Biking and Hiking and Kayaking: Be Careful Out There

Sweating in Seaford, Sabotaging Susan, Sudsy Shower Scene

As that great philosopher, Roseanne Roseannadanna said "Its always something." Between dealing with trees falling on my house and work travel, I haven't spent a lot of time on the water this year. It figures - I eagerly await a brand new boat all winter and when it finally gets here, just not enough time to get out on it. I think last year by this time I had done two or three Wye Island paddles, this year not one.

So, the original goal this year was to do the Blackburn race in Massachusetts, but I haven't spent enough time in rougher water in the Marlin to be ready for that. That same weekend is the Nanticoke River Challenge in Seaford, DE - a 7.5 mile flatwater race that I have never done before. Since my local training paddle is 8 miles on Rocky Gorge reservoir, the distance was about right, too. Off to Seaford I went.

Mapquest said it was a 105 mile trip, so I had the Marlin and associated paddling paraphernalia on the truck and was on my way by 0700. After the traditional stop for the pre-race 7-11 coffee and a muffin, I was going over the Bay Bridge by 0800 on what looked to be a hot and sunny day with minimal breeze. I hit just a smidgen of Rt. 13 traffic just north of Seaford, as all those Delaware and New Jersey people were heading to the Maryland beaches, while the MD people were heading to the DE and NJ beaches. I guess $4 gasoline hasn't had that big of an impact yet - there were RVs galore, and of course I was doing 210 round trip miles of driving to paddle 7.5...

I pulled into the non-descript launching area and many of the usual people and boats where there. Susan Ladyjustice and friend were doing a tandem racing kayak, looking like Satanic Doublemint twins in their matching red outfits. Jeff Pringle (or what is left of him, anyway - he has apparently been making "healthy choices one day at a time" and is now positively waif-like) was there in his maroon Millennium and we bemoaned the fact that we wouldn't be repeating our close race from last year's Broadkill since I had moved up to a faster boat. Holm and Melissa Schmidt were also there - they have completed the move from South Carolina and are now living in Pennsylvania in a town that I guess was founded by aging liberals - Lake Mock-on-Nixon.

A number of other familiar faces were there with impossibly narrow racing boats, along with a lot of sea kayaks and vac-u-form rec boats. One thing that is unique about this race is that it seems to attract a large number of much older paddlers - many of whom seem to believe cigarette smoking is part of of a good paddling training regime. One guy was very proud that this would be the first year where he didn't actually smoke during the race - he would normally go through half a pack of cigarettes as he paddled along.

The put-in is only about 10 feet wide so there was a logjam to get out on the water but with a minimum of fuss we all got over to the starting line, where there was plenty of fuss. The tide was going out, and the river is not very wide at that point, so there there was a decent current. Twenty five or so boats jammed together trying to stay in place was not a pretty sight. After a few minutes of back paddling and boat bumping, we all finally grumbled at the starting guy "Just say go already!" and he did - which lead to a lot more boat bumping and wild thrashing about. Once the spray cleared and I avoided some of the wildly swerving rec boats, Holm was already almost out of sight.

The Nanticoke is a very twisty and scenic river, edged by lily pads and houses. On this section it is rarely even 100 feet wide, usually less than 50, and there is rarely more than a few hundred yards that is straight. I just started paddling at what felt like a reasonable pace and a pod of four boats formed: two women in a racing canoe, Susan and friend in the racing tandem kayak, a guy in an Epic and me. I figured they all had done this race before and knew the river, so I stayed behind to see what lines they would take around the bends in the Nanticoke. Or maybe I was just hypnotized by the syncopated paddling of Susan and partner in their matching red striped tops and red hats.

In any event, everyone took different approaches. The canoe women seemed to take each turn differently but they were so fast they pulled away. The guy in the Epic hugged every inner shore, just about scraping the lily pads. The Syncopated Satanettes seemed to swing wide on most turns as if looking for deep water. So, I did what I usually do and just generally stayed in the middle of the river - I'm really not much for tactics. I had worn my Garmin Forerunner and heart rate monitor to gauge how hard I could push it but as I looked down I noticed in the thrashing and splashing at the start I hadn't turned it on and once I did the display mode was such that the heart rate display was microscopic and even with my fancy new glasses I couldn't see it anyway.

