LONE PADDLER

My new kayak is the bomb. 

A modular design, I split it in half to cart it around since it fits right into my car.  To put it together, I maneuver the two parts together, feed the connecting flap through on either side, lift the back of the kayak ever-so gently, and tighten the clamps.  The whole process takes about thirty seconds on either end of the trip.

I have only used the new kayak twice: once when my son came with me and helped go through the motions and test its seaworthiness on a local pond, and once when I met friends and took the kayak out on the mighty Merrimack River.

Today, I am determined to do this alone.  After all, I have every intention of kayaking some afternoons after work (I pass the pond with easy access every day on my way home). 

I am relieved when I arrive in the dirt lot along the pond to find one empty car and a guy sitting on a motorcycle.  No matter if I look like an idiot trying to do this by myself; only one or two people will witness my shame and embarrassment.

Turns out my limited practice has paid off.  I only worry when I see the two-foot drop I have to conquer, and I do this easily since the kayak must be in two pieces for transport.  Once I have the pieces down to the water, they fit together quickly.  I grab my sunglasses, the paddles, put on my funky and incredibly old water shoes, zip my car key into the waterproof pouch I have attached to my life vest, then zip myself into the life vest.

Holy crap.  Within minutes I’m ready to go.  I cannot believe nothing has gone wrong yet.

I don’t even make an ass out of myself when I push off and drag my sopping wet feet into the kayak with me.  I start out keeping close to shore and within sight of the small area where I put in, but this is not the confidence booster for which I am searching.  I paddle on and start exploring all the coves and open areas of the pond, which is pretty big, to be honest.  I see a lone fisherman on shore, presumably the lone car owner, and am exhilarated to be the only paddler out on the pond today. 

I truly am all alone.

It takes me forty-five minutes to complete my exploration of the open water and around the islands, finding places to stop and drag the kayak up if I ever decide to come out here with others and eat lunch in the middle of the trip.  By now the parking lot is filling up with people walking the trails, more fishermen and families, and one more kayaker.  It’s unfathomable to me that more people are not out here on such a wonderful day.

I steer into the sandy area where I put the kayak in, reversing the entire procedure and having no problem taking the kayak apart, which shocks me since it gave me a bit of trouble in its maiden voyage.  Three minutes later, I am packed up and ready to leave.

This is day three of this kayak’s grand adventures and only the fourth time I’ve ever kayaked in my life.  I’m not an expert by any means, but I feel a sense of accomplishment and independence knowing that I can do this all by myself – I don’t dump it, I don’t break it, I don’t lose anything, I don’t get soaked, I don’t have any trouble with the general management of the trip, and, most importantly, I don’t look like a total asshole.

Just when I’m feeling somewhat smug and confident, I hear a song rolling around in my head.  It’s a commercial jingle for pull-up diapers of all damn things:  I’m a big girl now!

Oh, well.  So the only humiliation today is internal.  I can deal with that.

JOGGING WITH THE PIED PIPER

Apparently, I am the Pied Piper.

I like to walk and sometimes jog.  Between my messed up feet and my poor stamina, I’m curious to see if I’ve made any progress whatsoever with my routine, so today I skip the circuitous route and go straight for the track.  It’s still relatively early and it’s a weekday.  How many people are really going to be there?

When I arrive, the parking lot (small as it is) is already full.  There appears to be some kind of class going on, some kind of training blocking an entire section of the track, and there are little kids running everywhere.  This does not bode well with me.  Share the track.  It’s public property.

I walk a little bit then start jogging, barreling right through the boot camp trainers, and I continue to do so as I jog around.  This is the amazing part.  Last summer I could barely make it halfway around the track.  Today I make it all the way around the track not just once but twice before needing a walk break.  Two times around.

On my second time around, though, a little kid is running to keep up with me.  I have picked up a straggler.  I am jogging, and his teeny little legs are pumping full force, running at a full out gait to catch up to me. 

Um.  Okay.

I reach the parents again, and Jack’s (for I have learned his name and his age, which is four) mother tells him not to bother me.  “It’s all right,” I reply, “he’s pacing me.”  Actually, he’s passing me.  I continue on, making it around the track with my walk-then-jog routine many more times.  Now that I’ve picked up Jack, I lost count of my progress.

Suddenly a girl on a bicycle joins in, telling us to keep running because Loki is after us.  Loki?  How the hell does this six year old (for Kiley introduces herself) know about Loki?  I peek behind us and see an older gentleman who is wearing a white shirt and blue shorts.  He alternates between walking and jogging, much like I do, and is half a lap behind us.  Hmmmm.  I’m the one dressed totally in black.  I’m the one who’d be typecast as the villain.

