from: http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/global_warming.png

yup

Storming the eastern shore

The second weekend in October was another race weekend for me. It was my second time competing in the Storm the Eastern Shore race based out of Cape Charles Virginia.

STORM the Eastern Shore race 2008 Post
The second weekend of October was also the weekend for the second and final race for me this summer. I did the Storm again with the same team as a month ago for Untamed VA and last summer by the same race organizers. The race used many of the same locations as last year for such things as the boat to bike transitions, a few checkpoints and others. And because of the painfully flat terrain, it was quite hard to really make the race much different from the previous year. Also, the navigation in the orienteering sections was different from last year. And I would say much easier.

This time we had a much better start to the race. My teammates showed up on time and we got a half decent night sleep without me having to break into their house. We started in the boat, a nice short fat paddle that quickly lead into a long rough ride out in the open mud flats. Now I will complain about the looser that rented us our kayaks. He told us we had a nice green kayak with 2 cockpits (for our double kayak, we also had a single kayak - to make seats for 3), and showed it to me Friday at check-in. But Saturday morning at the race start he dropped us a bathtub with 1 giant cockpit. And no skirts for either boat. So the rough water out in the mud flats made for some wet kayakers. And we ad to keep bailing. And bailing! Our paddle took us right out to the barrier (and mosquito) islands for some orienteering.

Then we were back into the boats for a paddle across an exposed piece of water that scared Johnny Mapquest. So I came up with a navigating shortcut to get into some sheltered water. And I am quite proud of this decision. We were able to cut into some of the barrier islands through a couple meandering streams then a quick 100m portage over a muddy mosquitoe infested exposed mud flat. Not only did we miss the swells and whitewater, but we cut probably cut out about 0.5 km of paddling. Awesome. But we were followed. People know a good idea when they see one I suppose.

The paddle was also very cold because we were so wet without our skirts and the high winds kept us chilled. At the end of this paddle was a transition to bike, that had some hot outdoor showers. These showers were heavily used. The bike section was about 110km with an easy orienteering section about halfway through.

The most beautiful thing I have seen in a long time was near the end of this section. The route I chose to get to the checkpoints took us along the beach on the bay side of the Delmarva peninsula. 2 fingers above the horizon was a very full moon and some wispy clouds above the calm water. We had joined up with another team to find 3 checkpoints and without discussion we all paused to take in the scene. Thanks for the company team #6!

After finishing the bike section it was another orienteering section where I made a judgment error, but quickly recovered and found another shortcut. Sweet. Now, I remember making 2 judgment errors Saturday evening, but I cannot remember where or what... maybe that is for the best.They were minor errors but moves I would not want to make again.

We finished the race with a sub-1-hour paddle to a 2km portage. Knowing there would be a portage in this race I built a cart before the race. It was a catastrophic failure. Ah well, back to the drawing board.

Portsmouth, New Hampshire

The first weekend in October we attended a wedding in Portsmouth, New Hampshire for our friends from Belgium. The wedding ceremony was Friday afternoon, followed by dinner. During the day as the wedding was approaching the sky looked like it was going to open up and pour on us. But after a few sprinkles from about 3:00 to 3:55, the sun came out at 4:00 - just in time for the wedding. It was a cool but nice weekend. Fall had not taken hold of the area as all the trees were still green.


The following day, Saturday, was spent at our leisure. I went for a long run in the morning and saw much of the cute downtown. Then we gathered for an afternoon in town before heading back to the bride's father's house where we were gathered onto a trolley and taken to the pier where we started a boat trip around the area. I was able to take some great photos during this trip.





After the boat trip we returned by trolley to the bride's father's house for the evening reception - a Lobster Bake. There was plenty of food and drink and a surprise a Capella show by Overboard. They were a very entertaining group.






Sunday we headed back to Boston and spent the day checking out a few sites, such as :
City hall and the market, Beacon hill, Christian Science center, Cambridge and MIT, and other places I can't remember the name of. And a good pizza joint called: the Upper Crust.






This was by MIT, I am guessing the architecture faculty?

Nice place, but boy do they overdo it with the baseball.

Untamed VA 2008

I will edit this later, I have a bunch of posts to post and wanted to get this out......

It has been a few weeks since I did this race, but I have not forgotten it. We were supposed to be a team of 4 but lost a racer due to weak ankles a couple weeks before race start. So the final team was made up of myself, Miss Polly and Johnny Mapquest.

