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My kind of entertainment!

Shall We Dance?.

The weather was bright and sunny, though the thermometer read 23 degrees. A bit brisk, to say the least.

A closer look (below) and you can see some smaller bits of ice on the river. All in all, a great day for a motorcycle ride.

Not too many other bikes on the road… at least not until we got down to the river. (And yes, I’m following in the ‘support’ vehicle, with warm clothes and dry towels.)

On one end of town, other motorcycles were gathering…
(photo by Dana BatGirl Carroll)

…while down at the river the crowd enjoyed all sorts of entertainment.

I didn’t catch the name of the band, and I hope the drummer, sporting only a pair of swim trunks, didn’t catch a cold, but I suspect he was just acclimating himself for an upcoming dunk. The four-footed audience, though, didn’t seem to mind the cold.

Plenty of emergency vehicles on hand, though no emergencies arose.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles… are they native to the Hudson?

And then it was Plunge time! Unfortunately I can’t seem to upload my own video (0r embed this one on Youtube) but someone else had a better angle and caught the excitement of the main event. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pIQtySF_C4

I like the guy at the end, with the souvenier block of river ice.

And for more pictures and stories, check out the Stony Point Seals on Facebook.

And here’s some more pics…

There has to a good reason a large crowd of people will be gathering along the shore of the Hudson on a bitter day in February to watch various brave souls strip to their bathing suits and jump into the river. And there is. It’s time for the annual Stony Point Seals Polar Plunge, which takes place on a quiet stretch of road in Stony Point, NY. Each year a huge crowd gathers for the event, which normally benefits a local family or child in need.

In last year’s Plunge, you can see a whole lot of crazy people having a whole lot of fun for a good cause.

Every year, the families that live along this quiet road welcome this invasion of happy insanity. But this year, the neighborhood of Grassy Point looks more like a ghost town, with vacant and boarded up homes. Sadly, the homes lining that road, along with so many others in the area, had been devasted by Sandy. So for 2013, the Stony Point Seals are holding the Plunge to benefit these very people, along with many other North Rockland Hurricane Sandy Victims. And this year, my husband will be among those hardy souls making that fridgid leap.

Below, some of these homes, shortly after Sandy. If you’re in the area on February 3rd, come on down and lend your support. And even if you can’t stop by, you can still donate online and help our local families recover.

I did all my proper preparations, to the best of my ability. I’ve done all I could to make sure the boat would ride out the storm, and being that she’s in a (hopefully) sturdy shed at the highest point in the yard, I’m hoping she’ll be alright. I can only wonder how the river is handling the surge and flood waters flowing down.  And I did all I could to prep the house. But there is only so much that can be done. The news coming in over A.M. radio is troubling and the roar of the storm outside is truly terrifying. They just remarked that this is a night people will remember for years to come and I’m inclined to agree.

It’s 10:30 at night, and we still have power, for the moment at least, which seems ironic considering I have a tree through the middle of my house. Yes, one of those lovely massive oaks came down, there’s a trunk in my kitchen, and rain is pouring in. There are cracks in the hallway ceiling, another new skylight in the small bedroom, paintings were knocked from the walls. I’m just grateful no one was hurt, and all people and animals are safely bunkered down in the basement, and come daylight we’ll see just how bad the damage is. The police advised us to leave, but there’s nowhere to go. Every road is blocked, powerlines are dropping, driving was impossible, and ultimately we turned back as tree crashed down. The basement seemed the safest place, and that’s where we’re staying until this passes. But the lights are flickering, so I suspect I should sign off. I hope all of you out there are well and morning comes to find all well. Or as well as can be hoped for.

A while back I posted about how I’d be posting here more regularly, and I did, at least for a short time. But I’m sure those of you who follow my blog have noticed by now that little burst of activity was short-lived.  That’s not to say I haven’t been writing, in fact I’ve been wearing away at my keyboard at an accelerated rate, which has left me little time and focus for much of anything else. On top of that, life’s been throwing me a few curve-balls, and in my determination not to be derailed from my most important tasks, blogging has, for the time being, fallen to the back-burner. In fact, any of you who also follow my posts at Write on the Water may have noticed today’s post is in fact a recycled post from this blog. I’ll admit it – my inspiration was spread a bit thin this morning, and it seemed appropriate for that site.

I’m hoping in the coming weeks I’ll have a bit more time and creativity to spare, and if that happens I’ll be sure to share some of it with my online readers. I thank you for your understanding.

