Cogs and Logs

A back-up mountain bike from the previous
 week's ride propped between two logs.

The back of the Grand Logavan/
Grand Bikeavan/
Grand Surfavan was a bit chaotic during Sandy's aftermath. Two firewood logs found their way in during lunch time. One is doing mountain bike propping-up duties.


Gordy's wetsuit alas is now out of there.

Too much sewage in the water, for one, and too cold for a 4/3 on a kid with zero insulating blubber, at this point in the season. Still, plenty of van cleanup/re-org to do.

Long Beach, Sandy, A Town I Love, Heartbreak and Hope

Virginia Ave., Long Beach, N.Y.

   The last time this happned here, it was 1938. The archive photos show it was a hell of a storm.

  Seven decades ago and change. Few remember, though some do. That one was reportedly a lot worse.

Wyoming Ave., Long Beach., N.Y., 1938

   I was in New Orleans not long after Katrina. An industry association, I am a member of chose to support the town with a conference, there, along with a Habitat for Humanity project.

   Long Beach could use some of the same help. For most houses flooded to their bedrooms, it's the same story as Katrina.

Ripping up the beautiful hardwood floor to mitigate the water
damage. Note: drywall is removed to the level of the mantelpiece.

The vast majority of residences in this city of 33,000 plus have been flooded out. Weekdays, I'm told, it's a ghost town. It's uninhabitable for the most part, so residents come in on the weekend to work on their homes.

Anything below the high water level — which came up about 5-7 feet — is  compromised or ruined.

Every house has a pile of debris outside.

In that pile is everything they own that has been ruined, from kids' toys to appliances, walls, floors. And no guessing how many ruined cars.

My friend is a waterman, he knew the warning signs, and had the sense to get himself and his family out, as most did.

W. Park Ave.

He got everything out of the basement, but half the houses here are 1 floor only, so pretty much everything gets trashed anyway.

Grand Avenue church and homes, 11/18/12

So many houses on so many streets; they all have their furniture and belongings out by the side of the road. Massive piles of domestic debris are being deposited at Nickerson Beach parking lot.

The water table is still high. As the tide comes up, the sump pumps still pump out water, even three weeks after the storm.

The sewage plant is still out of action. Sewage from many municipalities is pumped directly into the bays.

Leaving at sunset. Some favorite places look desolate. But this town and it's people are resilient, rebounding, and getting back on the horse.

The dunes are washed away, the boards that separated the boardwalk from the beach and the town are blown out.

The force of the water blew out some basement walls. And everyone knows about the lack of power, heat and running water.

There's a long way to go, it's going to take a long time.

The last devastating hurricane was 74 years ago. Irene was last year — some people just got finished repairing from that.  Sandy this year. They are coming close together. It may be a fluke, but I'm not convinced anyone believes that...the weather has been too erratic and extremely variable in the last decade.

But we'll rebuild Steve's house and a lot more. West End Pizza pizzeria is back in business. That's a major step in the right direction.

For now, it's hammers and crowbars, sturdy boots, gloves and whatever supplies and hope you bring in.

Cabin Fever ... Meet Trail

Headache. Is it dehydration, something else? Who knows, but cabin fever is cabin fever. We're going out. Haven't ridden anything outside, or gotten much vitamin D time since Oct. 21. In the scheme of things, that's nothing when one thinks of the disaster conditions afflicting people in this area — still, my Doctor's orders: exercise and continue to lose weight.

G-man: stopping for adjustments, mid-roller coaster.

But I'm not going to deny it — first time in gym in a long while last week, was good, but to get out on the trail today, was magical for the spirit.

Gordo had slipped back into computer zombie mode and I wondered whether he needed to get out of the house even more than I did—except he didn't know it. 

Let's see, the options:

• Windsurfing in sewage contaminated waters — fuhgeddaboudit

* Surfing in really sewage contaminated waters — fuhgeddaboudit

• Paddleboarding in sewage contaminated waters — fuhgeddaboudit

• Golf? — no, my neck discs are way too irritated for that.

• Road biking — too much tree debris from Sandy and the Noreaster

C.L.I.M.B. crew had been hard at work clearing Stillwell, post-Sandy:
Downed trees were everywhere. In places the woods
looked like a bomb hit had hit them. Some of the smaller trees took a
real beating too..

• Mountain biking? Maybe — good weather for it. Let's try that.

