All in Kayaking

Yes, I'm alive.

Charlie O'Donnell
Baseball and Other Sports, Friends and Outings, Kayaking

Yes, I'm alive. And now, because of my delay, I know have lots of stuff to post.

First off, some current notes:

1) The sneakers I bought in Tampa are amazingly comfortable. They're bouncy and nicely snug and very quiet, too. Its such a pleasure to walk in them. They're New Balance I think.

2) The GM finished its season with a win, finally. We won 16-6 tonight, making our final record 7-5. We could have done better, but obviously, this is a big improvement from 2-10.

3) I went to the Fordham Young Alumni Happy Hour tonight, which was highlighted by the exposure of huge fake boobs. Some trashy blonde chick just decided to kneel up on the bar and flash everyone, prompting chants of "one more time" from the whole bar when she left. She did not comply however. Do you think people like that realize how little they've made of themselves at some point, or do they just continue bottom dwelling?

Anyway, let's recap on what I need to post about. First off, last Thursday, Brian and I had dinner at Ben Benson's. The feeling about the food was that the appetizer and the desert were excellent, while the steak was above the bar, but not great. If we could have combined the tail ends of the meal with a Del Frisco's steak (and waitress), it would have been perfect. Peter Lugars is kind of a different animal, so that's not really comparable.

We've been making a semi-tradition out of these steak meals, and we agreed to make it more of a regular thing. We should probably make it quarterly or something. $400 of steak a year with Brian is definately worth it. One thing we talked about extensively was the sense that, at this point in our lives, things, specifically people, were coming up short in our view. Its kind of a difficult time, I think, to be 25. There's a book on the "Quarter Life Crisis" out there that focuses more on people who took directionless jobs or jobs for the wrong reasons and now they're realizing the life they created for themselves sucks. I don't think that's really the case with us... I think we're as close to the path we want to be on as we can, but to some extent, that's part of the problem. I think our good fortune to this point has, to some extent, let our expectations get ahead of us. Things that are probably non-issues to other people are now splinters in the back of our minds--other people that can't seem to figure themselves out or who get caught up in the small things become really frustrating, and no longer challenging. We also acknowledged that we need to be better at making time to see each other, too, because its too easy to get caught up in responsibilities. The one thing I do like, though, is that its never taken personally... that there's always this mutual underlying understanding that there's a continuing friendship there no matter what circumstances bring, which is probably why we've been friends for as long as we have. Its solid. The trick is maintaining this stability of quality in our own respective lives on a pace that maintains reasonable growth.

On Saturday, I kayaked down the Bronx River. That was quite an adventure. Victor invited me, and as soon as I figure out how to post pics up, I'll put some of them up. First of all, for 3/4 of the trip, you'd have no idea that you would even be in the Bronx in the first place. We put in at 215th Street, where the river is like 12 feet wide and 2 feet deep. It goes all the way through the Bronx, into the Botanical Gardens and the Bronx Zoo, and empties out later into Hunt's Point, which isn't so nice. In fact, its full of trash at that point, which is a real shame. However, the trip for the most part was beautiful. Trees form a canopy over the river in the early going, and its really kind of surreal. I'll bet you it would make a really spooky night trip.

The other thing I want to mention this week is that I learned something. Time spent does not mean emotional investment. That's one thing I've always done--easily confused the two. If I think back, there have been many times in my life where I've failed to really go out of my way to show someone an effort on my part, even though I may have been putting in time. Maybe its forgetting birthdays or seeing disinterested, or whatever... Its all a matter of focus. Admittedly, there are many things to be focused on during the day, but we should make it a point to focus, even if it might not mean commit time, on someoene else for a few moments a day.

Gitmo on the Hudson

Charlie O'Donnell
Kayaking

Its nice to be checked in on from across the globe.  Makes me feel special.  :)