It was hot out, but after the first 10 minutes or so I got in rhythm and felt pretty comfortable. The guy in the Epic asked me what race class I was in, so I thought "aha, he is racing me" so I decided that would be the race within in the race for me. There are something like 24 different categories, I actually had no idea what class I was in - maybe "name ends in a vowel, can't ever figure out how to use a Camelbak, under 55"? As the river narrowed, he pulled in front of the Doublemint Devilettes and I drafted them for a bit, then tried getting on their wake like we had practiced at Lake Anna, but a couple of skinny women in a skinny racing kayak didn't seem to have any wake that I could notice.

Holm and the faster boats came by on the return, so I knew we were getting close to the turn-around. Susan's paddling partner suggested I sprint around them or else I would have to wait out their slow, barge-like buoy turn. I replied "you are making a big assumption about what my buoy turn looks like" but I sped up and got in front of them (sort of, anyway) just as the guy in the Epic started back paddling to make the turn around the buoy (well, inner tube.) I had to swing wide, and proceeded to cut across Susan's bow and force them to turn directly into the shallow water. Now, I didn't realize at the time that I had done that but when I told this to Jeff Pringle at the finish he offered to pay me $20 for having done so. If they were giving out scores on the buoy turn, even if I had bribed the Italian judge she wouldn't have given me higher than a 1.3.

On the way back I followed behind the guy in the Epic and he kept turning his head to see where I was. I kept working on my stroke, often times even getting two out of the five parts to be halfway decent for a few strokes in a row. With about 2 miles to go I was still feeling pretty strong, so I decided to focus on the "axe chopping" part of the stroke - really stabbing down and getting a good catch and a power stroke, and stop trying to think about hand height and elbow lift and foot push and torso twist and frammis angle. I passed the Epic guy and even increased my stroke rate for a while to get some distance. I could see the canoe women up ahead but never really closed the gap with them. The return trip was against the current and much more slog-like.

I figured the Epic guy was drafting me but I never looked around. I figured that if I was the one behind, I would start to surge when we came under the Rt. 13 bridge with less than 1/2 mile to go - so I stepped up the pace before the bridge. Then once I could see the dock where the finish line was I just gave it everything I had and just did my version of sprinting, which lead those watching from the shore to think a bee's nest had fallen into my boat. Holm and Melissa were paddling around after finishing and they started cheering me on: Holm "Go, you get this guy." Melissa: "Great job of sweating profusely, John!"

I finished about 15 or 20 seconds ahead of him, I think in something like 1:21 - I never did hear a time. The town had a firetruck spraying water up in the air onto the river, so I headed through that to cool off - until I realized that high pressure water sprayed up comes down really hard and really fast - it was like getting slapped in the head with a mop. I got out of the water, put the boat away, apologized to the Titian Twin Terrors for cutting them off at the turn around, and chatted for a bit. The awards ceremony wouldn't be for several hours, and the real world awaited, so I stopped by Susan's van to say goodbye and I walked into a scene right out of the movie "Wild Things": Susan had set up her camper's shower, basically a plastic bag full of water that heats up in the sun. Susan and the two canoe women were standing under it, soaping each other up. All they needed were prison outfits and it would have been every guy's fantasy. They were all fully clothed, by hot weather kayaking standards anyway, so it was sort of the PG version but a nice exit note to go out on. With that vision in my head, I hopped in the truck and headed for the inevitable Bay Bridge slowdown on the way home.

When I got back and looked at the heart rate data, I was pretty surprised to see how high my heart rate was during the race. I'm usually in the high 150's in these races, but it looks like I averaged 172, though that is high because I didn't have it on for the first .25 mile of the race. It wasn't until the last mile or so that I really felt like I was pushing it.