With roads blocked by fallen trees, or taped off due to fallen powerlines, it took a few detours from my usual well-worn shortcuts to get to Stillwell. The phone GPS came in handy, there, as it's easy to get disoriented and go in all kinds of directions, if you don't know a few alternate routes, I found some clean main roads.

The soccer fields were incredibly packed with cars and players, and the bike area had plenty of riders in various stages of preparation or de-biking.

Uh oh — lot more moisture on the service road than I expected for snow that had mostly melted at home a while ago.

The trail was muddy in paces for sure, but we'd come too far to go back. Ordinarily I would not ride in this, as it's not good for the single track, but it was borderline. Just a few deepish muddy patches, outright mini-pond/swamplets, and other wet spots. The CLIMB crew had done an amazing job clearing the trail of downed trees.

The first time round we picked our way carefully. By the second trip we knew what to avoid. ... except the unavoidable dog-poop spot somewhere hidden under the leaves. And were there ever leaves.  They made the gravelly, sandy parts easy, and the steeps a lot softer, but more sweetly exhausting to climb. Ek, stinky tyres for a while there.

We cleaned a few tough climbs but failed the rooty switchback from hell. Not even close on that one.

Yep, there were a few spots that screamed out just how much MTB conditioning we'd lost since the Spring. Some tough climbs that revved up the breathing to the most rapid it's been since ... we last were here?

Still...love the learning curve, and the getting fitter curve.

Sandy

It was like a plane's jet engines outside in the street. The power of it was door-ripping-off-the-hinges-strong.  I once stayed on RAF (later JMF) St Mawgan, in Cornwall, UK, for a short while, and you woke up to the sound of Royal Air Force Nimrods warming their engines on the runways across the other side of the base, at about 6 am. Except this sounded a lot closer, give or take a few yards.

The Rockaways, NY

Earlier, we spoke to Mum and Dad who were worried in England. I reminded them that they'd not so long ago had surprise 100-mph winds that blew out all kinds of things, but  people just didn't bother to give it a name. But they had weathered their own 'hurricane' and here we had our second annual Cat 1 (… and almost Cat 2 in places.) 

Frank and I Facebooked and arranged that he might come up here, via the high back road exit, if things got out of hand. Lenny was AWOL, and Mustang Steve had not responded to contact. I figured he was smart enough to evacuate Long Beach, since he monitors the fishing and the surf on a daily basis and is a superb waterman with plenty of insight into what's going on on the water and with the wind.

Gordo held the step ladder as I taped the back gutter downspout back into a solid grip with its tubes, as the first raindrops fell. Taped the front East-facing downstairs windows, and went in to put the tea on. 

Marg and Robby returned from Grandma Havlik's, and we ate something — what I don't remember. 

At about 6 pm Gordo, with his headphones on said, "Uhhhm … it's a lame storm." 

"Whaaat are you saying, nitwit?"

And within seconds of that, the lights and power went out. 

"Nice karma job Gordo. … when are you going to get it?" But he does not believe in that, and seems to like to tempt fate with words, for now.

Atlantic City, NY

Hurricane Sandy roared and things shook a bit, and you hunkered down and hoped the house didn't blow away, or fall on you. 

What are you going to do? Might as well curl up, listen to a few more radio reports. 

Landfall sooner than predicted—well at least it'll be out of here sooner, right?  

… And try to go to sleep, and pray all your peeps and everyone in harm's way are OK. I can;t believe I slept that well, but to be sure, the preparations and all the muscle-tensioning angst beforehand kinda tuckered one out. 

I was expecting Frank to park his van up here that night, but the fact that he didn't probably meant that the waters at Manorhaven had not risen that high. All the same, it was impressive to see the east wind whipping the bulging Millpond as it flooded its banks and joined with the bay.  

That was as far as we were going that Monday morning, as it was getting periously close to tree-limb busting status. 

During the aftermath of the hurricane, powerless for 5 days, like many others we went back to an era of candlelight, radio and early nights. 

Breezy Point, Queens, NY

No TV no phone, no Internet, no power, no lights, no gas/petrol, no milk, no meat, no frozen food …  are just a few of the things you get if … you're lucky.  

If you're unlucky you get flooded, crushed cars, trees on your house, fires, houses swept away, looting, disaster, death, so the alternative — a semi-cold/cool, vegan, powerless lifestyle was easy to deal with for a week and luxury by comparison. But we knew it would get real cold sooner or later—we were coasting on borrowed time and luck in that regard. That and the few preparations we'd made. Basically extra food, water, candles and batteries unused from Hurricane Irene preparations, plus full tanks of gas. 

