biker Chix sat around and barely even glowed) in the 90 degree heat and we were on the road back home (only one stop to check the boats this time.) We closed out the day with a trip through the Burger King drive-in to get Memorial Day special $1 fruit smoothies (mango very good, strawberry banana eh) and another fun, mostly outdoor 3 day weekend was on the books.

No World Records for My Slice of the Baby Boomer Generation?

An unemployed electrician from Green, Ohio, embarked on a quest last Friday to set a new record for the world's longest individual fist-pump.

My parent's generation had flagpole-sitting and phone-booth stuffing and I think their parents did dance marathons. Today, Generation Y gets busty babes cheering when they break the record for consecutive fist-pumps.

I'm trying to remember some Guinness Records set by my generation, but all i can thing of is girls making really long chains of gum wrappers, seeing how many candles you could have drip on a cheap wine bottle and maybe the biggest collection of Wishnik Trolls?

 

Releasing the Inner Radio Nerd: Dayton 2012

I've been a ham radio operator since I was twelve years old. While my wife and daughter said I should never say this in public, I was fascinated by radio even before I realized girls were kind of interesting, too.

While there have been periods of years (and even a decade) where I did nothing radio-wise, one constant in my 43 years as a ham has been the yearly Dayton Hamvention - sort of a combination yearly ham radio convention and gigantic electronic fleamarket held in Dayton, OH. When I was a teenager it was sort of a legend you would read about in the ham radio magazines. Back in the early 1980s I went for the first time, sleeping on the floor of Rick WA3UOO's sister's house in Xenia OH. In the 30 years since then I've gone a half dozen times or so, including this year when I managed to finagle a business trip to Columbus for the Friday before the Hamvention.

Rick drove down from Columbus Friday night and we had a nice dinner at the traditional Dayton Spaghetti Warehouse restaurant. I don't think the economy has been kind to Ohio in general and Dayton in particular, but 25,000 radio nerds coming to town does give the economy a boost. The restaurant also had a lot of teenagers in tuxedos and gowns (not simultaneously) - imagine taking your prom date out to dinner and being surrounded by middle-aged men with antennas sticking out of their heads.

Rick is ready to fest

The next morning we drove the Hara Arena, and parked at the traditional church parking lot for $5. I waited impatiently while Rick put on his makeup donned his traditional hamfest outfit, and by 0815 were were doing the traditional walking around the outdoor flea-market area pointing at old radios.

Much of the fun is running into people you talk to on the radio but don't see very often, and we did a lot of that. After a few hours in the 80 degree weather under the cloudless sky, it was time to head indoors for a break.

Radio nerd capitalism at work

Hara Arena is basically an old dilapidated convention center, with a small hockey arena in the middle. Commercial vendors set up booths on every possible indoor surface, and the seats around the hockey rink are a good place to give your feet a rest and observe the action. Kenwood was showing their new radio here - it is literally the size of a microwave oven.

Rick and I split up for a while and I sat in on some seminars on contesting and went and looked at the new Elecraft, N3ZN and Begali goodies, but largely kept my wallet in my pocket. By 3:30 we were Hamfested-out and Rick headed back to Columbus and I went back to downtown Dayton and hit some of the radio club hospitality suites and chatted with more people I've known for years over the radio but often never met. I took a shot at the Kansas City DX Club's pileup contest and was an early leader - but that was only because most of the yearly winners were still at the contest dinner...

I had an 0615 flight back to Baltimore on Sunday morning and went out to the boat directly from the airport. Lauren and Mike met me there and we went out on the South River for a bit (picture here)  Unfortunately, clouds had moved in and the winds had kicked up - there were small craft warnings out. We went out in the Bay far enough to see the Bay Bridge and glimpse the Thomas Point Light at a distance but things were rocking and rolling. A nice lunch at Annapolis Seafood Market closed out a really FB weekend.

Savoring Silent Movies, Strolling Sites of Skirmishes that Saved the States, Supermodel Spousal Success

The movie "The Artist" was lacking in car chases, explosions, frontal nudity and Mike Tyson - oh, and not much speaking either, as it was mostly a silent move. So, not generally the type of movie I'd enjoy. But Friday Carole and I saw it with Jim and Jacqui at the restored Silver Theatre, a fitting venue for an old fashioned movie - and it was just an old fashioned, good movie. 