All in all, a fun race on a nice scenic river, very well organized by nice people. Googleicious map of the race course below.

The Hawk Was Out, My Friends

7:00 pm - I finish grilling some veggies on our deck for my daughter's high school graduation dinner. It has been hot in the DC area, currently up in the 90s.

7:30 pm - Seven of us are enjoying pasta, grilled veggies and salad in the fancy eating room as we start to hear thunder and see some rain.

8:00 pm - We notice the rain is now horizontal, the thunder is getting a tad louder. Oh, and a lot of twigs and branches are flying through the air as we look out into the street.

8:30 pm - Loud thunder and then the slight tinkle of breaking glass. I look out through the sliding glass doors in the back of the house to the screen porch/deck, and here is what I see:

Turns out one of the many 80 foot trees in our backyard had just had enough, and with a great big sigh it just toppled over, turning the deck and screen porch into a pile of cedar and Trex splinters. If it had just falled a few degrees to the right, no damage - but of course a few more degrees to the left and major house damage, so I can't complain.No injuries, just a bunch of omelet eyed teenagers when they saw the damage.

A few more pictures:

Women Don't Get It - At Least Not When It Is In Men's Underpants

If you work in technology, you have to be a Dilbert fan. Scott Adams has a new book out, and I took it along on a recent trip to Seattle and Colorado Springs. It is basically mostly reprints of many of his blog posts over the past few years - I guess the equivalent of newspaper columnists coming "back for more cash" by publishing compilations of their columns, though Adams did seem to freshen his up a bit. Many are funny, many are just sort of quirky, but one had me openly laughing while the rest of the plane was watching Jumper, a very lame movie.

When I got home I showed the piece to my wife and she looked at me like I was from Mars. I guess maybe if she showed me some Elayne Boosler piece on bra strap problems, maybe I'd have the same response - but I doubt it since I actually do seem to get Sex and The City.

(Sex and the City/Sarah Jessica Parker joke that was just on the Tony Kornheiser radio show: "Attending the Belmont horse race at Aqueduct Race Track in NY, Sarah Jessica Parker broke a heel in her Manolo Blahniks and had to be put down.")

The Dilbert blog archives don't go far enough back to link to the piece, but I've repeated it below from a post I found here:

Undergarment Dysfunction - by Scottt Adams 2006

Well, I am returning from my family vacation where -- much to my surprise -- I did not have ready access to the Internet in the middle of the ocean. It was barbaric, yet warm and often tasty. (Specifically, it was a Disney Cruise to the Western Caribbean with my family.) More on that later. For now, I apologize for the posting void and offer you some writing from just before the cruise...

Once in a while I experience a problem that I wonder if anyone else in the world has ever had. Yesterday was one of those times.

I was packing for a one week cruise with my new family and spied some briefs in a drawer that I hadn’t worn since I-don’t-know-when. So I figured I’d give them a go as part of my travel outfit. This turned out to be a big mistake.

For the benefit of the ladies reading this, let me explain a bit about the architecture of men’s briefs. We’re all about efficiency, so most traditional briefs have a flap in the front for quick extraction of your Johnson. That allows us to drink caffeinated beverages (from a cup, not our Johnson) right up to the last moment when it would be too late to make it to the restroom. Then it’s just zip-yank-wizzzzzz. It’s all good.

As a practical matter, I think most guys do the “pull down” move as opposed to snaking it through the flap hole. But in any event, the flap hole is there if you need it, perhaps more for tradition than anything else.

Now sometimes a pair of briefs – for reasons I cannot understand – have the most annoying characteristic you could ever imagine: In the course of normal walking and sitting, the wearer’s weinershnitzel ends up poking halfway through the flap hole like a turtle coming out of its shell. And before long, the most sensitive part of your body is wedged between your briefs and the harsh denim material of your pants.

As I walked toward the departure gate, I was choking Private Johnson and giving him a noogie at the same time. For those of you who have never experienced such a thing, let me say that it causes one to walk like Michael Jackson with a spastic toddler in his pants.