No sooner do I pick up Kiley when Jack’s three-year-old sister joins in.  Her stubby legs cannot keep pace so I slow us all down to a walk.  I look like the damn Pied Piper with this trail of children growing behind me.  I guess we should’ve kept running because walking is not the little girl’s forte, and she wipes out hard on the tar track.  I try to console her, but I am a stranger, after all.  She won’t take my hand to help, either, so Jack must try and drag her all the way to the other side of the track to where Mom is taking her training class.

I think, Good, mayhem means the kids will stop following me.

Wrong.  Kiley urges me to join her mother’s class, and also recommends that I show up every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning so we can hang out together.  This might be fun for her and Jack (probably not for Jack’s sister), but I’m not so sure about this whole kid magnet thing.  I explain that on Friday I’m going hiking in New Hampshire, but maybe I’ll see her next week. 

After a short while she and Jack go to play at the nearby playground, forgetting all about me.  I make my final turn around the track, marking thirty-five minutes and rejoicing that today I have jogged more than I walked.  Much more.  I glance around and see that I, the Track Stranger, The Pied Piper of Shawsheen, am a distant memory if any memory at all.  I walk to my car, which I parked around the corner from the full lot, as alone as I had been when I arrived.

Bye-bye, Hamelin, I think as I drive away.  Maybe next Monday?  We shall see.

WEATHER, MUSIC, AND A WALK ON THE BEACH

Crazy damn weather up here in New England, and I'm not wasting a second of it.  Well, that's not entirely true.

Yesterday the weather was phenomenal.  Hot, sunny, fantastic.  I had to waste it sitting inside trying to get my sorry self into a lottery for a required class that has limited seating all across the state.  I got into the class but lost a perfectly decent beach day, so today I am determined to have my time in the sun.

Only problem is the weather.  It's storming out, not so much where I live; it's just raining here.  But the beach is getting a big-ass thunderstorm this morning.  I watch the radar like a savant.  I consider myself a bit of an amateur weather person, so I know if I leave my house at 9:00 a.m. sharp, I should arrive at the beach just about the same time the sun does.  Either way, sun or no, it's going to be hot as blazes today, so I'm going to the beach, damnitall.

I get into my car at 9:06, and the sun is already peeking out here.  By 9:16, the skies turn bluish, and by 9:19 I'm in sunglasses mode.  I have Ted Nugent's "Stranglehold" on full tilt, followed by Little Feat's "Dixie Chicken" and Joe Jackson's "You Can't Get What You Want" (the live version online is outrageous, by the way) and then "What You Know" by Two Door Cinema Club.  This is all followed up by a bootleg live version of Bruce Springsteen and Eddie Vedder singing AC/DC's "Highway to Hell" recorded in Australia.

Low tide at the beach is right around 9:00 this morning, and I'm going to walk the entire beach for the first time this summer.  That's my plan if the weather cooperates as well as the music does.  I shut down the radio as I make my approach down High Street.

When I arrive, my favorite space is open, right at the best part of the entire stretch of ocean. Steam is rising from the still-wet pavement, and the sand is damply pockmarked from the pounding storm that has drifted out to sea.  I walk/jog the entire beach and back, stop back at the car, then haul my chair and bag to a prime sandy spot. 

A few hours later after a dip in the waves, four chapters of a good book, and constant movement back toward the rocks to flee the rising tide, I am ready to leave.  A new cloud bank has formed, and shortly after I arrive home, tornado warnings go up all over the area. Funnel clouds are spotted and hail the size of golf balls pelt nearby towns, but my hamlet escapes the worst of it.  I can still hear the storm in the distance an hour after it passes overhead.

Crazy damn weather, and I won't waste any of it.

SEARCHING FOR HENRY

We are searching for Henry.

My sister and I spend a hot day outside, starting at Walden Pond, not swimming (like we probably should, due to the humidity) but hiking, jogging, and exploring.  Neither one of us has ever been to Walden Pond, though both of us have passed by its sign on the main thoroughfare dozens of times.  Today, we’re going to find Henry David Thoreau, or, at least, his remainders, his remnants, his resonance.

We check the trail map and decide to stay on the main Pond Path because it is an easy and direct shot to the site of Thoreau’s famed cabin, and we also decide that 2.5 miles in this heat is probably more than enough to start our long day of adventure.  The cabin site is cordoned off with granite hitching posts and rope, allowing an entry to the small area to explore where the chimney had been, where the door had been, and on.