The internet — i missed it the least, the TV — we missed all the coverage of the election, the storm itself, the information about what was going on in the outside world. It was just cool enough — 40 - 50 degrees F at night not to be a real problem at night. 

more to come...

Paddling and Wind — maybe Not a Bad Mix After All

Hoping for some flatwater paddleboarding on Oct 21. It started out looking like a very mellow day, but picked up to sailable conditions. We did both.

Stehli was way too choppy already, so we drove to OYSTER BAY where we had a better chance of a wind shadow. Sure enough the wind built, by the time we were well under paddle, until it filled every crevice. That's October in New York. Windy.

The Duck Pond ... OK a bit larger than a Pond but
still OK for ducks ... ducks that don't
mind being hunted, that is.

But being on what some of us call the "Duck Pond" the water was still flat enough to make for good paddling anywhere but directly upwind. 

Upwind — the solution — zig-zag on alternating tacks. It took a wee while but we made our way up to the "corner" of the marsh grass by the rod and gun club.

Fortunately no duck hunters out.

The return trip was a predictably fast downwinder. Frankly, I don't mind the upwind paddling, you feel like you're going faster as the small waves pass under your board.

Stroking across the wind afforded the luxury of not having to change hands: you could literally paddle on the left side of the board — out on a beam reach — and the wind provided the straightening force. Ditto coming back, you could paddle on the right.

We continued the downwinder past the bathhouse and headed back out, wending our way around a series of strategically placed speed limit buoys, before grinding back in across the wind.

With the wind theme picking up, our paddling arms were now well pumped. I decided to ditch the paddle and rig up a 5.3 to give Gordo a well-deserved flat-water lesson (after so many struggling lessons in Heckscher heavy chop he was due to experience the ease of learning in calm waters).

Approximate paddle course — tacking upwind and
paddling across the wind was a good part of the day's work.

He did way better this time — really getting his first feel of riding and staying on the board for long enough to actually say "yes, now I'm sailing, now what? … How do I turn this thing around in real life, not just in theory?"

So his next challenge — to figure out how to tack and jibe. After that, and keep on refining the sailing position a bit more.

P.S. The wind however, was venturi-ing from the West, under the Oyster Bay bridge and accelerating past the marsh grass by the Rod and Gun club. so there was a definite wind line about 10 yards out. A 6.0 - 6.5 and a 110+ Lts for normal size folk would have been a cinch for planing.

Don't ask why I left the harness at home. There is never a good reason for that. But — if you do, you can bet you're going to get wind. OK I had Marg's waist harness, but while I could just about get the velcro to meet, there was no way I was able to buckle that thing up. Watch out, though, if I lose another 15 lbs, I could borrow her harness, LOL.

Coming back from mid-bay, I had to hang on like a crab claw just to make it back from a long excursion in chase of a fancy yacht. By the time Joe G arrived, however, it was dead — over and done by 5:30 or 6 pm.

After the rack-like traction of sailing without a hook I wonder, just how did those original guys deal with long rides in solid winds in the days before harnesses were invented? All of us who learned after 1992 had it easy ?

P.P.S. I have a recovering cervical radiculopathy in the neck — 75-85% better this year which is why I'm sailing again — but, at one point today, had to resort to an old-school trick of hooking the elbow (in my nerve-compromised left arm) over the boom just to take a rest from hanging on. An hour's paddling had taken a toll there, and sailing harness-less was the coup de grace that finished it off.

Trading Runs with the Squid

revised 10-15-12

Arty tends to our good friend Leonardo, who, now
unable to walk with his back legs, takes
in the sea breeze at his favorite place, Joe's Beach.

We call 'em runs. A run out — which needs to be followed by a run back in* — or the whole things goes pear-shaped.

And that we did, quite a lot. Runs, that is, not pear-shaped thingies.

The first 5 runs were all about getting the harness lines adjusted, lurching, skittering off on a plane and bogging down again, all without getting tossed over the handlebars.

The squid changed and watched from the beach. Getting the lines finessed is often a challenge, and ditto that as far as the right depth of pocket in the sail is concerned. [Memo to self: get out that tape measure in the back compartment, a Rite-in-the-Rain pen and pad, and write the measurements down.]

P.S. Was it me or was it gustola out there? That cross-chop was coming from all angles, especially if you were looking anywhere else than where the wind and chop was coming from.

The adjustments continued, followed by more tweaking, including some extra downhaul when the wind picked up later.

