I admit it; that was COOL!

      The next total solar eclipse visible in the United States will occur on March 30, 2033, but there aren't good motels on the northwest coast of Alaska or in northeast Siberia, and you know, March, so scratch that.  Next will be August 23, 2044.  I will be 90 years old (or not) when that one happens, but it will only pass through upper Montana and North Dakota, and that's too far to let a 90-year-old drive, even in August.

     So it had to be this one.  Those of you who know Paula will not be surprised that about a year ago she got the date of this year's eclipse, looked on the Official Eclipse Map and reserved a room in a Quality Inn in Lima, Ohio.  And by the way, don't try to fool anyone that you're from there unless you pronounce it "LYE-muh."  Apparently, it was named after the one in Peru (pronounced "Per-OOO"), like the capital city, which is pronounced "LEE-muh" and you won't fool them either unless your Spanish is better than mine.  It looks like both places had malaria in the 1800's, but the one pronounced "LEE-muh" had quinine, which is used to treat it, so they named the one in Ohio "LYE-muh."  Got it?

       

                                 LYE-muh                                           LEE-muh

     On the way to LYE-muh, Ohio (Peru is too far to drive), we stopped off to see a property recently purchased by our daughter and her husband who are presently in Kazakhstan, which you can pronounce however you want.  It is located in Rio Grande, Ohio.  The locals at the Taco Bell there will know that you are from out of town unless you pronounce it "RYE-oh Grand."  The land is lovely, but as far as you can tell from the picture, it could have been in Worchester, Mass. (pronounced "WOO-ster") or in Boerne, Texas (pronounced "BURN-ee").  

     Finally in Lima (whatever), we hung out for a couple of days, reading and watching the General Conference of the Church.  We knew that trips = calories, so trying to get some exercise, we discovered a great place to walk - the local cemetery!

     Lima, at this point pronounced however you'd like, peaked at about 53,000 inhabitants in the 1970 census, but by 2020 had dropped to 35,000 and change.  The graveyard spoke of more prosperous times with more people hanging around to fill it, and indeed the city mirrored much of the "Rust Belt" region.  Oil was discovered nearby in the late 1800's, manufacturing boomed for many years, but factories closed gradually after the 70's, and although M1 Abram battle tanks are still produced there, industry has largely passed it by.

     But not Waffle House!  One of the 1,900 outlets of that no-advertising purveyor of mainly Southern breakfast food (and what could be better?!) welcomed us in for our first meal ever,

thus erasing any temporary advantage gained by the morning's walk in the cemetery....

     OK, OK, but what about the eclipse?  I am pretty sure that the Quality Inn in Lima has not recently been sold out very often, but it looked like it was this time.  Scouting for a good eclipse-viewing venue, we decided on a hill on one side of the parking lot, making sure that the floodlights all pointed away.  

     By the time we arrived, a couple from Windsor, Ontario had staked out our spot.  However, as true Canadians, they were chill and friendly and even let us use one of their blankets.

     The hour finally arrived and through our non-bogus Eclipse Glasses, we watched the moon begin to eat into the sun's disk.

     Not much seemed to change around us for a while, but as the crescent of the sun became thinner, as seen through our non-Amazon Eclipse Glasses, a strange, dream-like twilight descended, and I noticed that the dozen or so buzzards that had started circling us were headed for their nests.  (Do buzzards have nests?)

     And then it happened!  Suddenly the thin crescent of the sun disappeared, as viewed through our glasses conforming to and meeting the Transmission Requirements of ISO 12312-2 Filters For Direct Observation of the Sun. 

     We ripped them off and stood in awe.  The corona of the sun shown beautifully around the moon, with several tiny bright-orange solar flares projecting from it's edges.

     Looking around, the twilight had darkened further, but an almost-sunset could be seen in the distance, first behind us, then all around, then sadly, advancing toward us.

     Just after the fourth minute of the amazing totality ended, a mere instant of the "diamond ring" was visible before we grabbed for our glasses once again.  

     Afterward, it seemed like a dream.  It was impressive how soon the intensity of the daylight seemed back to normal, even though it took another hour or so before the moon completely unmasked the sun.

     OK, was it worth driving about nine hours each way?  Yeah, I think it was, even though the Eclipse Glasses didn't do much for our fashion sense. 

     I'd been a bit skeptical about the enthusiasm with which folks had described their experiences attending previous eclipses, but I have to admit, they were other-worldly moments that I'll not forget.  

