NEWFAZE

Carpe diem

Posted on April 2, 2013 by Jay McLaughlin

2 April, 2013 Carpe Diem

“Carpe diem” (“Seize the day”) relates to the Jim Morrison quote I used in my last post. “No ‘Eternal Reward’ will forgive us now for wasting the dawn.” Seizing the day is how we avoid “wasting the dawn.” April 1, 2013 here in Richmond, VA was Spectacular with a capital S. Due to unexpected juggling of my schedule I was able to enjoy the fine morning at Pony Pasture with Turner and Mackey. Not the dawn (I wasn’t quite that motivated) but a nice part of the morning.

My last blog post was on Monday, March 25. Although some blog viewers were not heartbroken, that post didn’t have any pictures of enormous diesel locomotives. One old caboose and an old railroad sign, but no locomotives. Two days later I was at the CSX tracks in Richmond with an old buddy and we got to see a very large and very dirty 6,000 HP CSX locomotive. CSX calls this a “CW60AC.” The manufacturer (GE Transportation) calls it an AC6000CW. This time of year they’re still running through a lot of sloppy rain and snow; this one is very messy:

CW60AC, a.k.a. AC6000CW

One day later (sorry to jump around) I was walking the dogs. It was clear and bright and the moon was about to be full (officially on Wednesday, March 27 at 5:28 AM). So Tuesday night when we got in from our walk I pointed the camera up and took this picture:

The moon 8 hours before being “officially” full (ps with a few branches in the lower left)

Anyway. Now for the stunning first day of April at Pony Pasture. A day meant to be seized if ever there was one. We were tipped off about the beauty when we went in the driveway to get in the car.

The sight is nice – but the smell is indescribable

You know it’s a spectacular day when the weeds look like they’re smiling:

A smiling dandelion

So we finally stopped staring at the yard and got to the river. Where I was surprised to see a pair of buffleheads – still on the upper James River in April! I thought this was a straggling pair staying late for the season. Until we walked down to the other end of the park and saw a flock of at least fifty. I don’t know what this means about climate change. I suspect it’s just a random seasonal variation within the realm of statistical probability. I never get tired of them:

Handsome pair of buffleheads (ps male on the left, female at right)

These guys seem a little early too. Notice how he (perhaps she) has his back feet tucked into his shell. Probably still a bit cool down there. He was not budging from his warm perch in the sun.

First turtle (for me) of 2013

When there are flowers in my driveway, you can bet there are flowers at the river. I think (I am uncertain) this is an early bluebell:

Early Bluebell

I took a pretty (to me) closeup of a water droplet suspended on a leaf. It looks like a diamond, and diamonds are forever, but this I’m sure evaporated in an hour. Which is why you have to carpe the heck out of each diem:

This particular diamond is not forever. So it’s TRULY priceless! (carpe diem!)

Violets are everywhere, including at PP:

So many colors

I see these flowers early each spring and I’m never certain what they are, other than delicate and graceful:

Delicate and graceful

Each year I notice yellow flowers first: dandelions, daffodils and forsythias. There are also big, bright clumps of these everywhere at PP. That turtle was moving slow because we haven’t yet had an extended period of warmth. Bugs are moving slow too; I didn’t even notice this one until I put it on the monitor. See it on top of the top petal?:

BRIGHT yellow flower with insect inspecting

Well. “All good things gotta’ come to an end”. [Jim Stafford, Wildwood Weed, 1974] [click that link for a great video, by the way]. “All good things gotta’ come to an end” is THE reason to carpe each and every diem. As we were leaving the park a friend of ours named Darryl was there with his superb dog Blackie. We asked him (Darryl, not Blackie) if he would be kind enough to take our picture. That’s Blackie walking by on the right. Darryl, I spelled your name phonetically – sorry if I erred – please correct me next time you see me at the river. And thanks for the picture! Have a great day everybody,

Jay

PP with a Posse of Pooches

Posted in Dogs, Flowers, Fun, People, Rivers, Smiles (including "dog smiles"!), Trains | Tagged Dogs, Flowers, Fun, nature, outdoors, People, pictures of the moon, Rivers, Smiles - human AND dog smiles!, transportation | Leave a comment

Unwasted dawns – Maple Festival 2013 and more

Posted on March 25, 2013 by Jay McLaughlin

25 March, 2013 Unwasted dawns – Maple Festival 2013 and more

St. Patrick’s Day, the Maple Festival, other spring rituals

I watched the sun rise in my rear view mirror as Jim Morrison and The Doors sang “…no ‘Eternal Reward’ will forgive us now for wasting the dawn.” (The Wasp (Texas Radio and the Big Beat), 1971). This particular dawn was not going to waste. I was on my way to pick up three of my nieces to attend the Highland Maple Festival in Monterey, VA for the sixth time in as many years. We arrived at The Highland Inn – “Pride of the Mountains” since 1904 – in time for breakfast, as usual. I cannot recommend it highly enough; it’s excellent every year. Casey (perhaps Kasey or KC) was our waitress for at least the second year in a row. She remembered us as soon as we sat down. She also took our picture:

Best travel and dining companions EVER!

She’s a great photographer. Of course with nieces like mine, all pictures look great. Another person took a picture of us in the lobby:

In the lobby

We’ve taken a picture by this sign each year:

Great food, even greater companions

We went to Duff’s Sugar House, also as we do every year; they make syrup the old-fashioned way. They tap the trees themselves, boil the sap over a wood fire, very little automation. Great tours too. There’s a pond outside that has a statue that catches my eye every year; I call her The Maple Syrup Fairy. Doesn’t she look serene?:

A picture of serenity

This old piece of John Deere farm equipment was near the pond. It’s a little bit difficult to read, but on the pedal near the center it says “John Deere – Moline, Ill”:

John Deere farm equipment – from a LONG time ago

On the way home we stopped at The Depot Grille in Staunton to meet Mom and our friend Liz for dinner. We stop there every year on the way home. Last year (and in years past) we ate dinner there with Mom and Dad. Before we went in the restaurant this time we met Mom and Liz in the adjacent Rachel’s Quilt Patch. If you click that link, at the top left of the web site you’ll see a handsome cat. Scroll down a little and you’ll see three pretty ladies. Not as pretty as my nieces, but pretty. The one on the left in the pink top was curled up in a chair with the cat. When I asked her the cat’s name she said “Sweet Blue Eyes!” It was a fun place. The food was great next door as well.

There’s a neat caboose outside of The Depot Grille (two, really). Here’s one:

Old caboose

And a sign from the Norfolk and Western Railroad inside, the railroad that ran past the cabin when we were growing up:

Old Norfolk & Western sign

It’s a sure sign the seasons are changing at my house when I have my first hyacinths and my last load of firewood in the driveway at the same time. I took this picture on the first full day of Spring:

The sight in my driveway at the end of winter/beginning of spring

I didn’t waste the dawn Tuesday either. The dogs and I got to the river early and I got this lucky shot of a flying female bufflehead. It was a gray, cold day and she’s very beautiful:

Isn’t she gorgeous?