Anyway, so I was a detainee over the weekend, not in Guantanomo, but in the Hudson River and the Marina at Battery Park.   So, we were supposed to kayak to Governor's Island on Saturday morning, and we were going to have an opportunity to get out and have lunch there.   Well, we get out of the embayment at Pier 26 about 200 yards and here comes the Coast Guard in one of their little orange patrol boats.  First, they told us to hug the seawall, and then a second CG boat tells us to stop.  Taino and Harry went up to them and handed over their IDs to try to negotiate.  Keep in mind, the whole time the current is taking us out to the harbor at a 4 knot clip.  Eventually, we had to start backpaddling just to stay in the same spot, about a 100 yards off the south cove at Battery Park.  After about 45 minutes of just sitting in the water doing nothing, we were instructed to head back upstream (against the current) and go into the Marina.  The Marina is on the seaside of the Winter Garden next to the World Trade Center site.  We wound up having to sit by these two docks in the corner for like an hour.  It looked like Fisherman's Wharf in San Fran, except replace the seals with kayakers eating their lunch and snacks.  Finally, they told us we weren't going to be let across and we just headed upstream back to the boathouse.  Two hours of paddling, and about a total of 1 mile actually travelled.  It was still a good time...  bizarre, but a good time nonetheless.  I learned that exactly 89 Baby Goldfish make a serving.

Fantastic Weekend

Charlie O'Donnell
Fordham, It's My Life, Kayaking

I had the most fantastic weekend... Friday night was the Fordham alumni boat cruise. Its funny, because everyone always asks whether or its fun or not. I never thought of anything as being fun on its own... unless its like a show or performance--something we're I'm not interacting. For an event, I really think the fun is what you make of it, and I definately made this fun. I had a great conversation with someone the entire cruise about family, careers, values, etc... it was just a very real talk, something I haven't had with someone for that long in a while. Very cool stuff. Brown and Matt came, too, which was bizzare, because they never come to anything. Anyway... the views were fantastic and so was the company. We went past the Boathouse, too, which was cool.
Speaking of the Boathouse, this kayaking thing has seriously been like the best thing to ever happen to me. I absolutely love it... I spend as much time as I can there, and look forward to it the whole week. The people who volunteer are just a great bunch of people. Its a really diverse group... and its weird. Very few people talk about what they do or where they come from, but it doesn't seem to matter. Its just this place where people have come together to have fun and facilitate other people's fun. Jeff Reals keeps saying its a cult... and it kind of is.. but its a happy cult that kayaks. If I had to choose a cult, that's the kind of cult I want to be in.
Anyway... Saturday, I was out from 8AM to 2AM... I started by going down to the boathouse to try and get on the morning trip, which I did. We went up a little past Chelsea piers with Mike and Janice and came back... neat little trip. When I got back, Andie was there. We hung out the whole day, and then added Amar and Jay to our posse and headed out after kayaking. The four of us went down to this outside bar/resteraunt down by Battery Park where they park yachts... right by the Winter Garden. We must have been there for like five hours... totally laughing our asses off the whole time. Amar is a total nutcase, and he and Andy were pretty drunk. We were inviting everyone to come down to Kayak. It was a riot. Then, we took the SI ferry at 11:30 just to see the downtown skyline... and to satisfy Andie's touresty curiousity. It turned out to be a great trip...

Sunday was fun, too, except for the part where this guy took a seizure on one of the kayaks and nearly drowned. It was totally bizzare, and scary to watch. This guy in his 40's and 50's was paddling back to the dock, when he suddenly started convulsing and bounced himself right out of the kayak and into the water face down. I screamed, "That guy is having a seizure!" Everyone had seen it... I was up at the pier eating my lunch. His friends in a double hopped off and pulled his head up, and one of the other volunteers paddled out to get him. They pulled himm out pretty quickly, and eventually he came to. I had called 911 and ran to get the ambulance, which had stopped in the wrong place a few blocks up. Scary stuff... he turned out to be ok, but I don't think I'll ever forget that image and sound of him shaking and falling in the water.

Sunday night, I had dinner with Liz, which was great. Its really nice that we're friends again, almost as if our debacle of a relationship never happened... Anyway.. this is the abridged version. The face to face story is longer, but I'm sleepy and this is long overdue as it is.

Kayaking, Independent Baseball, and Greenwood Lake

Charlie O'Donnell
Baseball and Other Sports, Friends and Outings, It's My Life, Kayaking

So the foreign girl at the counter at DTUT has a boyfriend...   some greasy looking guy... sort of takes something out of our little exchanges when I get my green tea.  Oh well.

So I've had a really great Memorial Day Weekend so far.  Friday night was a long overdue cleaning of my apartment.  I threw out five big garbage bags of...  just random crap.  I seriously have issues about holding on to stuff.  When I moved out of Fordham, my desk alone produced about three for four garbage bags of stuff, which is difficult to comprehend given the mass of the desk and the known and accepted laws of phyisics.