Anyway, the only solution is to do a subtle reach-down followed by a manual adjustment. This is especially challenging when you are surrounded on all sides by people who are waiting for flights and have nothing better to do than listen to iPods and watch for people grabbing their woo-hoos. I couldn’t wait to make it to the men’s room. That was about a block away. I had to do a mid-stride, reach-down, pecker-adjustment.

Luckily for me, I have the power of invisibility. As an unattractive middle-aged male of average size, no one notices me in a crowd unless I’m either on fire or wearing a suit made from the skin of an attractive 20-year old woman. For once, neither of those situations applied.

Now as you might imagine, pecker adjustment needs to be done quickly. If you linger, it looks like something else entirely. You want to maintain some degree of deniability when airport security starts questioning you.

Security: We have a report that you were pleasuring yourself at gate 17.

You: No, I swear, my Johnson had turtled out of my underpants and I was just adjusting my junk.

Security: You lingered.

You: I…I didn’t linger. I panicked. It wasn’t a smooth move, that’s all. I swear.

Security: We’ve got you on the security cameras. Do you want to stick with that story?

You: Okay, maybe I lingered a little. Force of habit.

Security: You may go. No one wants to touch you long enough to put on the cuffs.

Anyway, I went for the readjustment as I passed between the pizza place and the sundries store and I’m almost certain no one noticed. That was the good news. The bad news is that the briefs were repeat offenders. No sooner had I freed Farmer Johnson from the cotton clutches than my yoo-hoo snapped back into the trap like a deranged yo-yo. After about the third adjustment in five minutes, I lost all inhibitions. It’s amazing what you can get used to. I must have looked like I was panning for gold in there.

Anyway, my point is that I’m glad my last name isn’t Johnson. And I’m especially glad that my first name isn’t Harry

Memorable Memorial Day Mileage

I've never been a big "let's go drive somewhere over the three-day holiday weekend" kinda guy, and with gas at $4 per gallon, a stay-at-home Memorial day weekend sure makes a lot more sense anyway. The weather gods smiled on the Baltimore-Washington area for the holiday, with blue skies, temperatures in the 70s and not a drop of rain in sight.  The movie gods also cooperated, with some good opening night opportunities for evening activities.

I started the weekend with a hilly 32 mile bike ride through Montgomery and Howard counties, stopping at the new "House of Flavors" in Highland for an expensive coffee and a bagel. I did the Haviland Mill hill both ways for my first granny gear test of the year - I could do the hills in 3rd gear, so I'm starting out the bicycling year a little bit ahead of last year anyway. Though, 7 miles an hour isn't much faster than 5 mph. This route passes by about 7 different coffee shops (only one of them a Starbucks) so some day I will map out a tour de java where every 7 miles or so you get another jolt of caffeine.

I followed that up with an 8 mile kayak training run on Rocky Gorge Reservoir, where I concentrated on trying to do every stroke the right way. Lots of herons and turtles out, and the one bald eagle, to watch me as I tried to keep both hands high, both upper arms bent, both hips rotating, both lower arms straight, both paddles fully in the water - oh, and sit up, and forcibly stab the paddle in the water, too. I made some progress - without really trying to push it, I got my standard time of 1:28 (5.5 mph average) down to 1:24 (5.8 mph). Maybe I will make some progress in doing less thrashing and more actual boat propulsion. That put me in a good frame of mind as Carole and I joined some friends to go see the new "Indiana Jones" movie (many thumbs up if your thumbs like Indiana Jones movies, which they probably do) and a really good dinner at the Aida Bistro in Columbia (many tongues up if you are one of those who eat.)