In the afternoon – same day – I found myself with some free time and made my first trip to Colonial Shooting Academy on West Broad Street. For those of you who don’t know, we did a lot of shooting growing up. Dad taught us to shoot and we got to do it very often at the cabin. I felt like I was reconnecting with a part of myself that’s very close to Dad. Here’s what it looks like:

Colonial Shooting Academy

I hadn’t shot much in a long time but it was fun. This was a pistol target I shot. I’m glad Dad’s not here to see this awful group! But I enjoyed myself immensely, and that would be plenty for him:

Lack of practice makes imperfect. But I had fun!

I’ve also gotten a few more nice images of the moon on these cold, clear late-winter and early spring evenings. I stood in my driveway and pointed the camera up and took this one:

The moon from my driveway. So beautiful.

Many of you (more all the time, fortunately!) know my friend Evie. You may also know she is a blogger. Look here to see her blog: The Hippest Part of Nowhere

Enjoy this early spring. Although it’s very snowy here in Richmond! Have a great day,

Jay

Posted in Flowers, Fun, People, Rivers, Smiles (including "dog smiles"!), Trains | Tagged nature, outdoors, transportation | 2 Comments

Bliss

Posted on March 12, 2013 by Jay McLaughlin

12 March, 2013 Bliss

I don’t have a specific topic. But after an extended non-blogging interval I of course have a large pile of pictures. A large digital pile. Spring will be popping any day now – really it already is – so I will have tons of pictures. And how hard can it be to write about bliss.

I’ve put off blogging until I got some unpleasant (non-blissful) accounting business out-of-the-way. Fortunately I have a pleasant accountant! It was just boring stuff that I don’t excel at and avoid. So I told myself I couldn’t blog (a favorite activity) until I got it all done. One night while lying awake thinking about why I was avoiding this simple activity, I was thinking about mindfulness. Thinking about mindfulness is not being mindful, by the way. Anyway, I was thinking of the expression “ignorance is bliss” and realized mindfulness – the opposite of ignorance – is also bliss.

Fortunately or unfortunately I fell asleep. Fortunately – at least from my point of view – I now have an opportunity to post a few of the pictures I’ve enjoyed taking. And I’ll post again soon.

Also vaguely on this subject, I’ve just hit the two-year mark since my first blog post. An anniversary meaningless to all except me, but I’m glad I’ve kept the blog up and it’s as much fun as when I began. My first post was March 2, 2011, “Rivers are always different and always perfect.” No pictures! I think that won’t happen again.

My last post was on February 2! Over a month ago! It’s great to be back.

I’ve gotten two neat pictures of the moon. One in daylight when I was with my friend at Bryan Park. This was on Monday, February 18 at 4:15 PM. At that point it was “waxing gibbous”, about eight days old, about ⅔ illuminated. Here’s the picture:

Waxing gibbous moon, February 18, 2013, Bryan Park, Richmond, VA

Precisely seven days later I walked out on my front stoop in the evening just as the full moon was rising:

Full moon, from my front porch (Richmond, VA), February 25, 2013

Full moon, February 25, 2013, from my front porch (Richmond, VA),

Fun pictures to take – I’ve never taken a picture of the moon before.

I got a pretty picture of the sun last month too. Evie was leaving early for a trip so I got up too and went down to the river early like I used to. Just after sunrise I took this picture at Pony Pasture:

Pony Pasture sunrise – hard to beat.

I was at the river later and it was that beautiful, or maybe more. I ran into a friend who asked if I’d been to see the Chihuly exhibit at the Virginia Museum. I said no – is it more beautiful than this? I may be a Philistine (some would say there’s no question about it) but I don’t tire of the river.

Only a day or two later – still in February – I took this picture of a daffodil at Pony Pasture. Spring is springing:

February daffodil at Pony Pasture

I suspect there will be lots of baby mallards soon. I saw this little six-pack in a canal at PP last week. Later I saw a ten pack, but didn’t get a picture! Five pair of mallards! Wikipedia says each female lays between 8 and 13 eggs, so I’m guessing there will be a whole lot of babies down there soon. Unless there’s a massive flood or a hungry fox takes up residence, but that river is just loaded with all types of waterfowl right now.

Six pack of mallards (soon to become a couple of cases)

When we got out of the car at PP that morning I saw my favorite (and central VA’s most ubiquitous) weed on the edge of the parking lot. I understand why people want to get rid of these and I am even unfond of them in my own yard (where they grow like… weeds) but they’re so beautiful:

Beautiful

I saw a grebe (perhaps a cormorant) that morning at PP as well. I took some reasonable pictures, but the light and the water were unattractive and made an already somewhat homely bird look even homelier. It’s possible I’ll still get a picture of one in better light and put it up.

I get decent bird pictures around my house from time to time, mainly on my feeders. I am unfond of taking pictures of birds on the feeder because it’s a little unnatural, but the birds are pretty. And I bought the feeders and seed with a little of the money dad left me, since he loved to feed birds. It always reminds me of him. Dad’s favorite songbird (by far) was the Eastern Bluebird (Sialia sialis). I see them at the river and on bike rides but I haven’t gotten a picture – yet. When I do, it will go up here. Dad and mom also both love Carolina Wrens (Thryothorus ludovicianus). They’re quite common and I’ve even managed to get a picture of one in the wild at PP. Mom and dad have wreaths on the front door of their house and wrens build nests in the wreaths and even lay eggs! This one was on my back feeder:

Carolina wren

In my yard I also have Juncos (a few), nuthatches (occasionally), tufted titmice (many), and chickadees (I’m almost overrun). Of course I have crows and cardinals and robins and mockingbirds and blue jays but I enjoy the little songbirds most. I’ve also recently seen at my feeder for the first time a rufous-sided towhee, but I was too slow to photograph it. Maybe in a future post. These little ones were all birds that figured prominently in my youth, especially chickadees and especially at the cabin.

Forgive me if I repeat myself – it’s possible I’ve told this story in a previous blog post. But we spent so many great winters at the cabin. It was in the mountains and would snow like mad. My mom just gave me some old pictures; I’ll put them up soon. But we had a front porch that spanned the 24 foot width of the cabin and extended eight feet in front. Two huge sliding glass doors opened out onto it and woods came right up to it. In the snow – and at all other times – we’d put out lots of bird seed. We could stand inside in our shorts and t-shirts by the blazing woodstove and look out at the birds eating a foot from our faces. I hunted a lot and had lots of warm clothes. Once I got bundled up and put bird seed in my gloved hand and went out there and stood in snow with my arm extended. I’d hardly begun to get cold when a bold and hungry chickadee landed on my glove and began gobbling sunflower seeds. I’ll put up a chickadee picture soon. It’s been harder than I thought to photograph them at the river but they’re a dime a dozen at my bird feeders. Ever since that one literally ate out of my hand I’ve had a soft spot for them. I have a beautiful picture of one hanging on my wall that my friend Lynda Richardson took.

