Kayaking at sunset

We went down to the Guilford town dock late this afternoon with our kayaks.
Paddling out into the harbor, we enjoyed the evening light.

The water lay flat and calm; after the storms of the last few days, there was now no wind. The pastel colors of the evening sky were reflected in the water everywhere we looked.

For many years, Guilford and the surrounding shoreline towns were vacation destinations for people living in New York City (there used to be a number of big hotels dotting the shoreline). We have to remind ourselves that we don't need to go away to have a vacation experience!


We met our friends Maya, Sheldon & Claire paddling in from a longer outing.

Eventually, reluctantly, we did head in to shore ... but noting the warmth remaining in the water and air, it seemed likely we will be back to the Guilford harbor in our little boats again before the autumn weather gets too nippy!

AIDS ride - Braking The Cycle

123 other people are riding their bikes from Boston to New York this weekend, as Amy and I are, to raise money for services to people living with HIV/AIDS. The picture above is of Garrison, who lives in California and has ridden in many AIDS rides before. To fly out for this ride, he had to overcome a variety of illnesses -- despite which he is one of the reliable bikers who rides as the "caboose" at the very end of the group to make sure the slowest bikers finish safely.


Tom first rode a year or two ago with his son, but when his son couldn't make this year's ride, Tom signed up, fundraising and biking anyway.


William is bike mechanic from Brooklyn. It is not easy for him to make the fundraising quota, but he has ridden every ride since the event's inception eight years ago.


Rusty rides in memory of his brother, who died of AIDS in 2002. Rusty was also one of the caboose riders.


Allen and Scott are from New York City, where Allen is a schoolteacher and Scott runs a public relations firm.

Although all these pictures happen to be men, there are also some women riding, and many more men and women on the support crew who feed us and clean our injuries and keep us safe on the road. The riders are gay and straight, HIV-positive and not. They are diverse and warm and wonderful.

Here's a story from today's riding: The riding has been very strenuous (over 100 miles each of the first two days) but full of personal reward as we meet the physical challenges. We were warned of the difficult of a particular hill we would face at mile 22 today, on legs tired from yesterday's riding. We were told that the hill is a metaphor for living with HIV/AIDS. "It will be unexpected and scary," we were told. "Some of you will ride up, some will walk, some will do some of each, and some will be carried in vans. And that is what living with AIDS is like." But I have to admit that I thought that with all my training, with my new bike and clip-in bike shoes, this hill would be manageable. It was only about 400 feet in elevation, and I didn't think I would have a lot of trouble.

When we got to the hill, it looked steeper than I had expected. But I had been going up a lot of hills over two days, and I didn't think I would have to walk. So I started up the hill. Pretty soon, I realized that this hill was much steeper than anything I had been on. About one-third of the way up, passing the many bikers who were walking, I started to worry. My heart was pounding, I could barely breath, and I didn't feel good. So I decided I had better walk. Except that it turned out that wasn't an option. I am not completely accustomed to the clip-in bike shoes, which require a particular swift movement to detach your foot from the pedal, and in my labored struggle, I was unable to get either of my feet off the pedal. So struggling and slowing, I kept trying to pedal up the hill, but knew that I was running out of options. I couldn't make it up the hill, and it appeared I was either going to faint or fall over. There were a number of crew members cheering us on as we struggled up the hill, and I tried to figure out if I could shout for help and have the closest one catch me. But instead, one of the crew members ran up behind me, put a hand on my backside, and started to run up the hill propelling me to a sustainable speed. When he let go, perhaps fifteen feet higher up the hill, I had more momentum and was within sight of the crown of the hill. Gritting my teeth, I made it up the rest of the way.

It was a real accomplishment to get all the way up the hill. Getting in that predicament was also a result of my overconfidence, perhaps arrogance. And I would never have gotten to the top without some unseen and unknown person behind me giving me the crucial help. If that doesn't say something about the world, I don't know what does.

If you would like to contribute to the fundraising for this event to help people with HIV/AIDS, you can click here. Thanks.

Guilford Fair

The Guilford Agricultural Fair was this past weekend (congratulations to the Cascio family and others with entries and prize-winners!). It's always fun to see the young and old assembled for such a time-honored community entertainment.

When I got there today, the spelling bee was in full swing; the kids were struggling with "intricate."

Some of the rides seem really scary, some seem quite tame -- to me. Joy or terror are in the mind (or stomach) of the individual ...



And then there's the fair food. If limited to once or twice a year, perhaps you could call it "mental health food" ...


Aside from the food, rides, games (throw the ball, shoot the bottle), and vendors selling everything from basement systems to woven bracelets, there are the traditional displays of animals, and the "pulls" in which huge beasts of burden pull enormous loads. Watching this team pull 3,600 pounds of weight, it wasn't hard to see how early settlers could clear a field of New England boulders.