First, we had to arrange for riverboards/boogie boards. This was tough as we had no idea what to expect. And the cost did not seem worth it. So I went with the boogie board, while my teammates used riverboards. The $250 riverboards were heavy as hell, big, and had no advantage over the $50 boogie board. More on this part of the race later. Second, it was an unsupported race so we had more gear to carry than usual.

The check in went smothly this time with my teammates arriving in time to check in this year. We even had a chance to sleep for a few hours which was a plus over last years crazy pre race night.

The start was a 90 minute drive from the city of Richmond VA. But, from there we were put onto school buses for a 120 min. drive to the official start. On the bus ride we had the opportunity to start plotting and planning our race. And develop a huge urge to pee.

Because our team dropped from 4 to 3 people, we also dropped a canoe and stuffed all 3 of us into it, along with our river boards and boogie board, and packs packed for 30 hours. The race started with a 1 or 2 hour portage (I have no idea how long it was, but I do remember it was up and over a very large hill). We did not have wheels, which did not seem like a huge advantage over the rough terrain, but I am sure would hve helped. We were about 3rd last into the river, but we gained allot of ground in the paddle.

We spent the majority of the day on the river. The very shallow river. We were scraping bottom or out walking the boat for a fair bit of the race. As we progress through the river section, pasisng other teams, we increasingly came across locals out fishing on the river. Because of the shallow water they were all in canoes as well, it was neat to see so many boats out enjoying the very warm sunny day.

As a result of being on the water all day under the clear sky, I got the worst sunburn I have evr gotten. The shirt I wore had a large head holeand exposed about a 1 inch width piece of my untanned back. Over the subsequent days this section of skin became a nice pink. The tanned part of my neck was just fine.

Anyway, after the paddle we put on our swim fins and bike helmet, climbed in the river and onto our river boards. Then we floated down the calm shallow river for a couple check points. The water was very nice and this was a huge waste of our time. If they said get a piece of foam board and expect to float on the river for a few kilometers, that would have been cool. But part of the pre race material should videos of people going through crazy whitewater on river boards. I think the race director was buddies with the local river board dealer.

At least the swim was nice.

Then it was trekking time. We found all the checkpoints before the sun set, but made it to our bike pickup in the dark. From here we started the bikesection that first followed gravel roads for about 50km, then we were on paved roads for the final 30km.

The ride was very hilly, which took us b surprise. It should not have surprised us, but it did. This is a very hilly area. Not big hills, but there is not flat terrain. This seemed to be a bit too much for Johnny Mapquest. He had to bail about 60km into the ride. In fact this point was a popular bail-out location. After all that time on the gravel roads, this was the first sign of real civilization - a grocery store, gas station and a bank. Basically, as people came across this oasis of rural Virginia and saw others stopped in the bank parking lot the group of people calling it quits grew.

Oh, about 10km before the infamous bank (~2am), we stopped in some guys driveway and slept for 30 minutes (as some of you know, I could not sleep, while the others slept just fine.... oh wait, is it the other way 'round?).

This is where the race organizers plan for the weekend began to fall apart even more (after the lame riverboarding). So they got people to shuttle the group calling it quits at the bank to a point farther away from the finish line in a very remote location. Miss Polly and I rode from the bank to the point where the quitters were being dropped. Suddenly there was a large group stranded in a low lying marsh further from anywhere waiting for the same people to come and shuttle us back to the finish line. Here we waited for about 4 hours. I think I slept a bit, no sure. Then it was our tuen to be picked up driving us back to where we left our cars before the bus ride. The route back to our cars passed the bank where we (or at least Johnny mapquest) had just been picked up.

The race organizer claimed to design the race for a 40% finish rate. The complained about all the picking up that had to be done.

Overall it was a good race route, I wish we could have finished it. I would do this one again next year. With teammates that have been properly training.

Telemarketers

Damn telemarketers!

They are phoning my pay as you go cell phone daily and costs me $0.20 each time they do. And it is a different number every time. Here are some of the more recent callers:

213 363 5144
408 587 2143
562 223 8854
301 223 0031
480 505 8859

Resources to see who these people are don't turn up much useful information. They all say it is a car warranty scam. No shit. The caller isn't hiding that info from me.

http://800notes.com
http://whocalled.us
http://www.instantphonelookups.com
http://www.callercomplaints.com
http://whocallsme.com
http://phoneowner.info

Getting on this list does... well, what you would expect.

https://www.donotcall.gov/

Nothing.