The seed in my yard attracts a lot of white-throated sparrows:

White-throated sparrow

Meanwhile (perhaps inevitably) back at Pony Pasture, I saw a new (to me) duck last week. It was a ring neck duck, a very handsome little guy:

Ring-necked duck

Pony Pasture, to my great delight, is left for the most part in its natural state. But there’s a neat plaque on a bench there:

A sentiment I enjoy

As a general rule I enjoy freshwater more than salt water, and I enjoy flowing water (rivers and creeks) more than I enjoy still water (ponds and lakes). But I like being near any body of water, and my friend Ethan and I hike at Bryan Park regularly. A nice creek flows through it and it has some beautiful ponds. Yesterday we took a long hike through the park and just as we got to the car we spotted a great blue heron wading around in the mud. We sat on a bench and it stood still while we practiced taking a few pictures. It certainly appears to be paying close attention:

Heron eye. And head and partial beak.

Anyway. I hope your early spring (and final week of winter) is enjoyable. Have a great day,

Jay

Wait – this just in – I was going through other pictures and found a chickadee photograph I took at Pony Pasture. It’s a non-traditional chickadee picture. They’re at their most distinctive from the side, where their black and white heads stand out clearly. And there are branches in the way here – the bane of wildlife photographers, I’m learning. But it’s still cute. And I like the blue-sky background:

Chickadee from below

Also (why not) I have yet another bufflehead picture. I took one at Bryan Park yesterday, but this little flock was bobbing on the river last week. I thought they’d have headed for their summer grounds by now but they’re still out in large numbers:

More buffleheads at Pony Pasture

Posted in Flowers, Fun, Rivers | Tagged bryan park, nature, outdoors, pictures of the moon, waxing gibbous moon | 8 Comments

Groundhog Day!

Posted on February 2, 2013 by Jay McLaughlin

2 February, 2013 Groundhog Day!

Seven years ago this morning, Ivory and Nicky and I left before dawn to drive to the Yukon Territory in northwest Canada. We were volunteering at the 2006 Yukon Quest. From the time I pulled out of my driveway that February morning until the time I parked here again five weeks later, I drove well over 10,000 miles. To get to Whitehorse, you drive to Seattle, then turn right and drive another 2,000 miles. My brother Shane made a neat map of the trip. Take a look at our route here: Yukon Trip, 2006 . The drive to the Yukon took around ten days (five to Seattle and five from Seattle to the Yukon). I stayed for about two weeks in the Yukon, and the trip back took ten more days. Including staying a couple of days with my friend Nate in Longview, WA and a couple of days with my friends Marni and Jason and Zane in Portland, OR.

It occurs to me that some readers may have never met Ivory and Nicky. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they’re dogs. My first two. They’ve both been gone for many years. Someone, probably my friend Pat, took a picture of the three of us on the banks of the Yukon River just as we arrived in Whitehorse. Ivory is behind me and Nicky is on his hind legs. He spent a lot of his waking hours on his hind legs – ever an elegant and graceful dancer. I should have learned from him!:

Welcome to the Yukon!

If you look at the blog you’ll see a lot more pictures of both of them.

I’ll put a link to the blog from that trip here; go through it at your leisure if you find it interesting. The link here is mid-blog, on a day that was particularly fun. But the whole thing was fun. A non-random post, from February 17, 2006:
“If the reward for virtuous living…”

Two tips for navigating this blog. There are many pictures. The first post is from December of 2005 and it ends in March of 2007 after 75 posts. But 45 of the 75 posts are from February of 2006, beginning seven years ago today. Blog tips:
1. Click on the pictures (in the blog); they get a lot bigger
2. At the bottom of each post is a link that says “Newer Post” or “Older Post”; click on those links to move forward and backward. Or “Home” to go to the beginning (really the end) of the blog.

I am a dedicated nostalgiaphobe; the alleged good old days were no better than today. There’s a reason we call it “The Present.” But I learned a lot on that trip and I loved every minute. And I’m going to share a small sample of the more memorable experiences. There are two reasons for today’s post. One is that the 2013 Quest begins today in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Canada. Click this link to go to the Quest’s web site: Yukon Quest

The second reason for this post is that we left on Groundhog Day; it was February 2, 2006. Today is the seventh anniversary. In 2006 February 2 fell on a Thursday. The content on that seven year old blog is not as consistent as this one. The pictures aren’t great (except for a few) and neither is the writing but the experience was singular. Here’s the post from Day 1: Yukon Quest Blog, February 2, 2006

We left way before dawn that morning because I wanted to drive a long way the first day. Of course we headed first for my favorite Starbucks (River Road 2, 5001 Huguenot Road, Richmond, VA) to fuel up. Imagine my surprise when my old friend Cris was waiting for me there in the dark – I didn’t even know he was coming! A few minutes later my friend Jim, a fellow Pony Pasture dog walker also showed up to see me off! What a great way to start a great trip.

Out of the 44 February posts, there are a lot of pictures – probably a hundred or so. A few are good. I like this one of Ivory and Nicky and me talking with a little knot of people in downtown Whitehorse. Notice Nicky flying around. I can tell that’s a really cold day by the way I’m dressed. We met so, so many nice people. Someone from the race HQ had followed our blog as we crossed the US and drove north through British Columbia. Shortly following our arrival in Whitehorse I was taking Ivory and Nicky for a walk. A person walked out of a building and says “Ivory! Nicky! Welcome to the Yukon!” And people say southern hospitality is great. There are nice people everywhere:

Happy people and dogs on the banks of the Yukon River – Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Canada

I of course enjoy wildlife, as you’re aware if you’ve watched this blog much. As we drove south out of Whitehorse, people told us to watch out for bison in the road. They’d just stand there. They regularly weigh 2,000 lb., as in one ton. I’d come around a corner in the car and see eyes reflected in the headlights and this:

Roadblocks!

We did the whole trip in my green 2001 Subaru Forester. It’s parked in my driveway as I type this; Turner and Mackey and I will take it to the river tomorrow morning. It’s got around 220,000 miles on it and is my “dog car” but it’s reliable and runs great. Which is why my “people car” is also a Subaru Forester, only a 2011 with considerably fewer miles. And considerably less dog hair.

There are a lot of pictures of that Forester on the yukonmutts blog. Many covered in snow. Here’s one in southern British Columbia, half a day north of Vancouver. That’s my friend Pat fixing a peanut butter sandwich on the hood of the car. Ivory is on top of the snow bank and Nicky is on the other side. Pat flew from Richmond to Vancouver and I picked him up at the Vancouver airport. He drove to Whitehorse with us – it took five days – and flew back to Richmond the day after we arrived. The car is clean and beautiful because I’d gotten an oil change at the Vancouver Subaru dealer and they washed it for me. Then followed my blog and commented on it! Great group of people. Great car too:

Excellent Subaru – my 2001 Forester in the southern Canadian Rockies

That was the beginning of our northward journey from Vancouver to Whitehorse. It’s on the yukonmutts blog (a random post from that blog: yukonmutts.blogspot.com).