The reverence for this literary site is shattered as we start back on the trail and I whimsically wonder out loud if Henry David Thoreau swam naked in Walden Pond.  I don’t know why I wonder this because, judging by the man’s portraits, he’s not much of a looker, to me, anyway.  Okay, he has interesting and unusual eyes, but the rest of his face is super-creepy.  If I ever stumbled upon him in the woods --day or night, any season, him clothed or not – I’d probably run screaming for the nearest exit.

On our way back to the parking lot, we stumble across a replica of Thoreau’s cabin along with a statue of old Henry, himself.  It is early morning still but ungodly hot and steamy, and the line to get into Walden Pond stretches far down the street.  We tell one car that we will be leaving in a moment, if they would like our space.  The gratefully accept, and as we are pulling out of the lot, we see that there is no more line inside the gates, for they have been locked.  The new line forms on the street.  9:40 a.m. and Walden Pond is already full.  Thank goodness naked Henry isn’t swimming today; he’d have quite an audience.

We decide to visit the nearby Concord Museum, inside of which are artifacts, history, and a baseball exhibit.  Outside of the museum is another exact replica of Thoreau’s Walden cabin, except this one is more historically sparse and more modernly functional: A table full of brochures adorns the room, brochures I am certain of which there were none in Henry David’s day.

We watch a thirteen-minute film on Concord’s history through the ages, and are startled to hear every narrator pronouncing Henry David’s name differently than we do.  All the years, all the teachers, all the professors, all the book store clerks, the name has always been Henry David ThorEAU.  These voice-over actors are pronouncing the last name as THOReau. 

Wow.  Do we feel like dumbasses.

I mean, we only grew up around here.  Have we all been saying poor Henry David’s name wrong all these years?  Did he change its pronunciation to separate his literary self from his naked-swimming Walden Pond self?  Was he travelling incognito?  “No, I’m sorry, but I do not swim in the nude.  I’m not THAT Henry David.  He’s ThorEAU.  I’m THOReau.  Dreadfully sorry for the mistake, you disobedient civilian.”

After being shamed by our collective verbal ignorance, we head off in a couple of other directions (Old North Bridge, Minuteman National Park…) before I direct my sister (the driver) to Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.  This is not THE Sleepy Hollow Cemetery of Washington Irving fame; that’s out near Tarrytown, NY.  This is the literary Sleepy Hollow Cemetery of New England writers’ fame. 

Author’s Ridge is a short walk from the parking area.   Before this entire acreage was a cemetery, it was considered a nature preserve by the local transcendentalists.  Now, though, many 19^th century local authors/transcendentalists are buried here.  We pass by Hawthorne, Louisa May Alcott, and Emerson before we stop to say hello to Henry David.

Awkward moment. 

We have been searching all day for Henry David ThorEAU, but we may have found Henry David THOReau.  We’re not sure anymore. 

Oh, well.  Doesn’t matter.  The sky is dark and foreboding; rain is certainly in our immediate future and we still have Sudbury to conquer.  We wave a quick goodbye to Henry and the rest and trot off to visit the Grist Mill. 

Grist Mill.  See?  Easy to pronounce.  No problems.  Unless we’ve been saying that wrong all these years, as well.  At this point in our search, nothing would surprise me anymore.

UNEXPECTED BASEBALL ENCOUNTER

Whenever I go somewhere, I am a magnet for the weird and unusual.  A bizarre modern combination of P. T. Barnum and Robert Ripley, freakazoid places, people, and things seem to attach themselves to me wherever I go.

Sometimes these things are creepy, like the very nice but extremely odd male stranger in Tarrytown, NY, who bought me a hot chocolate on a cold day at the lacrosse field while I was photographing a college game.  (Yes, I drank it, and yes, it was delicious.)  Sometimes these things are fascinating, like discovering a church with stained glass windows crafted by famous artists Marc Chagall and Henri Matisse -- right in the middle of nowhere.  Sometimes these things are heartwarming, like helping a baby seal make its way back into the waves and on its way back to its mother.

Sometimes, though, these freakazoid happenings are completely and totally serendipitous.

My sister is visiting.  After a living room slumber party at my house, we decide to go on a historical tour of Concord.  One of the places we stop is the Concord Museum, a brick house loaded with local artifacts from pre-Revolutionary War to post-Industrial Revolution.  We sit through a thirteen-minute video then explore the museum.

The place is compact but amazing.  Three hundred years of history are housed here, including displays, period-styled rooms, and Emerson's study (moved and recreated and smelling of the leather-bound texts that fill the shelves).  There are muskets and pistols and sabres and cannonballs.  Original documents written in longhand are close enough for us to read the intricate script.

