Need more outside.

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Taking the bus lately, I enjoy much more human interaction than you get when you travel by car or even by bike. But what I’m missing is outside time, which was/is a benefit of cycling to work.  I haven’t had to wear socks to work until today, when it’s raining and in the 40s.  I’m altogether too protected from the elements.

I got nothing but outside time this weekend, and it was fantastic.  From the spiders and deer to my wet feet and chattering teeth, I got a big dose of Mother Nature/Earth on our little camping trip.  But the end of Saturday, I was not bothered with being dirty.  By Sunday morning, shedding layers, sweating and packing/cleaninp up our campsite, I was elated over how stinky and dirty I had gotten.  I smelled like sweat, baby wipes, campfire and coffee.  I arrived home  in flannel PJ pants, a flannel shirt, dirty and wet socked/sandaled feet and visibly dirty.  Awesome.

I love living in the city.  The best way to really enjoy the outdoors is to enjoy it, not cut it down to live in a small piece of it, poison the air getting there and also waterways and the land itself with roads, etc.  I do want to retire and die in a little cabin one day, but that will have a small footprint.  But I haven’t been getting out enough even in the city lately.  Few walks, few cycling trips, little of anything.  Monday, I got three hours to show a nice guy around Baltimore for three hours.  It was his first time in Charm City.  So we walked from Midtown all the way to the Inner Harbor and East to Fell’s Point — and back.  It was tired, and we scored big sandwiches when we got back.  I gave a walking tour of Central Baltimore the next day and earned my pasta dinner.  These are improvements.

But now it’s raining and nasty today, and I haven’t even gone to get my afternoon coffee yet.

Testing the Jones Falls River.

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The University where I work awards seed funding to awesome faculty project in Central Baltimore. I helped to recruit applicants and continue to help support/promote their projects. One such project is an analysis of the Jones Falls River, the lower falls. If you ride along the trail, you’re aware of the, uh, poopy smell around the Streetcar Museum? That’s a leak. That’s one of the four test sites.

It’s much nicer than you’d think down there, though, along our urban river. There are tadpoles, frogs, fish, ducks, assorted birds that our Ecologist can identify but that I certainly can’t. There are even tomato plants growing near the poopy leak.

“Do you think they’re being….fertilized by what’s coming out of here?” I asked.

“Probably. And you know what else I thought of, John[ny]? What if they weren’t planted?”

OMG. GAG. There are also cuke vines. Some are above the water, on the side of the trail. But, as my friend Dan points out, the seeds could have been picked out of the water by birds.

Still, there is some genuine beauty and peace down there. And it was fun to play scientist for a day, spending an afternoon making up for my relatively useless major.

Stab winter for St. Patty.

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I am very ready for winter to be over.  I generally like it.  There are past instances on this blog where I was angry at a lack of winter.  I like wearing sweaters and flannel and cuddling up with the Mrs at night to watch movies, read and sleep.  Cycling when water freezes to your face is exhilarating, if for no other reason, for the looks of amazement you get from other people.  Longjohns are their own unique experience when you have them on under your work pants with nothing under them.
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Maybe it’s barreling downhill for four miles every morning and getting watery eyes from the wind or my being tired of not being able to wear sandals sans socks.  Or of coming home from community meetings at seven or eight in the dark.  Maybe I’m tired of the bleak landscape on my way to work through the Jones Falls Valley and out of my window on University Parkway.  But I’m really ready for spring now.

I haven’t actually gotten tired of winter since 2003, when I lived in Boston and didn’t blog yet.  It was a particularly bad winter, full of blizzards and April snow.  St. Patty’s day that year was 70 degree weather, with students at Boston College sitting around talking in tanktops next to mountains of snow still piled up.  I remember wearing flip-flops and crunching on snow that April and wearing a jacket in May and June a few times.
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There was snow on the ground two years ago for St. Patty’s Day, too, after a January that was so warm that plants were budding the week after New Year’s Day.  I guess it could be worse.  I get to work from home this morning for afternoon meetings and can probably get away with sandals later, if I’m willing to have cold feet, which I am.

I have a fridge full of Irish stout, cabbage, homemade soda bread from the Mrs and Irish music.  What, you haven’t heard the new U2 album yet?  It’s excellent.

I’m back, mid-August edition.


