Indiana Jones and the Foot Bridge of Doom
Jul. 30th, 2006 12:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ar_wahanWednesday:
The weather was better today than predicted in terms of sun, but hotter than Monday. As I begin this entry, it is 10:35 p.m. EDT (7:30 p.m. PDT) and I just stepped out into the back yard here at our vacation place at Cape Cod, looked up at the stars, listened to a bullfrog declaring reign over its portion of the kettle pond. And I raised a glass (with a little of the Jose Cuervo Golden Margarita mixture left by previous renter) to the western stars in a toast to be4u. (In reference to my post on Sunday and her comment.)
Today I rose early after disturbing but forgotten dreams (except one in which a man threw himself into my car, pointed a weapon at me, and told me to give him the keys. I remember wanting to fight him off, but upon waking, telling myself that would have been stupid, to just throw myself out of the car and let him go. What does the car represent, I wonder?)
Edit: Security and financial independence, most likely.
Anyway, after crawling out of the nightmare, I went up to the Subway Shop, which, I had discovered, not only had a hot spot but opened at 7 a.m. with BREAKFAST! I had no idea Subway offered breakfast. So I had coffee and breakfast for $2.99 and tax and had the luxury of uploading seven pix to Photobucket, posting two journal entries, and reading not as much of my backlogged friends list as I would have liked -- for I was needed back at the ranch (house). [Note what I did not do: Check email.]
Before I returned, though, I went to sneak a peak at the tides information for Boston in the Boston Globe – without buying a copy (*bad* former journalist! *bad* girl! LOL) at the supermarket. I did buy a few other things, though, including lunch items to pack for our kayak trip. (Be4u, everyone in Harwich must be reading your journal, because the Lipton Diet Green Tea we both adore was completely sold out. I ended up buying a single, small bottle of Snapple Diet Green Tea, and it is a poor substitute!)
My daughter’s thighs and knees got very sunburned today, despite sunscreen. My knees did too, though less so. Made us both think about getting spray skirts for the kayaks, not so much as to keep our gear dry, as our skin protected. Stopped at a supermarket on the way back to buy some Bactine spray to ease her pain.
Once home, I took a quick dip in the pond (I’d had my bathing suit on under my shirt and shorts all this time; I’d considered getting out and pulling our kayaks under the bridge, but the river was too deep, according to a depth test with a paddle).
Stan wanted to see a movie (a tradition when we meet here on the Cape). We sent the men out for pizza, I made a salad, we ate, then took off to see The Devil Wears Prada.
Now Stan is asleep (I hope) in the living room, spouse and samurai are asleep in the bedrooms, I’m in the kitchen babbling at all of you, my sunburned knees burning still, and that’s all for now.
Except for one last look at the stars over the pond.
The bullfrog is still singing to the world.
The weather was better today than predicted in terms of sun, but hotter than Monday. As I begin this entry, it is 10:35 p.m. EDT (7:30 p.m. PDT) and I just stepped out into the back yard here at our vacation place at Cape Cod, looked up at the stars, listened to a bullfrog declaring reign over its portion of the kettle pond. And I raised a glass (with a little of the Jose Cuervo Golden Margarita mixture left by previous renter) to the western stars in a toast to be4u. (In reference to my post on Sunday and her comment.)
Today I rose early after disturbing but forgotten dreams (except one in which a man threw himself into my car, pointed a weapon at me, and told me to give him the keys. I remember wanting to fight him off, but upon waking, telling myself that would have been stupid, to just throw myself out of the car and let him go. What does the car represent, I wonder?)
Edit: Security and financial independence, most likely.
Anyway, after crawling out of the nightmare, I went up to the Subway Shop, which, I had discovered, not only had a hot spot but opened at 7 a.m. with BREAKFAST! I had no idea Subway offered breakfast. So I had coffee and breakfast for $2.99 and tax and had the luxury of uploading seven pix to Photobucket, posting two journal entries, and reading not as much of my backlogged friends list as I would have liked -- for I was needed back at the ranch (house). [Note what I did not do: Check email.]
Before I returned, though, I went to sneak a peak at the tides information for Boston in the Boston Globe – without buying a copy (*bad* former journalist! *bad* girl! LOL) at the supermarket. I did buy a few other things, though, including lunch items to pack for our kayak trip. (Be4u, everyone in Harwich must be reading your journal, because the Lipton Diet Green Tea we both adore was completely sold out. I ended up buying a single, small bottle of Snapple Diet Green Tea, and it is a poor substitute!)