Until next year ...

52nd Birthday

Here is the poem I memorized for my 52nd birthday (which is today):

Refusing at Fifty-Two to Write Sonnets
by Thomas Lynch

It came to him that he could nearly count
How many Octobers he had left to him
In increments of ten or, say, eleven
Thus: sixty-three, seventy-four, eighty-five.
He couldn't see himself at ninety-six—
Humanity's advances notwithstanding
In health-care, self-help, or new-age regimens—
What with his habits and family history,
The end he thought is nearer than you think.

The future, thus confined to its contingencies,
The present moment opens like a gift:
The balding month, the grey week, the blue morning,
The hour's routine, the minute's passing glance—
All seem like godsends now. And what to make of this?
At the end the word that comes to him is Thanks.

Thomas Lynch is a poet and undertaker from Michigan. Next year he will be 63.

Moving

We have become like an aircraft carrier. The girls land with us for awhile, then take off again. Last month Sarah came back from her summer trips away; this month Rebecca packed up for her Junior year at Amherst. Rebecca packed the car herself; it could not have fit another toothbrush.
Rebecca's room looked stark when we arrived. But Rebecca immediately had ideas of what she wanted to do with it, and went to work with Sarah and me to haul and carry. It wasn't just the full load from our house - more furnishings had been stored at Amy's sister's house down the street.

Four carloads later, the room had become pure Rebecca, filled with things we and others in Rebecca's life had made or given her and other things she had picked for herself.

How can anything be so right, and so hard, as to help your child leave you to make her new home?

Different Views

We are on vacation on Grand Island at the north end of Lake Champlain. The lake is between Vermont and New York; the Island is part of Vermont. This is the view from the porch of the house we have been in; we arrived on a windy day but went for a nice swim anyway.


It would be wrong if I gave you the impression that we have been sitting around. We have been biking, paddling kayaks, swimming, cooking, eating, watching movies, even reading a little(!). But I have been fascinated by the changes in our view as the weather and time of day change.


For a day and a half, the wind was blowing so hard that biking on a flat road we felt as if we were biking uphill. We didn't dare go out in the kayaks.


But then the weather calmed, and we could watch the sun set and then watch the stars. The view from the porch has been different every hour of every day. It has been a great reminder that no matter how much we are in motion, our actions are dwarfed by the movement of weather patterns, by the turning of the earth, and by the motion of the earth through space.

Europe, 1980

(Eiffel tower at Night)

In June of 1980 I had just graduated from college, and had the summer free before I started law school. My parents were kind enough to agree that I didn't need to work that summer, giving me the chance to travel, with the understanding that I would pay for my own trip. I had never been away from North America. I decided to spend the summer travelling around Europe. I flew to England, then traveled through Belgium, Germany, Austria, Italy, France, and then back to England, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland before flying home. I brought my Canon AE-1 camera and rolls of film.

(view of Florence from the Duomo)

It was an incredible, eye-opening trip. I learned enough in each language to find the youth hostel and buy bread, cheese, fruit, milk or ale. I met up with friends, sometimes on purpose and sometimes by chance. (A former girlfriend and I had a date to meet in England my first week, but she never showed up. Four weeks later we met on a subway platform in Paris, and I learned that her flight the month before had been delayed.) I made new acquaintances everywhere I went. I took long walks by myself, shooting photos everywhere. I set myself a budget of $15 per day, including the youth hostel and my food (but not including transport, which was mostly by rail pass).

(Gondoliers racing in Venice)

I must have shot 20 or more rolls of slide film (36 or 37 shots each); when I got home identified about 400 photos that I liked the best, and they became my "slide show," which no one but my doting parents and grandparents would ever see.

I dug some of these slides out recently when I acquired a new photo scanner that is equipped to scan slides. I found my old slide viewer, flipped through 100 of my slides, scanned a handful that I liked the best. I still liked a lot of the pictures. I was amazed to see the picture of the Eiffel Tower at night, taken with a guess of a long exposure on film, not knowing until the slide was developed 8 weeks later whether the shot would come out.

Some of my photography is the same as what I did with that great old film machine. I look through the viewfinder, and have a gut feel for what I am looking for. It makes a huge difference, though, to be able immediately to see the photo reduced to a captured image, and be able to shoot most shots again, from a different angle, at a different exposure, closer up or further away. Digital photography with a good camera gives me more control over the picture, more ability to show others what I am seeing. And the internet gives me the ability to show just a few pictures at a time to so many friends!

But I sure like some of those old pictures, taken when I was very young ...

(me, in Interlaken)