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I began this blog post then realized the whole post, more or less, is in that six-year-old yukonmutts blog. If you choose to flip through it. I see it’s only been a week since my last post on my current blog (the last post was Attics Of My Life) so I don’t have tons of new pictures. But I’ll get a couple in here. I’ve mentioned before there are just tons and tons of waterfowl at the river now – more than normal. And there’s normally a lot. Here is a pair of the most common; I just liked the pose. This is something Canada geese do a lot:

Honking Canada geese

I posted the next picture on facebook. I was trying to get a shot of a bufflehead and he began to take off. I snapped the shutter just as he began to fly. I like the pattern of the wake behind him, and the water droplets flying in the air. And his pink right foot:

Bufflehead taking off

I got a nice indirect lesson this week from one of the guys I work with. I hope you enjoy it too. Meanwhile, have a great day,

Jay

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That’s why they call it “The Present”

Believe me, I see the irony of including a story about “The Present” at the end of a blog post about a trip I took six years ago. But I had a little story pop up this week that I enjoyed. As some of you know, I spend a lot of time with people with disabilities. I take a buddy to the Y to swim every Friday; he’s a big guy with a big personality and he loves hamburgers. He doesn’t say much – almost nothing – but when he’s at the Y he says “hamburger!” a lot.

Everybody’s happy to see him at the Y. They’re happy to see him at Martin’s, at Starbucks, at the gas station, wherever we go. He’ll be twenty-four in July and we’ve been spending time together since he was eleven, so we’ve been a lot of places together. We have many common acquaintances. I saw one of our mutual friends at the Y this week and the guy asked me about him. Asked me about spending time with my buddy, what it was like, etc., because my buddy’s not as chatty as most of us. Doesn’t make a lot of small talk.

And as I talked with this guy at the Y – a guy I probably would never know if I didn’t bring in my old friend who says “hamburger!” a lot – it occurred to me why I enjoy the experience so much. Because in the thirteen years I’ve spent with this guy, in the thousands of hours we’ve been together, among the dozens of people we’ve interacted with, I have never – not once – heard a complaint. Not just from him – he never complains – but from the people we meet. Complete strangers and people we know well. No one ever says “boy this economy is awful” or “gosh gas is expensive” or “oh I wish it wasn’t so cold outside” or “my job sure is hard.” Never ever. And you can tell that stuff is just not even occurring to people when they meet him. They’re fully in the moment, fully present, just being themselves. Just like him. What a gift or, if you will, a present.

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Posted in Dogs, Endurance, Fun, People, Rivers, Smiles (including "dog smiles"!) | 7 Comments

Attics Of My Life

Posted on January 27, 2013 by Jay McLaughlin

27 January, 2013 Attics Of My Life

Apologies to Robert Hunter and Grateful Dead fans. This post is inspired by the title and concept of the song Attics of My Life, but follows it only in spirit. I think Robert Hunter wouldn’t mind. The video (if you click that link) is from a Berkeley Benefit show on 24 September, 1994.

I haven’t taken any pictures I love lately, but I’ve lucked out more than once. If you take enough pictures you get lucky occasionally. I was at Pony Pasture when the river flooded a little bit a few weeks ago. I took probably a dozen pictures of this heron; one came out relatively well:

Heron in a tree

Some of the flooding was from melted snow. The high water messed up some regular game trails and grazing areas. I saw two big does sprinting around near Charlie’s Bridge. They were really far away when I snapped this quick picture. I had to crop it way down to get this, which is why it’s so blurry. It’s still a neat picture:

Deer dashing through the park

When the weather is like this, I keep a fire going most of the time. Thanks to my friend Tim! This isn’t my current woodpile, but one I had a year or two ago. My current pile is about ⅔ the size of this:

I had the good fortune of finally meeting Evie’s mother and sister. Evie’s dad used to cut a lot of wood too. Unfortunately he passed away around ten years ago. Evelyn’s mother was kind enough to give me this superb poster:

“Every man looks at his woodpile with a kind of affection” – Henry David Thoreau

Speaking of lucky photographs I’ve taken. This morning (Sunday, 27 January, 2013) Turner and Mackey and I were hiking at Pony Pasture. There was a little bunch of ducks and geese way across the river paddling around feeding off the bottom. I took a few images because I hoped to get one I enjoyed. Sometimes I’m zoomed way in like this – this picture was taken at 140x zoom – and the image on the camera isn’t clear. It’s not until I get home and look on my computer that I see things I was unaware of. In this case, the little brown duck on the right. The big giant one is of course a Canada goose and the other one is an unmistakable male mallard. Certainly the two most common waterfowl in Virginia. After a closer look I saw that pretty little girl in the lower right. She’s a female Hooded Merganser (Lophodytes cucullatus). They’re not particularly rare, but I don’t often see them at Pony Pasture. And the males I’m sure if I see one I assume it’s a bufflehead. This time of year we have zillions of buffleheads and they’re not dissimilar. Here she is:

Female Hooded Merganser at lower right

Anyway. Speaking of Thoreau. And speaking of heating with wood. I was hiking at Pony Pasture a year or two ago and saw this written on a rock. Many of us associate this word (and this concept) with Thoreau:

A caption would only complicate things.

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Attics of My Life

I thought of “Attics of my Life” a while back as more odd fragments of my upbringing continued to drift up in my memory. I’ve been in my attic here (on Westbury Drive) (and in attics of other places I’ve lived) and always find neat old things. Things that stir up interesting old memories. My relationship with my father is still stirring up lots of memories in the figurative attics of my life. Some will disappear forever, like the stuff you left in the attic of that house you moved out of all those years ago. That stuff’s gone forever. It wasn’t real important anyway. But some will always be with me. Like that hooded merganser. The first thing that came to mind when I saw that picture this morning, inexplicably, was “hooded merganser.” Hooded mergansers haven’t been in the conversation of my life in decades. So I started looking them up and they looked nothing like the bird in the picture and I said oh well, I was wrong. But I was looking at pictures of males – which look like buffleheads. Nothing like that odd little brown duck. Several dead-ends later, I found a picture of a female hooded merganser – and there it was. Dad always knew a lot about birds, and in my most impressionable years, he collected hand carved duck decoys. And I guess somewhere in there I picked up that name. I like the way “hooded merganser” sounds – the way those five syllables unfold – and it just stuck there in my head for all these years. In the attic, you may say.