The reason I wanted to check the Boston tide is because the book of Cape kayak routes that I’d purchased last fall used it as the basis for recommending when to set out. I’d planned to use the Nantucket Sound tide chart because I couldn’t find the Boston tide chart easily here (as samurai noted, if we had Internet access at the house we could have found it in five seconds. Ah, how spoiled we have become in the U.S. in general, and on the relatively wealthy, elbow-shaped Massachusetts peninsula Thoreau explored on foot in particular.). But having a more precise idea of when we should set out on the Herring River was reassuring – and because it was to be by 1:00 p.m., not 10:30 a.m. or so, it also allowed the samurai to sleep a little longer. She is a teenager, after all. I got back to the house the instant my husband was pulling out to pick up Stan.
Roused samurai, poured coffee into her, and off we went, arriving in time to shove off at 12:30. The reason for timing by the tides, obvious in theory, quickly became evident in practice, for if we’d wanted, we could have just drifted upstream, carried by the incoming tide. As we approached a low foot bridge over the channel, we became a little nervous, but other kayakers we’d seen shove off as we’d arrived had clearly got through. By lying back in our craft, we could scoot under with plenty of clearance. On the way back the tide would be going out, so we expected headroom to be better.
Beyond the foot bridge, the way became much less clear. The main channel was not marked, and they all looked a lot alike. We made several runs down channels that turned into dead ends. In the process, though, we did get quite close to an osprey nest and its loudly warning occupant. It was hard to tell from our perspective, but this bird has a wingspan of six feet. We later saw another one, maybe its mate.
I was starting to feel as if we’d never find the main channel when off over the heads of the acres of marsh grass I saw the yellow flash of the blades of kayak paddles! The pair ahead of us! Thus buoyed, we set to our own paddles with new zeal. Saw lots of other wild fowl. Samurai had the camera this time, so all photos are hers.
Ended up in a kettle pond, circled back around (still not sure what this one occupant is, and the bird book at the rental house is too limited; perhaps another cormorant, but it seemed bigger), and once back in the river, pulled in to the only dry land to be had, by a narrow auto bridge where some youth were fishing for crabs (yes, really – they kept throwing a line baited with a big chunk of chicken, and when a crab grabbed onto it, they would haul the chicken out while another youth would try to catch the crab in a net before it let go of the chicken and fell back in the water).
By now, the tide had supposedly turned, and the outgoing tide and the river current would together bring us swiftly back the way we had come. This it seemed to do.
But then we came again to the foot bridge. The water should have been lower, but it was HIGHER. I was afraid that even lying down, samurai would hit her head on the steel underframe. And so might I.
We dithered a bit. I tried to see if I could get ashore at the foot of the bridge and portage over, but it was a mass of thorny berry bushes and we were wearing shorts and sandels. We could just wait for the outgoing tide to drop the level more. Finally I asked samurai to lie as flat as she should in her kayak, and I would measure with my paddle blade how much higher than the kayak her head was.
Then I carefully kayaked my way to the bridge, hoping not to be sucked underneath, and measured with my blade how much higher its understructure was than the top of my kayak (we have the same model).
It looked like we’d both clear it, by a few inches…. But neither of us would be able to steer our craft by paddling.
She went first, the current turning her kayak sideways. She was able to pull herself out from under the bridge by reaching up and hauling herself along hand-over-hand by gripping the steel beams under its decking. I did the same.
On the other side, I said I felt this was like an escape scene in Indiana Jones. She said we deserved a reward of ice cream.
The rest of the journey was uneventful, expect for mint chocolate chip and peppermint stick at (a favorite of mine and rare in the off-Christmas season) at The Weatherdeck, a touristy restaurant on the Herring River that also offers an ice cream area and a mini-golf-course just to the east of the launch site.
I wonder now if the reason the foot bridge was so troublesome (and not mentioned in the guidebook, which clearly is younger than the bridge) is because of the record rains this region has had these past two months. Where we are staying, there are usually two distinct ponds with a broad sandy beach between them. Now they are one pond, the beach completely immersed in several feet of water.
Once back at the launch site, I pulled the cell phone from my car (how many times as we’d contemplated going under that bridge did I wish I’d brought my cell phone to alert people to our predicament and possible stranding there? O_o.). Called the house, and spouse and Stan were back. They’d in fact had lunch at The Weatherdeck, and on pulling out of the parking lot, had spotted my car at the launch site!
.