     We stayed the night in Lima, though there was little of the feared traffic after the eclipse.  The next morning we started early for Raleigh (pronounced "RAH-lee") and by the afternoon we were unpacked and back to our sordid little lives.

     We hope that you were able, or will be able to attend an eclipse sometime.  And by the way, we've got five almost-new sets of Eclipse Glasses you can borrow.  Certified.

Dave & Paula  

Ok, It's our turn now.

      When Paula's parents would come to town when we were first married, her dad would happily dive into whatever projects she needed done around the apartment, and then the house.  It bugged me a little at first, but I soon realized that he enjoyed doing such things and that he always did a superb job.  After a while I started quietly adding things to Paula's list in anticipation of her parents' visits.  

      Our son Mike's wife Adrienne was recently awarded a PhD for her research at the University of Delaware in Newark, DE (that's NewARK, as opposed to that imitation place in New Jersey that maybe spelled the same but is pronounced incorrectly).  They'll be moving to Provo, Utah in the next several weeks where she'll be a professor at BYU, and so they're putting their house in NewARK up for sale.  They've been working hard to get it ready, but meanwhile Adrienne has been editing her thesis, she and Mike have been working on the house, taking care of the kids, etc., etc. 

     It's been a great house for them, and they bought it when interests rate were at the bottom of the curve.  Like any house built in 1969, there are always things that need work.  Paula and I loaded up the minivan and headed north for a week to help out.  

     Windows needed washed,

and carpets needed cleaned.

      Someone told Adrienne that on the average, painting the front door black would increase the sale price of a house by $6,200.  Wow!  I need to paint some doors black!

     Other things needed to be painted white, though the financial upswing on those apparently hasn't been calculated.

     Home Depot's stock always spikes upward when we come to Newark, and this time was no exception

    While I was working on trim, three questions came to mind:  1) do they make those little trim nails wimpy just to irritate people when they try to drive them straight, 2) when is Christmas so that I can ask for a nail gun, and 3) when did I get so bald?!

     For the past 28 years, Mike's whitewater kayak has hung on his bedroom wall in Raleigh, a great piece of hanging art, but even more a reminder of the great adventures that he and Sam and I had in the mountains running rivers together with his uncle and cousins.  I admit to a pang handing it over, but it's time to do so, and there are further adventures awaiting it out west.

      While the adults worked, Kate, the five-year-old wild child of the family entertained herself watching ballet videos under the watchful but bored gaze of Elsie the Cat.

     She worked hard perfecting intricate dance moves, complete with elegant costumes.  

and of course she helped move the three yards of mulch from where the truck dumped it in front of the house.

     Always the gardener, Paula bent the flower beds to her will, 

taking time to smell the hyacinths.

     Four-month-old Emma won't understand for years that her sister Kate's clothing choices are...unusual, or that life isn't always chaos.  

     Way back when we were young, I thought that it must have been a pain for my father-in-law to come to town and spend his time working on our stuff.  However, now that it's our turn, I understand that I didn't understand.  It's actually a pleasure to help, and it feels right to hide the Home Depot and grocery receipts at the end of the day.  Just like they did back then.     

Dave & Paula

Photographs

      I started taking pictures in 1966 when I was twelve.  My sisters were graduating to Instamatic cameras, and they passed down their Brownie Starmite. 

It used “126” film and shot square photos. 

     At sixteen, our Explorer Scout leader sold me his Minolta 101 single-lens reflex camera with two lenses for $75. I shot a bunch of rolls of Kodachrome, especially during our Explorer Scout Virgin Islands sailing trip

  But I was thinking bigger.  I had heard that Japanese cameras could be had for less in the Virgin Islands and I brought cash. I had enough for a Nikkormat single-lens reflex camera body, with an in-camera light meter (!), which I purchased there for $105. Back at home, I bought a 50-mm lens and a 105-mm lens for it and took pictures with this camera for many years, finally giving it up in the 1990’s for a better Nikon SLR.

       My brother Mark, with whom I've had a fun arms race on almost everything was the first to go digital, and I ended up with a cool Canon 5d Mk 2, though I'm told by my tech-savvy son that it's obsolete.  

       I drowned so many small digital cameras on kayak and camping trips that I gave up and started buying waterproof ones.  During the years when we did more scuba diving, I bought a Nikonos underwater camera and shot many rolls of film.  ("MORE underwater pictures?!")