In the future I’ll write more about where I came from and where I am now, though I have zero idea where I’m headed. I have a lot of old attics. My mother and father and two brothers and two sisters are the foundation my life is built on. People who know me well have heard my say that the “big three” influences of my upbringing were “Camp, the cabin and Gonzaga.” On April 5 of 1988 I had my accident and spent five days in a coma and was given a second chance. With my family, Camp, the cabin and Gonzaga formed the foundation for what followed. Working for two years at Green Top. Finishing (finally) my BS in Psychology, then my MS in Rehabilitation Counseling. Ten years doing Animal Assisted Therapy at MCV, ten Ironman finishes. In 2006 a solo winter driving adventure with my dogs to the Yukon Territory in far northwestern Canada. To volunteer at a 1,000 mile sled dog race, the Yukon Quest. Starting my own business spending time with people with disabilities. Which has taught me as much as most of the other stuff combined.

The trajectory of my life is far steadier now than it’s ever been. I know from my own life history how much of an illusion that steadiness can be. But – the present feels great. A calm place to continue…

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Posted in Dogs, Rivers | Tagged nature, outdoors | 8 Comments

Terrific whistlers

Posted on January 13, 2013 by Jay McLaughlin

13 January, 2013 Terrific whistlers

My Dad was a terrific whistler. Much more important, he always knew that you were a terrific whistler too. Even if he’d never met you – even if you didn’t think you were a terrific whistler – my Dad just knew you were. Back to that after the pictures.

As I enjoy doing, I’ll post some pictures I’ve taken since my last post. Which was before Christmas – yikes! I’ll write some about Dad’s whistling at the end of this. To give you a heads up, whistling is a metaphor. First, enjoy (I hope) these pictures:

I’m hoping I can insert this video. I sent it to my mother and my siblings the night after Dad died. There was no text, just this video with the subject line “Another direct influence of Dad’s”

Dad got us started with woodstoves at our cabin when we grew up. And we all went on to have woodstoves in our homes. Kevin wrote back “That is a cool metaphor – lively, animated, brings warmth, pulls people to it.” Which Dad definitely did. I wrote back to what I’d been thinking that evening, the night after Dad died. I wrote “I’d gone out to turn the fire down for the night and, in the way of fires, I couldn’t look away for a long time. I thought about how much that came from Dad.”

My brothers and sisters and my Mom wrote Dad’s obituary and this was the final sentence: “Mike’s kindness, sense of humor, curiosity, love of reading, and love of animals lives on in his children and grandchildren, but we will still miss him dearly.”

Since a lot of this is a Dad-themed post, I’m re-posting a picture from two posts ago [Mostly pictures]. There’s a turtle picture in there my Dad would have loved. Dad was always fond of a poet named Ogden Nash. One poem Dad recited often went like this:

The Turtle
The turtle lives twixt plated decks
Which practically conceal its sex.
I think it clever of the turtle
In such a fix to be so fertile.

Dad would have loved this picture:

Twixt plated decks…

Anyway. My obligatory river picture – although it’s not an obligation. I just love to go to the river, and it’s impossible to take a bad picture. I took this one when Evelyn and I were there on Christmas Day:

We saw a squirrel up a tree as we were leaving a few days later. I never got a picture I really loved but I like the blue sky background and the bright sun. And the squirrel’s expression. Which I encourage the viewer to interpret:

Interpret this squirrel’s expression.

We had a nice New Year’s Day hike too. I didn’t get a ton of beautiful pictures but there was one colorful piece of fungus:

Colorful fungus

I don’t always know what’s popular in my posts (unless I get pictures of an eagle eating a catfish) but sometimes people just walk up to me and tell me things out of the blue. A couple of friends recently told me they like trains. Guy friends, of course. Some of us never grow out of this. I’m fortunate that my occupation allows me to look at lots of trains. And my natural curiosity (see the final sentence in my Dad’s obituary) pushes me to learn a little bit more about them. Of course there’s this cool thing called google that helps a lot if you’re the curious sort. This is a CSX ES44AH near Brown’s Island on January 2. Another ES44 right behind it, and 100 (more or less) loaded coal cars at 100 (approximately) tons apiece behind that:

GE ES44AH locomotive

My friend Ethan showed me a new spot at the river on Monday; I’d never seen it from here. It was interesting to look from this different angle at a different time of day. A little bit darker than I’m accustomed to:

Dark and pretty river

We hiked down a little and came to a sunnier area. Seagulls were enjoying (I presume) the sun. This one was looking quizzically – again, I presume – as we looked at him. Or her:

A quizzical seagull expression. Like the squirrel, difficult to interpret. An inscrutable seagull.

This is an unfavorite train picture. I like to take pictures “cab forward” and this is “hood forward.” But about ¾ (roughly) of CSX coal trains are pulled by GE locomotives and this is a GM locomotive, so why not. The locomotive is dirty and the light isn’t great but it’s out of the ordinary for what we see down there:

GE EMD60 locomotive

Anyway, I wanted to get a few pictures up to begin 2013. It’s hard to keep up the quality after getting those eagle pictures on my last post! But there’s always something rewarding at the river. And I hope you enjoy my little “terrific whistlers” blurb here; it’s been fun. I hope to put up another post soon! Until then, all best,

Jay

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Terrific whistlers

In J.D. Salinger’s 1951 book Catcher in the Rye, the main character was Holden Caulfield. He spoke about a former roommate named Harris Macklin. Caulfield spent lots of time describing how boring Harris Macklin was and all his bad habits. “He was one of the biggest bores I ever met” and “he had one of those very raspy voices” and “he never said anything you wanted to hear in the first place.” But Caulfield went on to say add “The sonuvabitch could whistle better than anybody I ever heard.” “He could take something very jazzy, like ‘Tin Roof Blues,’ and whistle it so nice and easy”. The paragraph ends with Caulfield (Salinger) saying “So I don’t know about bores. … They don’t hurt anybody, most of them, and maybe they’re secretly all terrific whistlers or something. Who the hell knows? Not me.”

Salinger was saying, and my father lived by this, that you can’t judge us by the face we show the world. That we all have some sterling quality that most people are unaware of. In Harris Macklin’s case, he appeared to be a boring person, and perhaps he was, but he was also a terrific whistler.

And on his surface, my dad was the most average guy ever. But he had hidden talents like no one you’ve ever met. He’d rent a houseboat and take the whole family – all seven of us – out on the Chesapeake Bay or Smith Mountain Lake for days at a time. He’d take all of us camping. He built from scratch a fort in our backyard in Maryland when we were kids. It had two stories and swinging windows. He knew all about birds. Photography. Computers. He had a collection of like two hundred toy ambulances. Dogs. Trains. He knew a little bit about a whole lot of things, and a lot about many others. All these great qualities that no one who met him knew about. That’s what I think of when I think of terrific whistling. You can know a person really well, or think you do, but there’s so much more that you don’t know. Dad just automatically assumed – because it’s true – that everyone has hidden gifts. And when he met you, he’d love to hear about yours. Because that was how he learned. You might not even think about your hidden gifts, but if you spoke with my Dad a while, you’d start talking about them. What a gift that was – Dad’s eagerness and ability to learn from everyone he met.