RUDOLPH THE ROCKERED REINDEER
The 99 liter F2 Style 255, it seems, has a bunch of rocker for a freestyle board — who knew? I thought they were supposed to be flatter underneath. Under a 205# weight like mine (it's a little less than neutral volume if you include rig, wet-wetsuit and lunch), it did not exactly want to release in the heavy chop, but it was still fun. I'll get it figured out. One thing's for sure, 5.7 sq. m. is its sweet spot.

For some reason — one I was not glomming onto quick enough; angle of the wind shop/harness line position again? — to get planing on port tack required pointing it even deeper off the wind — always feeling within a centimeter of catapulting during the initial acceleration/chop stops.

Dr Phil DDM, Lenny the Squid, perched on the hood
of the squidburban, as Tomas and John chat while
another windsurfer (quad-stretching), looks on.  

The good part was that the board was so damn loose the 14.5 inch blade weed fin felt like a 10 inch in the turns. Normally, I'd never normally use more than a 12.5 in that 5.7 wind, especially on a smaller board like this, but the 14 kept it tracking like "Upwind Mike" in the gusts. Even Lenny liked it. Amazingly it was not too aggro for such an obscenely large piece of G-10.

DIG-A-PULT
Once coaxed out of the gooey surface tension of Heck-soup, out of semi-planing mode, the board freed up remarkably well and lifted nicely out of the water. With its seemingly moon-shaped keel it wanted to bound and bounce in the morass of camel humps out there, but all-in-all relatively good control pretty much most of the time.The hairy part was catching rails. Either from overcooking or undercooking an S-turn.

Not keeping the eyes peeled for cross-chop in the turbulent, mogul-field conditions could mean paying a price. Had a few of those, some minor, and one a bit of an adventure.

The most notable came from catching a rail during a bottom turn. Bottom turn? you ask.

Yep, there were some wave-like objects forming out there, and with a bit of vigilance you could spot the eminently surfable ones. So that was what I was doing. I'm not getting air like I used to 10 years ago, so cresting "swellets" are the next best thing.  And that was going great until I suddenly found myself cutting just a wee bit too deep and too fast in front of an oncoming sailor.  I cut back upwind, dug the inside rail and ... oooohhhh that sickening sensation that you just lost it ... slow-motion ...  cat...a...pult... splat.

Bonus points for spotting the cheeky beagle on the left.
(click to make larger)

Was that the fall where I ended up under the sail? Yep. Thankfully not hooked in.

Not a fan of hooked in under the sail catapults, much less the twisted, hooked in variety.

I had a bad one once during a race under a bloody 8.5 Sq. m. tent-sail that came real close to end of breath before breathing water fish-style.

This time, I got out and directed myself without hesitation forward of the mast in a hurry.

Need to work on the breath hold, especially the caught-by-surprise variety. And that's one reason why I'm NOT doing the ocean right now. It's still nowhere near where it used to be 10 years ago, and neither is the swimming.

RIDE-SHARE
With the ride-share/board-share/time share thing with Len working out well, timing-wise,  I took the opportunity to respond to a call for assistance from Jimmy who needed some help with his Ezzy 5.0 Wave Panther. I was glad to. It reminded me of a time when I was a Heckscher newb and a red-bearded old salt with leathery hands kindly downhauled my old aluminum mast and Mistral sail with bare hands. Where did he go, never saw him again. But anyway, I have Jill's/Frank's old 6.0, Ezzy Wave so the Ezzy thing is not such a mystery as it could be to the uninitiated — just how much that thing is outhaul sensitive is crazy.

The enforced rest time between runs helped me avoid the tuckered-out syndrome, and it made for a gift of a day's sailing.

SPECIAL GUESTS
Great to chat with Moo and Lella, Shane and Grace who had been in the local pumpkin fields when the wind picked up.

The windsurfing crowd is the best I know almost bar none at sharing the fun in the sporting world (if you've ever been part of a military unit or a rugby team you'd know they have a similar thing going on) and there were plenty on hand, and plenty of wind to go around: Zev, George, Thandi, Arty, Marty, Leonardo, Tomas, Titus, Lenny, Mustang Steve, Jimmy, Jeannie, Al, Dr. Phil DDM, James, John, and a number of faces I am not yet familiar with — Jeff, Christine ... and quite a few more — all generally ripping up the place and making a foaming royal chop shop out of the water.

Double bonus points for spotting the curious westie in the
parking lot. (click to make larger)

Well, would we have it any other way? In a perfect world ...

