Yesterday was the last day of the Downtown Boathouse kayaking season. The season always ends with a whimper... it was cold and windy, although we did get a handful of public kayakers.
Yesterday was different, though. It was also the last day of the Pier 26 Downtown Boathouse. The Hudson River Part Trust is knocking it down to make way for a new pier--one that will last much longer than the one we have now. Eventually, we'll probably make it back down to Pier 26, but for now, we've moved up to Pier 96 and we'll probably be doing some kind of a program at Pier 40. Stay tuned for next season's details.
The boathouse we have is very special. Its old and we couldn't identify a lot of the rusted out parts that we tried to sell at our "yard sale" a couple of years ago. But, it has charactor. It has taken a little something from every volunteer and public kayaker that has set foot in there for the past nine or ten years or so. Its been my second home for the past couple of yeras during the summer and I've had the best time there. I've met so many great people there--people that are tied together by two simple ideas: They like doing new and different things and they enjoy getting to meet other people. There's no standard boathouse demographic. There's nothing about free kayaking that draws in a majority of affluent white men the way something like, um... blogging does. In fact, by numbers, I think we have a majority of female kayakers. Here are just a few of the pictures I've taken in and around the boathouse. If anyone has anymore, feel free to load them into flickr and tag them "dtbh".
