Carp::croak()

I went kayaking after work today on Irondequoit Creek. The carp were mating, and there were lots of dead ones floating around, thus my little perl joke in the title.

It was a great day to blow off work a bit early, and Rob and I went upstream from Bay Creek Paddling Center up just past the Elison Park dog beach. I was pretty tired on the way back, and it didn’t help that the wind shifted around and got cold, so we ended up with headwinds in both directions. According to the thermometer in my car, the temperature dropped about 10 degrees in the course of the hour and a half paddle, although it felt like the temperature change happened all at once when the wind shifted.

The weir was a bit of a challenge, but nothing like it had been last time I took a look at it. I nearly dug a rail under, and was grateful for my spray skirt. Rob took about three tries, but mostly because he tried hitting it from one side or the other instead of coming right up the middle.

A couple of times we saw a bird that at first we thought was some sort of Loon because it was so low in the water, but it had no white markings, only black, with a bit of red or orange near the base of the beak. When it flew, we could see very long pointy wings. And when it swam it held its beak up at a 45 degree angle to the water, rather than parallel like a Loon does. I guessed it was a Cormorant, and after looking it up, I’m sure of it.

We also saw lots of geese. At one point, we heard a lot of honking up ahead, and as we rounded the corner this goose left the shore and paddled out in front of us, and did a bit of a fake take-off, presumably to try to lead us away from his nest. But this annoyed another goose, who then flew into the first one and attacked him until they both flew off.

Lots of people and dogs in the dog park, including two people who kept asking us all sorts of questions about paddling and seemed put out that we continued paddling instead of stopping to talk after we’d answered a couple. And one canoe coming upstream just as we’d flushed the Cormorant downstream for the last time. They asked us what the bird was, I said Cormorant, and the woman in the front of the canoe said “See, I told you” to the man in the back.

Lots of fun.

Meta-x psychoanalyze-pinhead

There’s something wrong. I don’t know what it is. All I know is that in the course of this week, I’ve blown up at the pilots on rec.aviation.piloting for telling lies about Al Gore[1], and then had an even bigger blow up at my best friends in the world on a couple of mailing lists. I’m not just talking about you know, some amusing list that some people read once or twice a day, I’m talking about lists that basically my life revolves around. I read these lists first thing when I wake up in the morning, last thing before I go to be at night, I carry a Treo with a data plan and an imap mail reader so I can read it when I’m walking to the bathroom or at lunch, in business meetings, and during any lull in conversation or any down time at all. I hate to go more than a few minutes between my fixes. Yes, I’m obsessed. Probably in a not very healthy way.
Continue reading “Meta-x psychoanalyze-pinhead”

Blow off work, go paddling, good times

We knew that today was going to be an amazing day – sunny, temps in the mid 70s, so Rob and I decided to blow off work and go paddling. And we planned it in advance, so we invited the rest of the Huggers Ski Club to go with us, and 5 or 6 others accepted the invitation.

We went somewhere new for me, Black Creek. The put-in is about half way between the Rochester Flying Club tie downs and Vicki’s work at RIT. And the creek runs very close under the approach path for runway 4 at Greater Rochester International Airport. Runway 4 was in use, so every few minutes our conversation was interrupted by a low flying aircraft. Not that I’m complaining, mind.

The river was pretty high, and it had flooded a lot of land, making route finding fun and interesting. Right from the start it we ended up taking wrong turns several times. Even more exciting was near the beginning there was a bridge where the water was so high I had to lie back as flat as I could on the back coaming of the kayak and paddle like that. One or two people just shipped their paddles and pushed themselves along the top of the arch. At another point there was a bit of shallow stream with a strong current coming over it but a tree lying across it making it impossible to paddle, but there was a much longer deep channel. I paddled ahead a few hundred metres and ended up on the other side of the same tree, telling the stragglers where they had to go.

In a lot of ways, it reminded me of some of the times Mom and I paddled through the Minnesing Swamp in spring time.

I couldn’t tell you how far we went, because of all the twists and turns and retracing our steps. But it was a lot of fun, and I think I’ve got a hell of a sun burn to show for it.