Friday night/Saturday morning snow and freezing rain moved in, totally obliterating the Washington DC area, turning the previous lush Maryland landscape into a frozen tundra and quickly leading to the return of wild buffalo to the area. My purchase of a generator back in December and my proactively testing it, gassing it up and moving it into the screened porch worked like a charm: despite ice and freezing rain, we never lost power.

Sunday Carl and I decided to hike locally and revisited the snow-covered Monocacy Battlefield trail system. Allegedly, back in 1864 there was a big battle here that the North won which save the Union. I dunno - the "saved the Union" thing is sorta like "world's hottest coffee:" claimed a lot but hard to prove. One interesting historical tidbit is that agents of the B&O railroad apparently first learned of General Jubal Early's troop movements and told their CEO, who told Union Major General Lew Wallace, who mobilized the troops early enough to defeat Early. Sort of a 150 year old example of private industry doing a better job of military intelligence than the military...

On the western side of the battlefield areas, the trail system loops along the Monocacy River, through farmland and then into the woods. The four mile or so loop is pretty easy hiking and in the snow you can see an amazing amount of deer tracks - since around here the only predator deer have are automobiles, this is a big safety zone right next to I-270 for them. The trail then heads up to small ridge for a decent bit of climbing and then back down to farm level. You come out of the woods at the old (1850's vintage, old for the US anyway) Worthington Farm house, with its purty porch with the sky blue ceiling. 

Later that day we watched the end of the exciting Ravens/Patriots NFC championship game, where the Ravens missed a chance to tie the game with a field goal at the end and Giselle Bundchen's husband got rewarded with yet another trip to the Superbowl...

Winter Arrives, Oella Opens, Meeting Meat Killers

Well, April did not last long - the climate jumped to early February this past weekend. Which I guess meant the Super Bowl should have been played yesterday, so apparently the Baltimore Ravens are now Super Bowl champs, having defeated some team from Houston.

Friday night was a Biker Chicks birthday dinner for vegetarian Sue, so we enjoyed a fine meal at Andie's house made from the many parts of a pine tree that are edible. I'm not a big fan of asparagus, or of cream soups, but Christine's cream o' asparagus cream soup was the least disgusting I've ever tasted. I ate as much as I could without going all Exorcist all over anyone and then when Christine wasn't looking I tried to sneak my bowl into the kitchen - but the eyes in the back of those Biker Chicks' heads apparently work even when they are talking a mile a minute and apparently I was busted.

The below 0 degrees C temperatures did put the ixnay on ikingbay outdoors the next day, so I did a sweaty indoor spin class instead. That night Carole, Lauren and I went to Sage for yet another vegetarian meal, but I made sure there wasn't an asparagus in sight. I avoided temptation to order anything from the menu in quotes: I've found in the past that "chicken," "cheese" and "tasty" on a vegetarian menu generally mean "tofu," "tofu" and "you don't want to know/Exorcist warning."

Sunday am Carl and I decided to brave the temperature and hike around Oella, MD and explore some extensions to the standard 4 mile loop. We took a side trail to Banneker Park, then had to do some road walking where we passed a small butcher shop with a very honest sign - it is not often anyone admits they actually kill the animals before they sell the meat to us. With all that vegetarian food in me, I tried to buy some raw meat to gnaw on but the Treuthys don't open on Sunday. We wandered around through Upper Oella Heights until we found our way back to the old Oella Mill Race Trail and headed upstream along the Patapsco.

They blew up the old dam here a few years ago and are now working on replacing the crumbling bridge over Route 40, which appears to have made Carl quite grumpy. However, all that construction meant there was a temporary bridge over the Patapsco River which we could have trespassed on to get to the other side of the River and walk back along the rail road tracks to make a loop, but that would have been illegal.

As we walked along the railroad tracks on the other side of the River, we had a nice view of the tunnel. This is an active railroad track so we would never walk on the tracks, even though some odd optical illusion makes this shot appear to be taken from on the tracks - the cold weather does funny things to frames of reference. 

From there it was a few miles of crunching on the railroad trail ballast back to the picturesque town of Ellicott City, where I just missed taking a full picture of a giant thumb that floated across the street - I only got a piece of it, as you can see. While Carl's fakakta GPS claimed we had done a 7.2 mile loop, my more accurate internal odometer says we added about 2 miles to the standard hike to reach about 6 miles.