       So, with all of these cameras through the years, I must have taken some outstanding pictures, right?  Unfortunately, the majority of photos taken by the majority of people are pretty mediocre, and usually just serve to help them remember important people and moments in their lives.  It is estimated that between 4.1 billion and 4.7 billion photos are taken every day; that’s 47,564 per second!  About 95% are taken with digital phones, and this percentage becomes greater every year.  

       I just checked, and right now (February 2024) I have well over 100,000 photographs saved on my hard drive, from the 1940’s to the present, including many Kodachromes from those early years that were still bright and clear when I scanned them several years ago.  Digital storage makes the preservation of so many pictures too easy, and many (most?) should be tossed.

     That said, there are some that should be saved, and grabbed as I leave the burning building.  Ancestors long gone need to be remembered and honored.

     I could hope, perhaps in vain, that a few of the less-homely shots of me might be passed down.  While I’m still here, there are images that sharpen and sometimes correct my memories of sweet and important moments in my life, a life that has been pretty good to this point.  

Sure, there might be a few among the stacks that others might appreciate; that shot of a Hatteras sunset, 

or that one of the glacier on Mt. Huaytapallana with tiny figures descending, 

that macro shot of coral polyps in Bonaire.  

But those are the tiny minority.  The important ones are quietly held, and taken out from time to time.  They speak to me of things eternal, of growth and progress in this phase of existence, of precious moments frozen in bits and bytes that echo feelings of love and laughter, of times when I could run a little faster, when there were a few less beautiful wrinkles on the face of my love.

Those are the ones that matter.

Dave

This is how I roll!

     It all started with the Inuit people in the very - I mean REALLY northern parts of the world, Canada, Siberia and such places where light and maneuverable kayaks have been used for thousands of years.

     These boats were covered in skin, and were light enough to be carried by a single person.  The kayaks were largely used for hunting walrus and seal, and were hung upside-down when not in use, high enough that the hunters' dogs couldn't chew the skins.  Even today, people hate it when their dogs chew their kayaks.  

     Nowadays, however, the skin thing is considered pasé, and most kayaks are made from roto-molded high-density polyethylene or fiberglass.  That's where the similarity ends and the wild variety begins.

     A very common type of boat is the "sit-on-top" kayak (also known as the "fall-off-top" kayak).  They are easy to use, and if you fall off, as sometimes happens, you merely climb back on, minus your wallet, car keys, sunglasses, iPhone and dignity.  

     Sea kayaks are graceful, slender craft meant for distance travel, slicing smoothly through the water with minimal exertion, complete with watertight compartments for stowing your gear.  They can be considered the S-class Mercedes of the watery world, often with pedal-operated rear rudders.  

     Then there are the whitewater boats.  These are made for doing potentially stupid things.  Like waterfalls.

or giant waves on seriously crocodile-infested rivers,

or maneuvers that in the end really don't impress the chicks.

   If the sea kayaks are the upper-class limos, whitewater boats are the desert-rat off-road warriors.

     About the only things that whitewater boats have in common with their more-civilized cousins are a) they float in water, b) they are propelled with a paddle, and c) their opening is made watertight by a skirt.  The latter is important in either situation.  As my brother says, "Real men wear skirts."

      If you are serenely paddling your upper-crust sea kayak on the Inner Passage of Alaska and an orca rudely upsets your craft, or you get tossed by a standing wave on the Upper Gauley in your beat-up whitewater boat, your skirt keeps the water out and helps keep you in, but.... you eventually should get upright again.  

     This is where the "Eskimo roll" or just "roll" comes in, allowing you to get right-side up.

     When my sons were growing up, they couldn't come on the annual Spring Break "Big Boy Kayak Trip" with their cousins and uncles until they could successfully roll a kayak.  

     Everyone would hold their breath when the newbie capsized on the river, and then cheer wildly when he came upright, having hit his first "combat" roll.  The penalty for not hitting the roll was having to pop the skirt and bail out, necessitating a "yard sale," as everyone collected the paddler, his paddle, his lunch and his now-flooded boat as they bobbed down through the rapids.  

     Sadly, I haven't been on a river in years in my whitewater boat, which can be more accurately described as a '96 Subaru with a lift kit than a sleek European sedan.

     I brought it to a youth summer camp on a lake near Raleigh last summer.  I was assigned to be the on-the-water cop during canoe time, chasing miscreants who were wandering out of sight, helping with capsized canoes and participating in paddle-splashing fights, which I always won, by the way.