Just when we think we have hit every single room, we cross the upper foyer to a special gallery.  Inside the gallery is a display, "The Art of Baseball."  A short video introduces us to the owners of these treasures, an amusing older couple who have my sister and me laughing out loud throughout the gallery.  We laugh so much that one of the guides guesses instantly that we are siblings.  Guilty as charged.

In this gallery are paintings, sculptures, and various artifacts of baseball through the ages.  There is an old box office sign, an amazingly intricate and surprisingly ornate lady's hair comb carved with a baseball motif, and memorabilia of all kinds from throughout the ages of baseball.

Suddenly from across the gallery hall we spot a Lucite display case.  Inside are some everyday baseball items, or so we think.  Until we get closer.

Oh ... my ... god.

Inside the case are Pudge's catcher's mask, Jim Rice's baseball bat, Yaz's Red Sox cap, and Ted William's mitt.  Next to these are three World Series rings.  Right here in Concord.  Smack in the middle of a historical museum.  Hiding in plain sight where you'd least expect to find them.


Weird and unusual, yes.  Just another typical day on the road for me?  Absolutely.

CREEPY GPS

My sister and I are taking a leisurely drive to several semi-nearby literary historical sites in Concord and Sudbury.  In order to accomplish hitting all of our marks today, we need some kind of GPS device.

I have a Tom-Tom that likes to shame me amusingly using the voice of Scottish comedian Billy Connelly.  My Waze app used to be set to Elvis, but Elvis has apparently left the Waze building.  Not a huge Arnold Schwarzenegger fan nor am I fond of boy bands, there is little left to choose from voice-wise on Waze, so I opt for the traditional Siri clone voice.  Speaking of Siri, both my sister and I have Goggle maps on our cell phones.

But, my sister is more like me than she would ever dare to admit publicly.  You see, she has a Garmin GPS, and the voice setting is for Dr. Nightmare.

Dr. Nightmare speaks in a creepy, baritone, semi-British accent with an echoing quality to its vocal delivery.  When he first starts speaking, I crack up.  The fun wears off, though, when Dr. Nightmare gives us instructions for which we are not prepared, making us jump in our seats, straining against the seat belts because the creepy-voiced guy in the dash-machine has just scared the living shit out of us.  Of course, this just makes us laugh even harder.

We are crossing through some historically bucolic countryside, out in the middle of East Bumboot, totally not near anything remotely civilized, when Dr. Nightmare randomly announces, "Never mind that noise coming from the trunk!"

Holycrapola.  Is he talking to us?

The strange thing is that he says the same exact thing when we pass by that same exact location on the return trip.  I wonder if there is some sort of trigger that tells the GPS to say this when the map shows no other living, breathing soul within scream distance.   I mean, really.  Imagine some technician decides to add that feature just to frighten unsuspecting motorists.  How totally cool would that be?

"Turn right," Dr. Nightmare instructs in his deadpan lower vocal range, "then arrive at this dreadful destination."

Wait a second.  This "dreadful destination" is my house!

Okay, so Dr. Nightmare is noooo Billy Connelly.  However, he does run a close second place.   

BARBIE, QUEEN OF THE PROM

My sister is here visiting.  We are supposed to participate in a fundraiser tomorrow, a Mud Run, but it has been cancelled, so we are planning an adventure, instead.  While planning our adventure, we are keeping ourselves occupied with activities like long walks in the sweltering heat, Cribbage, Gin Rummy, and board games.

Yes, board games.  Old, old board games.

We decide to play the original Barbie, Queen of the Prom game.  For anyone unfamiliar, in order to win the game, we must collect cards about dresses, school clubs, and, of course, boyfriends.  I want Poindexter, but I keep landing on Ken.  Oh, that sounds dirty a little bit, doesn't it?  Several rounds later, I still have not managed to go steady with Poindexter, but I have cheated on Ken with Bob and Tom.  Apparently, my Barbie is a hussy.

Once we have exhausted make-believe Barbie dress shopping, we move up a level to a slightly more recent (but still old) electronic board game called Mall Madness.  My sister keeps winning because she has always been a superior shopper compared to me.  Even the game reaches its limit with her when every time her

cardboard credit card hits the money slot, the machine yells, "THE BANK IS CLOSED!!!!"  I, of course, am rewarded $75 for my pathetic efforts whenever my card hits the same slot; the bank feels sorry for people like me who are shopping-challenged.

In the end, I do reasonably well at the card games, but my sister totally kicks my ass at the board games ... the old, old board games.  I believe it's because she is OLD-er.

That's my excuse, anyway, and I'm sticking with it.