Back when most kids were getting bicycles for their birthday, my parents instead presented me with a bright orange Snark, which was pretty much a Sunfish knockoff, constructed of styrofoam, covered in tough plastic. It was more or less an Igloo ice-chest in the shape of a boat, and at 45 pounds, it barely displaced any water. Considering I didn’t weigh a whole lot more, it had a tendency to plane along the surface, and while it was never designed for radical sailing, once I rigged it with a tiller extension and hiking straps, it was a blast to sail. In fact, in the many years and boats since that Snark, I’ve never quite matched the pure exhilaration I had aboard that little orange cork — and that even includes a Laser I sailed for several years. And in recent years, my lack of sailing has begun to wear on me to the point I’m climbing the walls.

Well, I can stop climbing.  The other day my mom called to inform me they’d found me the perfect birthday present. She needs a little work, but nothing a few evenings in the garage won’t remedy.  And yes, she presently lacks a sailing rig, but that’s easily remedied as well.

This is going to be fun!  (And is also the subject of today’s Write On The Water post.)

I said I’d be doing all this regular posting, which clearly I haven’t been. Life has become a bit hectic, some of it good, some of it not so much. But that’s life. On the positive side, work is moving along aboard Annabel Lee, so much so, in fact, that I have zero photos to post at the moment simply because we’ve been too busy actually doing for me to stop and take pictures. On another (what I consider) positive note, I’ve acquired another boat, which in itself would be the definition of insanity, though it’s only a *little* insane, as in a pretty little dinghy that is, of course, in need of some work.Oh, and it is a design that can easily be converted to sail, and that will be hard to resist. Aside from that, I’m not going into details at the moment — I have much in the works beyond things that float, but for now I’ll just keep swimming.

Nothing deep and profound today. Not that profound ideas aren’t rattling around in my brain — trust me, they are. Spend the hours very carefully measuring and cutting giant swaths of woven glass, and the mind wanders to some odd places… but more on that tomorrow. Today the fiberglass saga continued, as it will for days to come, but being that it’s Thursday and my turn to add something to Write On The Water, I took some time to expand upon the process of Preparation.

I’d meant to post something yesterday and today, but things got hectic. I did, however, post to Write on the Water yesterday, so for anyone who missed it, here’s How did you guess?

It’s the weekend, which means another round of limited internet access and itchy fiberglass/epoxy fun. With luck, by Monday I’ll have some interesting pictures to post and the interior structure of the cabin will be complete at long last.

Comfort is nice. It’s something we all strive for. Things are going well; life is relaxed, easy, with minimal stress. What more could anyone ask for?

Challenge.

The danger in getting too comfortable is, if we’re not careful, it allows us to settle into lazy patterns. And while there’s nothing wrong with some occasional laziness, all things are wonderful in moderation. Comfort is a goal, and once you’ve attained a goal, it’s time to either set another goal or accept that you’ll be perfectly content to look back in a year, and five, and ten, satisfied that nothing has changed. Or, as Newton put it: “An object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion.”

Anyone who has followed this blog for a reasonable length of time should know I don’t do “at rest.” I’m perpetually on the go and involved in various undertakings. My tag-line, “Eternally chasing the ever elusive leaks,” referred to the original slant of this blog, boat restoration, though it has gradually gone out of context as each leak is banished and my posts have branched out into aspects of my life as a writer. And looking through it, looking back, I recently concluded that while I’m always involved several simultaneous and possibly insane undertakings, it’s all become almost routine to me. This level of “in motion” is my norm. It’s what I do, and I’m comfortable with that. Perhaps a bit too comfortable.

The time has come to take things up a notch, to accelerate that motion. I’ve set myself some new goals. I’ve been putting more time than ever into Annabel Lee, making great progress towards the goal of a complete and operational boat. And I’m writing more, setting higher goals for output, starting with posting here more often, making it part of my daily routine. The key to reaching a goal is by simply adding a new routine until it becomes habit, then building on that, one small step at a time. Each step forward becomes another accomplishment. Each accomplishment is another victory, and that momentum is a powerful force for change. Momentum is good.

I know… two posts in one day.  Still, it’s not every day I receive flowers from my publisher, editor and marketing team. And I’ll admit, it feels great! That, and I was the guest author on the Kindle Daily Post, Amazon’s Kindle Blog: Plotting Madness and Mayhem.

It’s been a crazy year, both in my personal existence, (writing deadlines, boat projects, life in general,) and in New Jersey, (earthquakes, hurricanes, rain, rain, rain, floods, more rain, Halloween snowstorm/massive power outages, all of which have disrupted my personal existence to one degree or another.) Needless to say, posting here is on a all time low, though it is yet again THURSDAY.

Meanwhile, I bring you:

It has melted. Not sayin’ that’s entirely a bad thing. In fact I’m quite please with where things are headed at the moment. But right now it kinda feels like this…

Yeah, that pretty much sums it up for the moment.  And the more your stare at it, the worse it gets. I want clothes printed with this pattern!