And there were a few of our canine friends. Leonardo, now paralysed getting his sea breeze therapy on the beach, Heidi, another young shep, a beagle and a westie.

It only seems like a year ago that Leonardo was able to play ball on the beach and get around, now the poor pooch is sad, but he gets plenty of love from Arty and friends.

Definitely a day not to miss if you had the chance to be there — or anywhere windsurfers were gathered together.

* Not to be confused with the infamous Ely Spivaks coined term, "OOBI" — Out Once and Back In — a.k.a. not such a great day. This fortunately was not the case on 10/14.

Godzilla Revisited

G-man walking the rest of the way up Godzilla. 2nd of
3 attempts. Godzilla showed no mercy today.

GODZILLA is a very steep wall of rutted gravel, roots, sand, moss, broken sticks and even a little bit of dirt.

For all of the above, traction was surprisingly good today. It was just the steepness and the step-up root ledges that got us.

We came at it at the end of our ride — and a sweet ride it was — tired but not too tired. With just enough left in the legs to give it an extra attempt or three. To tell the truth, after the first shot, my heart was beating so fast I wasn't sure I wanted to push it again. But, I took a minute to take a photo of Gordo on his second attempt, and decided, "Hey, why don't we descend it and both of us try again?   

In past years, attacking this with C.L.I.M.B. rider Cory "C-Rock" Davidson, I've made it up about 3/4 of the way, stopped only by the technical issues and traction (rear-wheel spin-out). Then there were a few years where physical issues kept me off the bike, and only recently have I gotten to where I could take this kind of body busting climb on again.

Gordo is fit as a fiddle, so it's only technique and picking exactly the right line ... he has the legs and the aerobic capacity to do this. On his third attempt he got 2/3 of the way up — not bad for a Godzilla newb.  

LUBE, PUMP, PACK, RIDE
This was our first MTB ride of the fall and it was nearly a DNS. 

I forgot I needed to do all those first-MTB-ride-in-a-long-time preparations.  

Swap the road bike out of the van and into the basement (the pampered bike); bolt on the bike rack; grab 2 MTBs; pump 4 tires; find a rag (where did they all go? check some t-shirts, nope the armpits are still OK); lube 2 chains, get 3 drinks ready, find some cold weather MTB clothing, grab an extra helmet and gloves; walk the dog beforehand; clean off some amber eyeshields for Gordo.

After the camelbacks were packed with the remaining bits and bobs and innertubes, and we ascertained that Gordo had indeed misplaced his Rx eyewear after an extensive search of the house, we were off.

I forgot how much I like that part of the Greenbelt and Bethpage. Nice mix of technical parts and some good flowing singletrack. Some of it is seriously fast for the curves, and you better be sure of your line and your traction, or you'll become a tree ornament pretty quickly. 

Bethpage has an abundance of mix and match random trails, so the permutations are almost infinite. The trail track doesn't do the various twists and turns justice at all, since it samples at relatively wide intervals. And the trail's multiple curves are lost in the lack of fine GPS detail.

K-dog requirement#1 — I must be walked before you
guys go off riding, deal? deal! K-dog takes in
the early fall afternoon sun.

What the track did reveal that that slightly odd feeling that the return Greenbelt section was on a different trail was correct. The return section was much more fast and flowing; so fast that at the X-junction, about 200m from "the clearing," there was that tell-tale sense that I was one the wrong track, but not one I couldn't get out of. (It led to the Broadway junction just below the Charles Campagne school.)

We doubled back and took a trail that headed back in the general direction of the parking lot. … but not too soon. There were plenty of fun sections to explore. We re-did the "step ladder" part twice, once on the easier side and the second time and attempt up the wood/root side. Fail. Gordo aced the easier side on the second go-round.  

After that we zig-zagged through some roller-coaster sections and found ourselves at the feet of Godzilla. For the first time in years … and for Gordo the first time ever.

Singletrack ... "with a side order of everything."

Maybe made it half way up the beast before Godzilla swallowed me up. Ditto for Gordo. He made a second attempt up the left side, but Godzilla rejected that, too (photo).  I told Gordo that going down the beast was as rewarding as going up especially if you took the trouble to get up it. But make sure to stay back on the bike, or you're going over the handlebars and it's a long way down.

We both made it down relatively uneventfully aside from a stick in the spokes here or there.

There was one more descent of note. A revisit to the scene of a pretty bad crash I'd had many years ago. Needless to say, I was more careful this time not to go flying over the handlebars.