By Vladimir Brezina
Ailsa’s travel-themed photo challenge this week is Peaceful. We’ve already posted one Peaceful photo here. Here are a few more.
A peaceful early morning during our recent kayak trip in Florida—
(click on any photo to view larger size)
.
This was Day 4 of the trip—still to be written up…
Posted in Photography
Tagged Peaceful, Photography, postaweek, postaweek2013, Travel, Weekly Photo Challenge
By Vladimir Brezina
Ailsa’s travel-themed photo challenge this week is Peaceful.
Seen on our 2012 Long Island kayak circumnavigation.
And here is a second take on Peaceful.
Posted in Photography
Tagged Peaceful, Photography, postaweek, postaweek2013, Travel, Weekly Photo Challenge
Posted in Nature, Photography
Tagged Birds, Fleeting, Gulls, Photography, postaweek, postaweek2013, Weekly Photo Challenge
By Johna Till Johnson
Photos by Vladimir Brezina
Prelude
All set to launch!
“And I want to see a manatee,” Vlad said.
We were discussing our goals for our upcoming kayak camping trip along the Gulf Coast of Florida.
The primary goal was to familiarize ourselves with the route of the WaterTribe Everglades Challenge, a 300-mile race from Tampa Bay to Key Largo that we hope to paddle next year.
It’s held every March, and is open to all forms of small non-motorized boats, whether human- or wind-powered (the wind-powered boats usually win). There’s no fixed route—competitors simply need to get themselves from the start to the finish in the space of 8 days, although they must check in at three intermediate checkpoints.
It sounds straightforward enough, but there are plenty of reasons it’s called a “challenge” (including a few that we learned on this trip).
First is the sheer length, which requires paddlers to clock upwards of 30 nautical miles per day. Then there’s navigation, particularly if you opt for traversing the mangrove swamps in the Everglades. Your sea kayaking skills need to be up to snuff as well, since at least part of the route will take paddlers out on the open Gulf. Making and breaking camp quickly and efficiently can be its own challenge (as we were soon to find out).
And finally, there are the dangerous animals: Alligators and snakes, but also raccoons (which reportedly love to steal kayakers’ food) and all manner of smaller biting and stinging critters, from mosquitoes to scorpions.
We’d originally intended to paddle the Everglades Challenge this past February, but Hurricane Sandy knocked those plans for a loop by damaging Pier 40, our customary launch place. Since we couldn’t paddle for much of the winter, we were woefully out of shape.
And to be honest, we weren’t really ready to tackle the Everglades Challenge. We’ve done a lot—but we’d never participated in a Florida race that required kayak-camping.
That’s why we decided to start with a trial run: this trip. Our goal was to spend a week or so doing a stretch of kayak-camping along the route of the Challenge, to get a feel for the terrain and what we’d be facing.
And, as Vlad noted, to experience some of the wilderness, including those dangerous creatures. On the bright side, we hoped to see a manatee (or two). As it turned out, we met more creatures than we’d bargained for!
Posted in Kayaking
Tagged Florida, Kayak Camping, Kayak Expeditions, Photography, Sea Kayaking
Posted in New York City, Photography
Tagged Costume, Halloween, Photography, postaweek, postaweek2013, Travel, Weekly Photo Challenge
By Vladimir Brezina
This week’s Photo Challenge is The Sign Says.
Kayaking out on open water, we meet few signs. But as soon as we come in to land, signs abound. Some of them do their best to be unavoidable. Nevertheless, we sometimes manage to avoid them—
Some years ago, Erik Baard and I paddled down from Manhattan and landed on the beach near the northwestern tip of Sandy Hook. We had a leisurely lunch, took a stroll along the beach, lazed about, and after a couple of hours were ready to paddle back to Manhattan. But just before we launched, we thought that we might, just out of curiosity, find out what those two big signs that stood there, facing away from us, said…
And not far from that spot was another, complementary set of signs that helped complete the image of Sandy Hook, at least in those pre-Hurricane Sandy days…
.
.
.
(Our first interpretation of “The Sign Says” was here.)
Posted in Humor, Kayaking, New York City, Photography
Tagged Kayaking, Photography, postaweek, postaweek2013, Sandy Hook, The Sign Says, Weekly Photo Challenge
By Vladimir Brezina
This week’s Photo Challenge is The Sign Says.