On Saturday, I was back at the Boathouse.  The water was choppy and the wind was whipping up pretty good, but a handful of brave souls still came to kayak.  One girl took a nice flop into the water by the dock, and I pulled her out by her lifejacket like I was one of those shipping cargo cranes... up, over, and down.  Mary came down...  I don't think I mentioned Mary and Andy.   Mary is this english woman who came down last weekend for the first time.  We started talking and it turns out she works for a publishing company.  She's going to take a look at my book and everything... how do you like that for dumb luck.  Kayaking:  fun AND productive.  Anyway... she gave me her e-mail address and number.  Then, later on, another woman comes down and tells me her friend just called her and told her how much fun she had, so she had to go.  It turns out that it was Mary, and so this girl Andy and I started chatting it up.  She was incredibly cool, and after she kayaked, she actually hung out to volunteer almost the whole day.  I think she's be a lot of fun to hang out with, but I'll wait until Mary looks at my book before I make any move that might be perceived as sketchy.  You never know and can't be too careful.

Anyway, from kayaking, I went to the Big East Baseball Finals in Bridgewater, NJ.  Brian and Rich met me at the entrance to the Holland Tunnel, and I drove out to Jersey.  They had the game in an Atlantic League ballpark, which is one of those Independent minor league teams.  I'll tell you.. it was such an enjoyable experience--$8 tickets, $2 for parking.  I'd easily go back again.  Brian's brother Jimmy was there with his wife.  I swear, Jimmy makes me laugh more than any other person I've ever met.  Something about the dryness and deadpan delivery I just find endlessly amusing.  His wife asks him where the bathrooms are... and its a dinky little stadium where everything is like two feet away, and he goes, "Its on the Concourse Level."   Hysterical.

Anyway, after the game, I hung out with Anna...   everyone else pretty much left for the weekend, so Anna and I were left to chill Saturday night and Sunday.  Saturday night we... painted.  It was bizzare.   She doesn't have any brushes or canvas, so she just paints on cardboard.  She can be so weird sometimes, but I guess it was cool.  We had nice conversation and it was just good company.  I left and came back the next morning for a random roadtrip.  We just decided we were going to go on a driving adventure, and somehow, that turned out to be a search for my grandmother's old country house in Greenwood Lake.  I drove up 17, and somehow I found it.  It was really strange being up there, because everything seemed so much smaller than I remember it--meaning I was obviously pretty small the last time I was up there.  Two different people had occupied the house since we sold it about ten years ago, but it was kept up very well.  When I got up there, I called my grandmother to tell her were I was and she got a little choked up.  Still, she was really glad to hear that the house had been kept in such good condition.

What was really disappointing, though, was when we walked down to the beach on the lake.  There was this little pier that they built about 20 years ago when I was younger and they put in sand behind it.  It was small but cute.  As we walked down the stairs to get there, it was obvious that they hadn't been kept up, but I wasn't prepared for how bad the beach was.  It was in total disrepair, like it hadn't been touched in that long.  The deck and pier is collapsing into the water, and all the sand is gone, with weeds overgrowing the concrete.  It was really sad to see...   makes me wonder what happened.  The raft we used to swim out to was gone, and it looked like part of it was sunken on the far side of the deck.  Anna took some pictures, but I don't think I'll be showing them to my grandmother.  I'm curious to figure out what happened and when.

Anyway, before we hit the house, we stopped at a marina.  Turns out that a pontoon boat rental is only like $150 for three hours...   The whole time we were there, we were thinking that it would be cool to come up here for a few days with a group of people, and it wouldn't cost that much money. 

After the Lake, we headed out towards Warwick, but on our way, we passed Wawayanda, which is this state park that has a beach.  I went with my grandparents a few times and I have pretty vivid memories of it.  We ate lunch at the beach and then we rented a rowboat.  I don't know if she just timed the current wrong or what, but Anna had quite a struggle with the rowing.  :)   

From Wawayanda, we went to a Farmer's Market in Warwick.  They had good icecream, and we stopped to watch the farm animals they had in their corral.  They had a goat and some sheep, and some baby goats as well.  I think that might have been the highlight of our trip.  Anna's got some good pictures, but I don't know how to post them.  If I figure it out, I'll put them up. 

Anyway, after we headed home at about 3...  but made a stop off at the Cross County Mall.  I went 4 for 4 on things I had to buy...  swim shorts, nice sandles, work shoes, and those wet sock things that you wear in the water. When I got home, I went for a run and to the gym... putzed around...   and now, I'm at DTUT, procrastinating on writing up some more material for my Tuesday lunch with Mary the publishing woman.