From the archives: Moose!

pulled onto Jenne road at 8:15, a left turn. As I advanced down the narrow dirt path at perhaps 10 or 15 mph, something moved in my left peripheral. I slammed on the brakes, stopping Gemma (my car) in her tracks. At the same moment, the poor moose I had startled walked out of the bushes to the side of the car, just a foot from my front bumper. I sat very still, being slightly worried that the moose would get the idea that I was trouble and should be trompled.  

The moose had other plans. He (I’m assuming it’s a he. It was a moose of moderate size without antlers) started ambling down the center of the road in front of me, completely blocking passage by any way.

So I waited. And I waited. The moose butt in front of me continued to mosey and generally take its time getting down the road ahead. When it was a moose butt in the distance, I started scootching up, revving my engine a little to let him know I was there. 

Two big moose eyes and ears turned to look at me in a vague, moose-like approximation of indignation. I stopped and went back to staring at moose-butt. Finally he decided, of his own accord, mind you, to get off the road, and stepped delicately into some shrubs. 

As I pulled past the spot where he had disappeared I muttered under my breath in mild frustration: Meese.

Originally posted to a previous (now defunct) blog on August 28th, 2006. One of two moose-sightings I had while living in Vermont!

...I flew a plane?

Looks like I neglected to post anything for an entire month despite the pile of saved drafts I have going here. eh heh.

A few years back I made a quick list of Life Goals for myself. Being in college at the time, they were pretty basic things: live in one place for more than four months (e.g. not a dorm), learn basic car maintenance, learn to fly an airplane.

Last Friday I made a step the right direction and took the pilot's seat in a Cessna 172 for a 30 minute flight over Gaithersburg, MD. Ok, I didn't entirely fly the plane, but it was pretty gosh darn exciting (and a little terrifying) to be steering a dinky aircraft at 2500 feet. The best part was takeoff. My co-pilot/instructor handled the throttle and details, while I pulled back on the yoke and actually got the plane off the ground. Causing yourself to suddenly become airborne is distinctly thrilling.

Anyway, as exciting as that was, the experience made it very clear how much there is to learn (and how much it would cost to learn it). As accompaniment to this adventure I've also been reading Beryl Markham's memoir, West with the Night. While it is ostensibly and primarily a book about flight, Markham also covers encounters with lions, racing horses and much else about living in Africa in the early 20th century:

Tom taught me in a D.H. Gipsy Moth, at first, and her propeller beat the sunrise silence of the Athi Plains to shreds and scraps. We swung over the hills and over the town and back again, and I saw how a man can be master of a craft, and how a craft can be master of an element. I saw the alchemy of perspective reduce my world, and all my other life, to grains in a cup. I learned to watch, to put my trust in other hands than mine. And I learned to wander. I learned what every dreaming child needs to know — that no horizon is so far that you cannot get above it or beyond it. These I learned at once. But most things came harder.

For a couple more photos, visit my picasa collection.

Photos/Ponderings: Dichotomies

Perhaps, we like dissonance because it is so full of expectation for resolution.
Perhaps, we like observing other people's tribulations from within our own safe shells.

No matter how long difficult times last, there is always hope of conclusion and mending, even when it should be left behind.
No matter how implausible an ideal denouement may be, we cling to it rather than take the tougher, circuitous path forward to our eventual goal.

And when we do have to accept an undesirable outcome, when one occurs despite our efforts, we change our way of thinking so that we may say, Yes, this is what I meant to happen. It is good.

Photos are both mine from this Autumn; Top are sailboats in Annapolis Harbor during the Boat Show, the sunset is from Chincoteague Island, VA. Both will get bigger if you click on them, but please don't steal w/out credit and due publicity.

ps. It seems that my photo posts are package deals with ponderings. And alliteration.

Biking the Capitol

I bike to work, and I run across huge flowing tracts of tourists, guys who look like they're prepared for the Tour de France, secret service SUVs tailgating each other across town, thousands of folding chairs piled on the mall, new traffic stops in new places every day, and occasionally fellow bikers who will chat as they pedal alongside.