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Posted in Fun, Rivers, Smiles (including "dog smiles"!), Trains | 11 Comments

Breakfast at Pony Pasture (this post has some very cool pictures)

Posted on December 19, 2012 by Jay McLaughlin

19 December, 2012 Breakfast at Pony Pasture

This week I watched a bald eagle eat a catfish for breakfast at Pony Pasture.

It was a beautiful morning to start. They’re all nice in their way, but Tuesday was extra stunning:

On a morning like this, anything is possible

The light was good and the air was nice (see above) and this heron was drying its wings when I got on the river:

Great Blue Heron drying its wings. See the seagull to the left?

There are enormous flocks of buffleheads on the water now. This is just a tiny slice of a flock:

Big flock of buffleheads

But I was wandering along and looked across the river and saw an eagle hovering about ten feet above the water. It was an adult (you can tell by the coloring) but it wasn’t huge so I’m guessing it was a male. I was getting my camera out and as I did he plunged into the water. This was the first picture I took:

Bald eagle in the water

If you look closely in that picture you can see little splashes to the left and right. Just his head and shoulders are out of the water. I’m guessing now he had the fish in his talons.

I took this picture only six seconds later. So I guess he was coming out of the water in the first picture. See how the fish is sideways, head pointing to the right? This is all clear now, but I didn’t know precisely what I was seeing at the time. It was obviously a bald eagle – you can’t mistake them for anything – and I could see he was brawling with a good-sized fish. This was a very long way across the river:

Fresh fish

I posted this picture on facebook. It’s a little blurry. But you can clearly see him holding the fish. Getting ready to eat I guess:

Eagle and fish from a different angle

This is the final image I took. He’s finally got the catfish still enough to eat. I used to go catfishing a lot and they’re strong fish. He must have been giving that eagle fits. But eating fish is what eagles do, and he clearly had the procedure down:

Fine dining at the water’s edge

I read up a little bit about bald eagles after I saw this. By “read up” I of course googled them and went first to wikipedia and learned a great deal there. But I also found a bald eagle specific site called “American Bald Eagle Information” at www.baldeagleinfo.com. It was informative and interesting. A few geeky facts. Bald eagles are “sexually dimorphic”, which means you can tell males from females by sight. Mockingbirds and crows are not sexually dimorphic. Eagles are only sexually dimorphic by size. Females are larger. There are a lot in Florida and a lot in Alaska and most places between.

There’s a rule (bear with me, I’m at my geekiest here) that I just learned on wikipedia called “Bergmann’s Rule.” Animals get bigger as they get farther from the equator. Bald eagles in Florida are much smaller than bald eagles in Alaska. Kind of cool. Also, since they’re fish eaters and need to be near water, there are lots of them on the coasts. Virginia has three times as many bald eagles as Texas, and twice as many as California. At 1,300 or so breeding pairs, Minnesota has the most in the lower 48. But – get this – Alaska has the world’s highest number at around 17,000. Wow. Florida has about 1,100 breeding pairs and Washington state has about 850. We have 485 here in Virginia, which is still a lot, especially for the lower 48.

More than anything I’m glad I had the experience. Of actually watching a bald eagle swoop down and snatch a live fish out of the river and eat it. I was definitely in the right place at the right time. And I’m definitely glad I had my camera. Fun experience. Fun for me, anyway, and probably for the eagle – not so much for the catfish.

Have a great Christmas, I may get another post up before then but we’ll see. In any event, have a great day and I look forward to posting again soon,

Jay

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PS I usually think through what I write in this post-post section, but this just occurred to me. It was really, really cool to be there for this and to see it. But – it was also no big deal – anybody can go to Pony Pasture any time. Furthermore, my camera is no big deal either. It’s better than a smart phone, and it’s better than a little tiny point-and-shoot. But it’s barely better – it’s not expensive, doesn’t have replaceable lenses, I wasn’t using a tripod, nothing like that. I was just in the right place at the right time with a low to mid-price camera. Mine is a Canon PowerShot SX30 IS.

I read once that nature is one of those things where you “must be present to win.” Or, as Woody Allen put it, “80% of success is showing up.” If you’re outside a lot and have a camera you’ll see stuff like this. But I do know I was extra lucky. I hope you enjoyed it!

Posted in Fun, Rivers, Smiles (including "dog smiles"!) | 8 Comments

Mostly pictures

Posted on December 7, 2012 by Jay McLaughlin

7 December, 2012 Mostly pictures
I had lots of writing to do, I sat down the other night and wrote 1,000+ words for a blog entry, but I need to edit it a lot so maybe in a later entry. But I’ve got a pile of fun pictures. Buffleheads are back on the river, a winter duck I really enjoy. Plus there is a single big Mute swan down there. Also was fortunate to get nice pictures of a Red-tailed hawk near Brown’s Island recently. A couple of other shots too. More later, but mostly pictures today.:

This is the hawk picture I referred to:

Red-tail hawk, Brown’s Island, Richmond, VA

This is her (possibly his) full body. He or she was being observed by but not bothered by this lone mockingbird. It’s flying past in the lower right of the picture:

Brave mockingbird keeping its distance on the lower right

Evie and I were at Pony Pasture (PP) on Thanksgiving morning. These turtles certainly do look thankful:

How turtles spend Thanksgiving. Like us, I’m sure they take a nap in the afternoon.

I don’t know if it’s the time of year or what but there’s a lot of bird and animal activity in my yard and at PP and all around. (See above) This lone Mute swan has been hanging around PP. Both sides of the river, I think it’s the same bird. It taunts my dogs and my dogs taunt it but each seem reluctant to get closer than about ten feet:

Beautiful Mute swan at Pony Pasture

This is a not-great-quality closeup, but I like his (maybe her) expression. Maybe it’s the angle of the head or perhaps the dark eyes but it gives at least a faint impression of wisdom. “Silly goose” is a common expression and geese have never struck me as thoughtful. But find this calm gaze appealing:

This gives the impression of being thoughtful

These are a few of the many buffleheads I’ve seen. I still haven’t gotten a picture I really enjoy. Both these pictures are very poor quality. I’ll keep working at it. They’ll be around for a few months. This is a female:

Female Bufflehead

And this is a male:

Male Bufflehead

It’s a little over two weeks since Dad died. I still have stuff I want to ask him. But that’s just the nature of my Dad. He’s the kind of person who encouraged you to ask questions. And if he didn’t know the answer, he’d help you find it. Evie took this picture outside after my Dad’s memorial service:

Moon rising over Holsteins after my Dad’s memorial service at Rescue 15 in Bridgewater, VA. Evie took this picture. So calm.