Sunday morning was the standard "bicycle with Carl" day and we decided to check on the Gwynns Fall Trail which had opened a new segment from the Park and Ride lot at I70 and the Baltimore Beltway. This is a very odd trail, mixing in new paved segments along the river with riding on abandoned roads with riding on dirt paths through the woods with riding on open heavily trafficked streets through urban Baltimore. It goes all the way down to the Inner Harbor, but we only did the northern, more rural part. The new northernmost section includes several switchbacks and lots of brand new landscaping - it will be a good looking trail section when that all matures.  About 5 miles in some fire trucks up on the road were spraying their fire hoses over the trail into the river, for some reason - this created a mini-waterfall that had us puzzled for  bit, but they stopped spraying as we sat there deciding what to do.

We went as far south as Carroll Park, home of the Mt. Clare mansion that dates from 1760. The Gwynns Falls route beyond that is basically mostly on streets, except for a few sections of paved path that get you under the Baltimore Beltway. It is a fun way to bike into Baltimore's Inner Harbor, if you are so inclined, but it ain't scenic - nice view of the Greyhound bus station, though. On the way back, we detoured to do the abandoned road section to beeyootiful Dickeysville, MD - a town that seems to have been isolated in time and remained unchanged for 100 years. Even though there is a tree down across the trail, it is well worth the 2 mile detour. We then headed back north and chugged back up those new switchbacks, for a ride total just shy of 20 miles. You can stretch this out to about 35 miles round trip if you go all the way to the southern end.

Later that night, Carole and I (along with Jim and Jacquie) did another dinner and a movie night, seeing "Son of Rambow", a weird British movie. Half a thumb up, if you like oddball movies with lots of kid actors with British accents using all kinds of British slang as they do all kinds of things you hope your kids never do.

The next day it was back to paddling. Jerry and Marie had mapped out a paddle on the Monocacy River, starting at a launch ramp north of Frederick, MD (essentially in the parking lot of a WalMart!) and ending at at Pinecliff Park, 6.7 miles downstream. With all the rain we've had in May, the river flow was about 50% above normal which gave us a nice downstream assist. We saw lots of herons and other birds, and one river otter - a first for most of us. The river is largely isolated from development, but you do go past the discharges from a few water treatment plants and you get to experience that nice minty fresh smell. At this water level you hit a few small rapids, probably Class I at best, which added a bit of fun. I lead the way through many of them and cleverly lead Carole and me to run aground at one point after passing under a bridge. However, we quickly moved on and enjoyed a nice float, er paddle down the river. A quick (but huge) bite to eat at the breakfast buffet at the Four Seasons in Mt. Airy, and a quick viewing of the fancy bicycles at the Mt. Airy Bicycles shop and a very nice Memorial Day weekend drew to a close.

The Googlefied map of the paddle:

More Paddle Stroke Analysis

This series of pictures are captures from a video taken at Lake Anna during the race training days and show Brian (grey shirt), Holm (blue shirt) and me (white shirt) at similar points in a forward paddling stroke. The set of three above show us all just at the start of getting the left blade in the water. I look OK compared to Holm, but I think he has actual torso rotation to the right, so his paddle angle is higher and the blade is going in closer to the boat. I think I'm also leaning a bit too far forward and not sitting upgright enough, plus my shoulder looks higher with my forearm less vertical than Holm's. Brian looks like he has rotated around but compared to Holm, his hand is way higher - above his head. I think Brian is just a split-second earlier in the stroke, as his paddle is less in the water than Holms, so that explains most of the difference.

The pictures below show the end of that stroke, with the three paddlers just at the point where we are taking our paddles out of the water on the left. Here the differences are much more noticeable - Holm and Brian have rotated so much to the left that their right paddle blades are completely clear of the left side of the boats and the paddle shafts are almost parallel to their boats. My right paddle blade is still over the center of my boat - you can see I only have shoulder rotation (not torso) and no way to get the paddle entirely to the left of the kayak. I think a lot of this is due to the fact that I'm still in "sea kayaker" position with my thighs locked in under the thigh braces (vs. in knees up position) but so was Brian - his knee injury meant he wasn't really able to push with his feet to get better rotation either. I just have to focus on using abs/obliques to twist and not just shoulder/lats. More to work on - its always something.