Flamingos Spotted in the Wild on Morning Run!

 The flock was on a hillside; the solitary was under a viaduct:

In other news, I've started my first slow steps toward running again! It's been two years since I was doing any significant running. I made an actual effort in the summer of 2019, right after I retired, but it all went away in the fall after my mother died. But I'm signed up with my girl for an actual 5K race at the end of October, and I want to make an effort to train for it. This is the incredibly fun Dead Man's Race at Historic Congressional Cemetary, which I have done before.

Me in 2015 at Dead Man's Race
Possibly the most fit I've ever been

I've been walking quite a bit more recently, and when my girl took up running this summer, I got the bug again. My running is Slow AF, but the mechanics of any running are different than the mechanics of walking, so there is a distinct difference between the two. A customary Slow AF approach is to run/walk very short intervals - right now, for me, it's literally 45 seconds of running followed by 60 seconds of walking. But by putting the walk intervals in, I can right from the start of training go a reasonable distance.

I have a target of finishing the 3.1 miles in less than hour. Most of my daily dog walks are at closer to two miles an hour than three miles an hour, and very fast walking isn't comfortable for me. With the run/walk intervals, my walking is naturally much faster than dog rambles, but three miles an hour would be a challenge for me to sustain outdoors (I can do it on a treadmill, level). But interspersing run intervals gets me there nicely - I was just over an hour today.

An added bonus to running:
nerding out on my stats and performance

My goal is to run three times a week for the next three weeks leading up to the race. On the off days, I'll do walks with the dog. Maybe after the race, when I have a base, I'll try running with Bixby. Right now, I don't want to have to focus on managing him while I focus on running form.

In Our Neighborhood

 Spotted a block away:

Fall Rituals

I've tried to up my game at making things "nice". That includes changing displays through the year. This rotating also works for my desire to have stuff but to not be cluttered. While I'm not strictly seasonal, this village strikes me as appropriate for Fall.

The black horse at the left was a recent impulse buy at Ikea. It'll be put with my other swedish horses when I dig them out with my Christmas decorations, but I don't want to forget it. For right now it's looming over the Bergen townhouses.

National Shame

 I took a dawn walk down on the National Mall, and saw the current art work honoring the (as of yesterday) 700,234 deaths due to Covid-19. While not all of this was avoidable, things could have gone very differently.

I took the time from my walk to take some photos. It was really breathtaking how big it is, and how it really sneaks up on you. Each flag has a hand-written name and other info on it. Like the Vietnam Memorial, there is an index to find someone specific. 

The display is in between the Washington Monument and Constitution Avenue, and takes a large amount of space.

Fall Eating

Brussels and Sweet Potatoes

I've gone full on brassica-vore since it's now Fall. (Aside: it's bangin' out there with acorns pelting down, making the term "Fall" a bigger deal than the image of gently wafting leaves down. I was thinking I needed a hardhat in my front yard!)  Many of my favorite foods are now in season, and it just feels right to eat them. Cabbage, broccoli, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, I love them all! But it doesn't always feel right to eat them, when they are not in season and they don't look great in the store. Only broccoli do I buy frozen, to add to other dishes. All the others have to be fresh.

I made this fabulous version of roast cauliflower the other day, from the New York Times, source of many of my experiments. This version has pancetta, olives, and parmesan, and half a cup of olive oil - so it satisfies my seasonal craving for blubber (got to fatten up to get through the winter, don't ya know). It definitely  made some meals by itself for me, not a side. I didn't think it would freeze well, so having done a whole head of cauliflower (and why not) I needed to eat it up quickly - three or four days. I have been known to eat an entire head of roasted cauliflower in one sitting, but this version is so very rich even I could not do that.

Roasted brussels sprouts and sweet potatoes on a sheet pan were even better for having bacon, shallots, and apples added (the apples for only the last ten minutes). Again, a complete meal, which I ate for several days. I need to be careful about over-buying, because when I'm with other folks, mostly we're eating out (or takeout) and it takes me a while eating alone to use up the vegetables.

Cabbage I don't roast, but it sautes up nicely and pairs perfectly with onions. I will have it with eggs scrambled in, or leftover rice as fried rice. Or, it can go with anything with gravy (omitting a starch) or be tossed in the pot for soups. And a shout-out to cabbage for being a champion keeper - I've had them last a month in my vegetable drawer. I wouldn't have tried to make a fresh coleslaw from the old head, but it was just fine as a well-cooked ingredient.