Another picture from the memorial service. We had tables inside with items that represented Dad and a few of his interests. He had so, so many. He loved being an EMT and he loved Rescue 15, the Bridgewater Rescue Squad, where we had the memorial. Here are a few items from one table. (Notice the inevitable picture of Dad with yet another dog, in the lower left corner of that framed award on the right side):

Stuff of Dad’s. Navy stuff, Rescue Squad awards, toy ambulances, the inevitable picture of Dad with a dog by his side.

And lest you think my Dad is the only dog person in our family, here is Mom a year or so ago in my living room with my old friend Roux:

Roux waiting for my Mom.

And here’s my brother Shane at the service with Tara; Evie took this too:

Shane with Tara at Dad’s memorial service

Dad drove ambulances a lot, and collected model ambulances too. One of the ambulances he used to drive was draped in black bunting at his memorial service:

One of Dad’s REAL ambulances! Draped in black bunting for his memorial service.

My mother’s father’s name was Jim and he died around 1980. I remember his funeral and there were a lot of his old buddies around. Thirty plus years ago and I’ll never forget this old guy coming up to me and saying “We miss old Jimmy, darn his hide.” I miss old Dad, darn his hide. I know a lot of people, but I don’t know a better conversationalist than Dad. Among his many superb qualities.

Anyway, perhaps a story on my next blog entry, which I hope will be sooner than later.

This was what I saw as I left the service:

Have a great day,

Jay

Posted in Dogs, Endurance, People, Rivers, Smiles (including "dog smiles"!) | 6 Comments

Good man

Posted on November 24, 2012 by Jay McLaughlin

24 November, 2012 Good man

Over a month since the race, over a month since my last entry. 2012 is unforgettable. I’ve gotten a few pictures I’ve enjoyed. I’ve been gazing a little bit more intently at the river than usual. It’s always lovely. These shots, like the river, are always different and always perfect:

Peaceful

True story – you can’t make this stuff up. I pointed the camera up at a passing train 2 minutes later. All the way across the river. I went home and looked at the picture on my computer:

I was feeling bad – seriously – and looked up and a coal train was passing by with this scrawled on the side of a car. Wild.

Crazy. Of course it feels pretty good to look at it like this too:

This makes you feel better too.

I had the pleasure of dog-sitting my friend Pat and Megan’s dogs Luna (smiling at the camera) and Lola (brown, back to the camera) a short time ago. Mackey was with us too, also with his back to the camera; Turner was dashing around:

Mackey, Luna, Lola, me, and the incomparable James River

Evie and I got down to the river to give thanks on Thanksgiving morning. This may be the only way to keep Turner from dashing around:

So much to give thanks for

Speaking of dashing around, I’ve mentioned before I have a cat named Dash. Although he has undeniably dashing good looks, he doesn’t dash around much. And if the window is open and your papers are blowing away, he is unsurpassed as a paperweight:

“Dash,” a.k.a. “Basket Case,” a.k.a. “Paperweight”

And now the most unforgettable experience in a life that’s been full of them:

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Good man

My Dad died at home on Tuesday, November 20, a couple of days before Thanksgiving. To our relief, his passing was swift and painless. Dad’s full obituary is here: Warren M. “Mike” McLaughlin

I started to title this “Dog man,” because Dad was a dog man. Way more than I am. I changed the title to “Family man,” because he was the purest family man I’ve ever known. I am so fortunate. I settled on “Good man,” because that’s enough.

All the words on this whole internet are insufficient to describe what my Dad means to me and to everyone in our family. I won’t try. I’ll put in a few pictures I enjoy and that’s enough. The first is with our entire family. We hadn’t been photographed together since the 1970’s. We used a tripod and took this picture 22 days before he died. He’s happy because he’s surrounded by his family. Only one dog in the picture at that time, but there were four in the house.

All of us together, October 28, 2012 – what a priceless gift.

This picture is of Dad and Mom at their house with their dog Lucky (RIP), taken years ago.

Mom and Dad with Lucky, July 15, 2000

This is a favorite. Dad and I were hiking at Pony Pasture with his dog Tara in the winter of 2010. That’s a dog man right there. I love this picture:

Dad and Tara, Pony Pasture, February, 2010.

Another one I love. This is Dad with Tara in my living room. See how they are together? You can’t really explain it, you can never see the essence of it, but that’s what it looks like when people connect with dogs. Dad really, really, really knew how to do that:

See? You can’t really explain it, but that’s what it looks like. Automatic.

I don’t know who took this one, or even where it was. The dog is Rica, a big, beautiful German Shepherd we used to have. I’m reasonably certain Dad never saw a single stock car race in his life, so I have no idea about the origin of this picture. See how alert and animated and happy she is? What a beautiful picture:

Dog man.

You can probably sense why I don’t want to end this post. But unlike the river, posts end. Ask me any time – any time – and I’ll tell you a story about my Dad. I have an endless supply.

If you met Dad, I know you grieve with us. If you never met him, I wish you had. But I hope my brothers and sisters and I reflect at least a glimpse into our superb upbringing.

All best,

Jay
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Posted in Dogs, Fun, People, Rivers, Smiles (including "dog smiles"!), Trains | 21 Comments

More fun every year!

Posted on October 23, 2012 by Jay McLaughlin

23 October, 2012 More fun every year!

On Saturday, October 20 at around 11:10 PM in Wilmington, NC I finished my 10th 140.6 mile triathlon in the last ten years. I don’t get faster every year, although this wasn’t a bad race. But I enjoy myself a little bit more each year. Which is why I’ll register for the 2013 PPD Beach2Battleship Iron Distance Triathlon as soon as registration opens.

Of course I have a lot of pictures, mostly thanks to having Evelyn along. Mom and Dad couldn’t make it to the race this year. Maybe next year. Shane (one of my two brothers) helped me on my first 140.6 mile triathlon in 2003. So now Evelyn, Shane, and Mom and Dad are in a three-way tie for best support team ever. Thanks Evie! I’m not sure what order to use these pictures. I should start at the beginning, but this is a post race picture some volunteers took for us. You can tell the race is over by the shell-shocked look on both our faces. We got up ~4:45 AM to go to the start. I finished the race ~11:10 PM. This had to be close to midnight. We were happy it was over!

It’s been a long day and we are VERY happy it’s over!

Rewind to the day before when Evie took this picture of me on the dock. That’s the channel we swam down in the morning, where we climbed out of the water and ran to the changing tents to get ready for our bike ride.

Getting ready for the next day – beautiful swim course!

This is still from the day before; you can tell by my blue shirt and baseball cap. This is in T1 (swim to bike transition area) getting my bike set up for race day morning:

In T1 (swim to bike transition area) the day before the race

She helped me get all my stuff squared away, we went to eat, etc. I get extremely anxious the night before my race. Mostly because I’m not confident my bike, helmet, running shoes, wetsuit, all that stuff, is in the right place. I’m always confident in my ability to swim 2.4 miles, bike 112 and run 26.2 – I have zero anxiety about that. But the details make me edgy. Evie’s a confident and capable organizer and helped me be calm on race day eve. And got me to the starting line in one piece. Then we didn’t see each other for nearly sixteen hours! But I think she had a great day and I know I did.