I've been biking the ~6 miles each way for a couple of months now, and feel secure enough about the whole business to invest in a few bike accessories. Being pretty abysmal at any form of decision making, this is a slow process, but I'm heading in the right direction. My bike (a er, Raleigh SC30 (specs), approximately 10 years old by now, and dark green [my colour preferences don't change much]) has collected the following things I find quite necessary to happy cycling:

-A water bottle holder (transferred from my previous bike), which is a bit of a tight fit between the bars of my "girl bike", but holds:

-A small 16 oz water bottle (BPA free, FWIW) from REI, which also comes into work with me and gets hourly refills from the water cooler. Yay hydration.

-A rack over the back wheel (loaned from a friend until I muster up one of my own) upon which I bungee my hulking "purse" which is really more of a satchel and is fairly unique at this point. (see photo). Someday, I might like real saddlebags (panniers) but then there's the issue of carrying something that's clearly a bike bag when I use my bike to go out places. Not terribly fashionable, but socially acceptable.

-Front and back lights, which strobe and are detachable. The back one conveniently clips onto other things, like a belt, or the back of my bag which covers the bracket the light normally sits in. I use at least the rear flasher on overcast days, and the front light going home in the evenings.

-I even went so far as to replace my old helmet, which I had gotten with the bike years ago. A friend who used to work in the REI bike shop told me they should be replaced every three years, and while this may in part be a marketing ploy, 10 years is probably quite enough. I'm self-conscious enough to feel a bit dweeby in a helmet, but heck, even I think the stylish-looking people who don't wear them are incredibly foolish.

-A bike lock (yoinked from a friend) that reaches both wheels and whatever I'm locking on to. I don't leave my bike anywhere sketchy, and most of the time it's right near a police perch, so I don't worry much. Nonetheless, I do want my bike to be there, so I lock it up all the time. It lives in my living room when I'm home, which is a bit awkward, but better than outside.

-I've had a little computer that keeps track of mileage, time and so forth as long as I've had the bike, and it's well worth it. There's nothing like assigning numbers to something to make it more fun! (or to impress coworkers with how far you ride each day)

-And just today I finally found an acceptable pair of shorts to wear. Most bike-specific shorts are rather expensive ($50+) and have schmancy wicking, padding, muscle-supporting technology, all of which is rather more than I really need. So I ended up at American Apparel getting some nice, plain cotton work out shorts.

Despite all the potential for looking like an idiot while biking, I actually feel wonderful about it. I'm not wrecking the environment, I'm getting a decent amount of exercise almost daily, and even if it doesn't make a huge impact on my body, I feel pretty good about myself physically. I don't even feel bad showing up damp and out of breath at work every morning (although I will need to find the shower in my building if I want to continue this summer). Bookending my day with half-hour bike rides makes the 8.5 hours of work more bearable (don't get me wrong here, I like my job, but it's a lot of sitting inside with no window).


View Biking to Georgetown loop in a larger map

<> So yesterday I rode from home to Georgetown, parked, shopped, discovered I had bike grease everywhere, biked the rest of the way across town to the National Gallery Sculpture Garden, listened to jazz until there got to be too many people and not enough picnic to offset the crowd, biked up to Young Chow, biked back down to the Botanic garden and listened to the Army band on the West Front, then biked back home just before dark. A note for the future: biking at dusk bites because all the bugs come out and form clouds over the trail. ~15 miles, casually. < /brag >

Moths and coincidences.

Yesterday I found this moth lying against the curb on the sidewalk in Dupont. I thought he was gone from this world, and tried to at least move him to a happy resting place in the grass just over the curb, but as I slid the magazine under him he flapped and jumped an inch in the air before coming down to rest again. It took about five minutes to get him to hold still on my magazine, and then, as I went to lower him onto the grass, he took off and flew away across traffic to some rooftop. I never thought I'd see one of these in downtown dc. The distance from one wingtip to the other was maybe 5 inches.

Then, a block away, as we walked to the corner to cross the street, I noticed a man who looked a bit familiar. There being a lot of people in DC, I assumed he was just another face, but after 30 seconds of awkward and mutual staring, he said "Marlboro? ...Elli??" Yup, I managed to be on the one street corner in the whole city where I could run into the former Marlboro Math Fellow who came from England to teach for two years. He just happened to be in DC after leaving VT and before going on wherever else in the world he was going. It's a very very small world, sometimes.