On May 20, 2011, during our multi-day paddle down the Hudson River from Albany to New York City, we landed in the town of Highland for a meal in a riverside restaurant. And we saw this sign, promising Judgment Day for tomorrow. Devastating earthquakes were predicted to usher in the Rapture!
It sure looked like our trip would enter some seriously uncharted waters. Nevertheless, we kept paddling, and made it through May 21 without incident. We later learned that Judgment Day had been postponed until October 21, and then it was abandoned altogether…
P.S. Some people have read the bottom line of this sign as “Ediblefellowship.com”, suggesting quite another set of possibilities…
(A second interpretation of “The Sign Says” is here.)
Posted in Humor, Photography
Tagged Judgment Day, Photography, postaweek, postaweek2013, The Sign Says, Weekly Photo Challenge
By Vladimir Brezina
Manhattanhenge is the phenomenon for which, future archeologists might well conclude, the rectangular street grid of Manhattan was built. As Neil deGrasse Tyson, the astronomer who has spread the word about Manhattanhenge, writes:
What will future civilizations think of Manhattan Island when they dig it up and find a carefully laid out network of streets and avenues? Surely the grid would be presumed to have astronomical significance, just as we have found for the pre-historic circle of large vertical rocks known as Stonehenge, in the Salisbury Plain of England. For Stonehenge, the special day is the summer solstice, when the Sun rises in perfect alignment with several of the stones, signaling the change of season.
For Manhattan, a place where evening matters more than morning, that special day comes twice a year. For 2013 they fall on May 28th, and July 13th, when the setting Sun aligns precisely with the Manhattan street grid, creating a radiant glow of light across Manhattan’s brick and steel canyons, simultaneously illuminating both the north and south sides of every cross street of the borough’s grid. A rare and beautiful sight. These two days happen to correspond with Memorial Day and Baseball’s All Star break. Future anthropologists might conclude that, via the Sun, the people who called themselves Americans worshiped War and Baseball.
So Manhattanhenge proper—when half of the sun’s disk would have appeared on the horizon at the end of the cross streets at sunset—was actually yesterday, May 28th. But it was cloudy. And anyway, from Midtown Manhattan it’s not really possible to keep the sun in sight as it sinks all the way down to the horizon. New Jersey is in the way.
But today, May 29th, the full disk of the sun was to appear at the end of the cross streets at sunset. Even better!
Two years ago I observed Manhattanhenge from 34th Street. Today, for a change, I went to 42nd Street.
The venue: 42nd Street
Photographers gather
That’s where it will happen
Here it comes!
It’s going to be good!
Excitement mounts ;-)
The magic moment
Crowds worship the setting Sun on 42nd Street
Posted in Nature, New York City
Tagged Manhattan, Manhattanhenge, New York City, Photography, Street Grid, Sunset
By Vladimir Brezina
As with my kayaks
My Feathercraft folding kayaks. Left to right: K-Light (1990s), K1 (2000s), Heron (2012). Increasing in overall length from 12′ 10″ (K-Light) to 17′ 7″ (Heron).
so with my cameras
My Pentax Optio waterproof cameras. Left to right: W90 (2010), WG-2 (2012), WG-3 (2013). Increasing in weight from 5.7 oz (W90, with battery and memory card) to 7.4 oz (WG-3).
I’ve noticed a progressive hypertrophy ;-)
Posted in Kayaking, Photography
Tagged Camera, Feathercraft, Kayaking, Pentax, Photography
By Vladimir Brezina
Ailsa’s travel-themed photo challenge for this week is Pathways.
On the beaches that we’ve visited over the years, we’ve discovered the pathways of all kinds of creatures…
What are these?
Posted in Nature, Photography
Tagged Pathways, Photography, postaweek, postaweek2013, Travel, Weekly Photo Challenge
... kayaked the waters around New York for more than 15 years in his red Feathercraft folding kayak. He was originally from (the former) Czechoslovakia and lived in the U.K. and California before settling down in New York. He was a neuroscientist at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. He died in 2016.
... is a kayaker and technology researcher at Nemertes Research. She's an erstwhile engineer, particle physicist, and science fiction writer. She was born in California and has lived in Italy, Norway, Hawaii, and a few other places. She currently resides in New York City.
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Wind Against Current 