Roused samurai, poured coffee into her, and off we went, arriving in time to shove off at 12:30. The reason for timing by the tides, obvious in theory, quickly became evident in practice, for if we’d wanted, we could have just drifted upstream, carried by the incoming tide. As we approached a low foot bridge over the channel, we became a little nervous, but other kayakers we’d seen shove off as we’d arrived had clearly got through. By lying back in our craft, we could scoot under with plenty of clearance. On the way back the tide would be going out, so we expected headroom to be better.
Beyond the foot bridge, the way became much less clear. The main channel was not marked, and they all looked a lot alike. We made several runs down channels that turned into dead ends. In the process, though, we did get quite close to an osprey nest and its loudly warning occupant. It was hard to tell from our perspective, but this bird has a wingspan of six feet. We later saw another one, maybe its mate.
I was starting to feel as if we’d never find the main channel when off over the heads of the acres of marsh grass I saw the yellow flash of the blades of kayak paddles! The pair ahead of us! Thus buoyed, we set to our own paddles with new zeal. Saw lots of other wild fowl. Samurai had the camera this time, so all photos are hers.
Ended up in a kettle pond, circled back around (still not sure what this one occupant is, and the bird book at the rental house is too limited; perhaps another cormorant, but it seemed bigger), and once back in the river, pulled in to the only dry land to be had, by a narrow auto bridge where some youth were fishing for crabs (yes, really – they kept throwing a line baited with a big chunk of chicken, and when a crab grabbed onto it, they would haul the chicken out while another youth would try to catch the crab in a net before it let go of the chicken and fell back in the water).
By now, the tide had supposedly turned, and the outgoing tide and the river current would together bring us swiftly back the way we had come. This it seemed to do.
But then we came again to the foot bridge. The water should have been lower, but it was HIGHER. I was afraid that even lying down, samurai would hit her head on the steel underframe. And so might I.
We dithered a bit. I tried to see if I could get ashore at the foot of the bridge and portage over, but it was a mass of thorny berry bushes and we were wearing shorts and sandels. We could just wait for the outgoing tide to drop the level more. Finally I asked samurai to lie as flat as she should in her kayak, and I would measure with my paddle blade how much higher than the kayak her head was.
Then I carefully kayaked my way to the bridge, hoping not to be sucked underneath, and measured with my blade how much higher its understructure was than the top of my kayak (we have the same model).
It looked like we’d both clear it, by a few inches…. But neither of us would be able to steer our craft by paddling.
She went first, the current turning her kayak sideways. She was able to pull herself out from under the bridge by reaching up and hauling herself along hand-over-hand by gripping the steel beams under its decking. I did the same.
On the other side, I said I felt this was like an escape scene in Indiana Jones. She said we deserved a reward of ice cream.
The rest of the journey was uneventful, expect for mint chocolate chip and peppermint stick at (a favorite of mine and rare in the off-Christmas season) at The Weatherdeck, a touristy restaurant on the Herring River that also offers an ice cream area and a mini-golf-course just to the east of the launch site.
I wonder now if the reason the foot bridge was so troublesome (and not mentioned in the guidebook, which clearly is younger than the bridge) is because of the record rains this region has had these past two months. Where we are staying, there are usually two distinct ponds with a broad sandy beach between them. Now they are one pond, the beach completely immersed in several feet of water.
Once back at the launch site, I pulled the cell phone from my car (how many times as we’d contemplated going under that bridge did I wish I’d brought my cell phone to alert people to our predicament and possible stranding there? O_o.). Called the house, and spouse and Stan were back. They’d in fact had lunch at The Weatherdeck, and on pulling out of the parking lot, had spotted my car at the launch site!
.
My daughter’s thighs and knees got very sunburned today, despite sunscreen. My knees did too, though less so. Made us both think about getting spray skirts for the kayaks, not so much as to keep our gear dry, as our skin protected. Stopped at a supermarket on the way back to buy some Bactine spray to ease her pain.
Once home, I took a quick dip in the pond (I’d had my bathing suit on under my shirt and shorts all this time; I’d considered getting out and pulling our kayaks under the bridge, but the river was too deep, according to a depth test with a paddle).
Stan wanted to see a movie (a tradition when we meet here on the Cape). We sent the men out for pizza, I made a salad, we ate, then took off to see The Devil Wears Prada.
Now Stan is asleep (I hope) in the living room, spouse and samurai are asleep in the bedrooms, I’m in the kitchen babbling at all of you, my sunburned knees burning still, and that’s all for now.
Except for one last look at the stars over the pond.
The bullfrog is still singing to the world.