     Lots of fun, but I was shaken by missing a couple of roll attempts near shore and having to bail out.  It has been a dumb little thing on my mind's back burner since then.  Am I getting too old for such things?  (Obvious answer - Yes.)

     One of Raleigh City's Parks and Rec pools is covered in the winter, and used by the public and the nearby high school swim teams.  

     On Friday evenings between New Years and Easter, the swimmers are pushed aside and the pool is opened to boaters.

     Last Friday night, I shoved my kayak, paddle, skirt, life vest and eight dollars in the macho minivan and headed for the Optimist Pool, not very optimistic about my kayak rolling ability.  I went early to avoid the public shaming that would result if I couldn't get my roll back.

     After slithering into my boat and siding off the edge of the pool, I paddled around for a bit and chatted up a couple of guys in their S-class Mercedes and Lexus sea kayaks.  Realizing I had to do it, I paddled out in a clear space and rolled over.

     And I rolled back up!  Reasonably smoothly!  (At least from an underwater point of view.)  But the next twelve attempts were successful, and some even looked OK!  

     Oh, man was I relieved!  As the hard-core guys started strolling in with their little trick boats to warm up, I said a silent prayer of thanks and crawled out of mine.  I dried off and carried my wet gear back to the minivan and drove home happily.

     I hope that you, too can still hit your kayak roll, or your triple axel on the ice, or your backside tailslide on your skateboard or whatever before age catches up, which, sadly, it always will.  

     Yeah, but until then...

Dave

Merry Christmas! And Brrrr!

     My brother Mark is three years younger than I am, but he's a very able guy.  He picks up new skills much quicker than I do, and has always pushed me to try new things.  

     We have been kiteboarding for about fifteen years, with some years off for various reasons.  Normal kiteboards look almost like wakeboards and can go in either direction, called "twin tips."

     However, there's always something new, and about five years ago hydrofoil, or "foil" boards were becoming very popular.  They look like short surboards, but with a "mast" attached to the bottom of the board and two wings, or "foils" on a horizontal bar (the "fuselage") below that.  

     When the foil board moves through the water, the large front foil produces lift like an airplane wing, and since water is about 800 times denser than water, that wing can be relatively small and doesn't have to move very fast.  It easily lifts the board and rider above the water's surface.

      You might well, and should, ask, "So what?"  Well, a couple of things.  First and foremost, the companies that make such equipment have found something new to $ell, and these things are not cheap.

     Second, when the board rises above the water, there is very little friction, with only the wings and mast underwater.  That means that foil boards go fast, even in very light wind.  Kite foil guys can use small kites for propulsion and be out sailing in light wind when the rest of us are whining on the beach.  

     Third, with only the wing and mast underwater, the ride is very smooth, good for old guys' knees.  The practitioners of the activity say it really feels like flying serenely a foot or two off the water.

     My brother Mark saw a new challenge and dove right in.  He quickly learned how to 'foil' behind a jet ski, and was soon doing it propelled by a kite.  

     OK, fine.  I tried several times behind his jet ski and got nuthin.'  Flat out nuthin,' and figured that maybe it was one sport too far.  

     Name something where there are ascending levels of coolness of the equipment.  OK, OK, that's dumb.  Name something where there AREN'T ascending levels of equipment coolness.  Cars?  Yep.

     Bicycles?  Ditto.

     Ironing boards?  Duh!

     OK, maybe that was a lame example.  However, as usual, there are better, newer foil boards, and Mark realized that he was being held back, and so for Christmas....

     YEE HAH!  I got the old one!!  Oh, yeah... the one that I could never get up on...

     Well, hope springs eternal!  These things are made for the water, right?  Remembering that our next-door neighbors are nice people, we ran next door to see if the board would at least float in their pool.

    Here in North Carolina, the winters are described as being like "running fast through a freezer without any clothes on," in other words, it gets cold, but not for long.  However, the nights have generally been right around freezing, so the water

was cold.  I mean really, really cold.  However, we had a purpose!

     So it floats!  Now we'll see if I can finally get the hang of foiling.  That's a rather large "if."

     We hope that you have had a great Christmas, and that if your neighbors aren't heating their pool you'll at least have sense enough to wear a wetsuit when you test your new foil board.  

     And Paula reminds me that people with even more sense don't jump in pools in North Carolina on Christmas.  Yeah, whatever.  

Dave