I was standing at the swim start behind a guy who had one arm amputated at his shoulder and one slightly below his elbow. He was wearing his wetsuit and ready to swim. We both stopped in the same place for a drink and a snack at around mile 90 on the bike and chatted for a minute. I got about 9 minutes ahead of him on the swim (swimming with two complete arms) and our 112 mile bike times were separated by 10 seconds. He beat me like a rented mule on the run and finished the race about 27 minutes ahead of me. Read his story here; this guy is incredible. Think about this next time you’re faced with something “impossible”: No excuses… don’t stop living

If you’d like to see the race results, they’re here: http://www.setupevents.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=event_results&id=3205

Just a few race impressions. The swim was great, as it is every year at B2B, although this year it was much warmer than it’s been recently. Still, it took me 1:00:46. I’ve done B2B twice in around 0:56:00 so that wasn’t blazing fast, but I’ve also done B2B in 1:35:00, so I didn’t complain. The first year I did B2B was 1:00:39 – 7 seconds different from this year. 7 seconds over 2.4 miles. Amazing. What a beautiful morning, though. It was beautiful when I was breathing on my right side to watch the sun creeping over the edge of the ocean. I wish I had pictures but the only ones are in my mind. You can watch the start on this youtube video to get some idea. But the camera’s facing mostly west so you don’t see it. Plus when I was a half mile out there in the water it was quieter and more peaceful and more pleasant and there was no recording of Eminem singing the theme from 8 Mile, like it or not. It was salty and cool and clear and brisk and beautiful. I’d had a wonderful dream about Ivory the night before, the first dream about him I’ve ever had, and it was pleasant to recall as I tasted the ocean and inhaled the salt air and watched the sun come up.

Evie helped me stash a pair of old grass cutting sneakers on the dock the night before and I found them quickly and sped through T1 (swim to bike). Last year’s time for that segment: 23 minutes. The year before: 28 minutes. This year, thanks to those sneakers: 12 minutes. Whoa. To put that in perspective, a few athletes did it in less than 3 minutes (!) but for me it was a huge improvement.

I enjoyed the bike a lot, especially after last year’s wind and drizzle and cold suffer-fest. It was breezy but sunny and gorgeous. Last year took me 7:36; this year was 6:55. That’s the second slowest of the ten 140.6 mile races I’ve done, but it was distinctly non-miserable. Anyone who knows me has heard (likely until they’re sick of it) that my goal when racing is to “have a good time.” For me that means enjoyable, and I enjoyed this ride the most of any I’ve ever done.

Evie took a picture of me the evening before the race in T2, the bike-to-run area. These bags each had our race number on them (this year I was #47) and all of our gear for changing from the bike to the run. There was a changing tent at the end of the racks. I handed my bike off to a volunteer and went in and took my helmet off and put my running shoes on and headed out. Here’s what T2 looked like the night before the race:

T2, or bike-to-run transition area, the evening before the race

The run is where I really slow down, and perhaps not coincidentally it’s where I enjoy myself most. It’s where I have the most opportunity to interact with people. It’s very, very important for me to set my feet up just right for the run and I didn’t do it this year. That cost me and this year’s run was a whopping 26 minutes slower than the next slowest ironman run. My legs felt fine but my feet were killing me and I walked a whole, whole lot. What the heck, it gave me more time to take pictures. Starting with this one around Greenfield Lake:

Don’t feed the alligators. Yikes!

It gave Evie time to take a few herself; I particularly enjoyed this one:

Sometimes you just can’t help asking yourself…

Why indeed.

There are many rewarding things about this event; Wilmington is a great town. I think every year I’ve eaten a post race brunch at the Boca Bay Restaurant on Eastwood Road in Wilmington. I can not recommend that place highly enough. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m so starving every time I go there, even the shingles on the roof would taste good. But my dining companions always enjoy it as well, and Evie was no exception. I snapped this picture an instant before I devoured this plate in about the time it takes a normal person to eat one Cheerio:

The first helping of many

There are a million reasons I love this race. Check out this little odd one. The
beginning of the run was on the boardwalk at the water’s edge. There was a little girl, I guess 12 years old or so, with a big saxophone. I don’t know much about saxophones but this was about ⅔ as big as she was and had a very, very deep sound. The British heavy metal band Black Sabbath released a song in 1970 – probably before her parents were even born – called Iron Man. If you’re of a certain era, you’re familiar with it, and with its iconic first five notes. She was wandering around the boardwalk with her head down, playing those five notes over and over again. It was so cute and odd and charming.

I love the people at B2B more than anything. Volunteers, spectators, organizers, athletes, every one is great. I wish I could remember all their names, and recognize each individually for all the times they made me smile this year and all the other years. But let me give an example from this year’s race. All the volunteers are great; this is just one that stuck in my mind. I wrote the race director about it, I was so pleased.

My walking stride mostly passes for normal. But my running gait is in equal parts inelegant, ungainly and awkward. Noticeable from a long way away, especially since I’m tall and wear a brace on my leg. And in 2008 there was a volunteer on the waterfront named Ryan and we chatted for a moment or two. On each loop of the run. We resumed our brief acquaintance each year at B2B on the run. Last year I told him how happy I was about the m&m’s. This year – I see this guy once a year, for fifteen or twenty seconds – he says “Jay! How’s it going! Did you get your m&m’s this year?” I smiled and said no but I’m having a great time and headed back out for my second loop. The run took me over seven hours, so it was a long time before I returned. And when I did, Ryan is standing there holding one pack each of plain and of peanut m&m’s. Because he wasn’t sure which I liked better. And that, folks, is why I go back to B2B every year. Not because of m&m’s. Not even because of Ryan. But because that enthusiastic, engaging, people-focused attitude pervades every facet of the race experience. Here’s me at the finish line:

m&m’s! Yay! Oh yeah and I just finished this long race, but m&m’s! Awesome!

This is what I was looking for all day:

The finish line! Yay!

The finisher’s medal isn’t bad either:

Check out this OUTSTANDING finisher’s medal!

Anyway. Until next year! Until next year at B2B, that is. Another blog post soon, I hope. Thanks for your support and friendship and I look forward to seeing you soon,

Jay

Posted in Endurance, Fun, People, Smiles (including "dog smiles"!) | 22 Comments

NEWFAZE

Carpe diem

Unwasted dawns – Maple Festival 2013 and more

Bliss

Groundhog Day!

Attics Of My Life

Terrific whistlers

Breakfast at Pony Pasture (this post has some very cool pictures)

Mostly pictures

Good man

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