Back from a week for training in Philly.  I slept for almost eight hours last night like, well, like a stone at the bottom of Walden Pond.  I actually had a lot of fun, learned a lot, met some nice people, got charged up for my “year of service” and got to explore Philly a bit.  Among my other adventures, I broke a Teva, rather than my foot, walking to a cool bookstore in the dark with my mind on musty volumes.  I have to get new sandals before reporting to my office Monday.  But it beats, you know, having a broken foot or toe[s].  And I have to get my bike all commuter-ready this weekend.  I think I might finally put that milkcrate on.  I don’t know.  It would make changing a tire harder.  But that stinky Slime did last week.  I’ll write about that on the bike blog.

Don’t have a whole lot I have to do this weekend, which is awesome. You should see the stack of books we bought on our travels. Or how much coffee I drank in Philly. I was so dehydrated that I drank a wine bottle of water before bed last night and didn’t have to pee this morning. I know you want to hear about my urinary tract. Right.  I haven’t had spicy food since Monday!  Need.  Peppers.  You should also see my pepper crop.  Holy hot sauce!  I am getting a new camera for my birthday, if heads have to roll.  Too many of the photos from our trips didn’t turn out.  Thank you, and good day to you.

Also for Photo Friday: Garden.

Red face from a campfire and revenge.

I came home from camping, and my wife asked if my face was red from too much sun.  No.  I led a nature hike of sorts in the woods, but we had the shade of poplar trees.  I didn’t sit in the sun much.  I sat in the shade, wrapped in flannel and fell asleep in my father’s chain from the relaxing wind and allergy pills.

I had a burned face from a very hot and pretty immense fire that some teenagers we were leading built.

They put extra stumps in the center of it to make it burn longer, because one of them didn’t lift a finger to help and was assigned to put it out.  They were getting revenge on him for his always-lazy-ness.  He did wind up proving them right when he threw a hissy fit and kicked something when he had to put the fire out after he tried very hard to get out of it.  I mean, it’s easier than finding, cutting and stacking wood.

On one hand, I was proud that they stuck together and glad that the person who always manipulates the rest of them and gets out of doing anything he doesn’t want to do got a small portion of what was coming to him.  The whole thing smelled of justice.  But on the other hand, I was disappointed at their revenge impulse.  There were other ways to get him to work, though I can’t think of them.

Mostly, though, I’m afraid I might have instilled this revenge instinct in these youngins.  I hope not.  They are some nice people.

This weekend, in my mummy bag.

The forecast called for cold nights this weekend in the city, so I knew it would be colder where we were camping.  I took my mummy bag accordingly, a sweet army surplus bag I inherited/stole from my Dad.  My usual sleeping bag would hold two people.  While comfortable, it’s not a great option when the temperature dips under 50.  With this particular mummy bag, you really need to pull it up over your head even if you’re not that cold.  You can unzip it a bit, if that helps.  I did.  It was chilly but not cold when I went to bed.  But each night I woke up with my face sticking out of the bag, all zipped up, my large nose very cold to the touch.  It was awesome.  I actually crawled entirely inside and made a tent of hot breath and my hairy arms.

Friday night, I used my cell phone as an alarm clock.  I wanted to get up first, get a shower, make coffee, etc.  I had it inside my sleeping bag so as not to wake anyone else up.  But when it went off, I was on top of my arms, which were asleep and numb.  I could not move them to shut the dang thing up.

Maybe I’m the only one that thinks this was funny.

I damaged a few pieces of gear this weekend, which usually drives me batty.  But I didn’t really care.  Could it be that I am getting closer to relating to my possessions like a normal person?  At least, the utilitarian ones?

I figured out the source of the bruise on my rear: when I kept falling on top of my metal flashlight during a skit about beans.  The flashlight looks like it got run over by a small car or several bikes from my big butt hitting it repeatedly on top of rocks.

Come on, that’s funny.

Old October walk.


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Last time the weather changed, I was embracing darker images. That was a very very hot day in October, at Robert E. Lee Park, just north of Baltimore City. I was excited about bunking down for the eventual fall and the winter. I was livid that it was so hot, especially since we were to take a daytrip to Washington a day or two later.

Now, I’m happy when the forecast is warm. I am thirsting for some color, some sun, sandaled feet. I am bummed at this weekend’s forecast, which means movies and reading and cooking. But no fun outside awesomeness, especially since I woke up with a tickle in my throat today.

Poor me.

It’s been cloudy and crappy so many days this spring that I would enjoy a nice, sunny, hot day today.

Remind me, in two months, that I said all this.

Photo Friday: Fragile.