Broccoli is the easiest. Quick chop into my pyrex casserole, a quarter cup water, put on the lid, and microwave away. It's fine by itself, especially with parmesan and/or creme fraiche, or like cabbage, on the plate with something else. I've roasted broccoli in the toaster oven (especially for the sparse harvests when I grew it myself a year ago) but if I'm going to spend the time to roast, I'd rather have cauliflower or brussels sprouts.

No offense kale, I don't hate you, but I'm not in the habit of cooking you. 

As the brassicas take over my cuisine, lettuce-based salads fall off. I buy pre-washed lettuce mixes and I find some leaves are tending to slime before I get around to finishing off the bag, tainting the whole bag. Time to get out my countertop garden and grow my own!

I've got another head of cauliflower I ought to cook today. I'll do it roasted with just some olive oil, because I've got some fancy Octoberfest sausages I did on the grill yesterday. Yum!

Video of Trip

 Edit- the embedded video works for me, so not working for others must have to do with permissions, but I can’t figure it out.  Instead, try this link and let me know if it works  

Let's see if this works - snippets in order from the trip - only a minute total!

Boston to Baltimore

The view from my bunk into the main salon.

I'm home now, after a totally terrific trip. It was different from the previous one, though with a lot of similarities.

I ended up with a cabin of my own, since we were down one guest crew, and one of the guys announced that the solo cabin belonged of rights to me because I was the only woman among them. I protested that was not necessary, but everyone else went along with that. To be honest, I was fine with it, though less for reasons of modesty than having the additional space to spread out my stuff. As before, I left the door of my cabin open all the time except when actively changing clothes because I needed the ventilation.

My fellow guest crew included one guy in his early thirties that had shipped as professional crew on other tall ships, alongside some of our current professional crew. The other three guys were more of my age and demographic, including David who had been on both my Bermuda and Norfolk trips in the past. I drew the 8-12 watch (both morning and night) this time. I think that watch is the least disruptive to normal sleep patterns - I think I got a solid six hours between midnight off-watch and breakfast at 7:30, plus catnaps during the eight hours off in the afternoon. My watch was led by the third mate (a woman promoted since our trip to Bermuda in June), and had three other professional crew - two women and one of my pals from Bermuda, a vegetarian guy with a yoga mat and dangly earrings. We had a yoga-and-stretch break in the middle of every watch that conditions allowed. One of the other watches had a much more bro-ie feel and I was very glad to be with my folks.

My watch back at the wheel while I do a boat check

While previous trips north this year by Pride II were leisurely coastal trips, with stops in places like Newport and Gloucester, we went well offshore on our way back from Boston. The captain had read the weather, devised a plan, and as rarely happens, it all went well. We motored out of Boston harbor on Thursday morning, raised sails as we passed the final islands, turned off the motor, and left it off until we reached New Jersey on Sunday. We went well out east and south, avoiding the shoals off of Cape Cod and Nantucket, and then we curved west 100 miles south of Long Island as the wind shifted just as forecast. It was a time of just ocean and sky (and no internet). I am endlessly amused by just watching. Pretty much the only sight to be seen was when we passed through a fishing fleet, southeast of Nantucket, in the early morning.

The wind picked up a lot, as did the seas, and for about 36 hours we had Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. A few folks (both guest and professional crew) were seasick - some pretty badly. I, fortunately, again never got more than slightly queasy, hooray! Not due to virtue, just luck, but I was so very glad. I had brought a pound of my ginger candies and shared them freely with the crew. When the wind and waves really got going, I was physically not able to handle the wheel all on my own. I lasted about twenty minutes, with the mate beside me helping to haul the big wheel when a wave caught us behind and flung the stern around. As the captain reminded us, we were in control of a 190-ton vessel with seventeen people on board, and we needed to really pay attention to what we were doing. My arms are still sore from that twenty minute trick at the wheel.

Because I wasn't sick, I found it exhilarating! But, I did get bashed about when moving around the deck. Once I lost my footing and went sprawling. Often, I was letting go my handhold on one place on deck or down below, timed to the roll to fling myself to the next handhold. Because we had a favorable wind, sail handling was fairly infrequent, and I confined myself to sitting on the deck and coiling ropes when the maneuvers were done. The other main job when on watch was doing a boat check - which required moving from stem to stern, crawling up and down four different ladders, kneeling down to peer into the depths of the bilges to determine how much water was coming in, and pumping it out if necessary (there are four separate water-tight compartments, and six different vantage points). On the night watch during the wild ride, I told my mate that I was not going to take a shot at the wheel, and that I was not comfortable moving around the deck in the pitch dark (no moon) to do the boat checks. As a result, I hung out by the wheel to help keep a watch and chatted with the crew, but did no useful work. As I told the mate, I am of an age and sex that permits me to admit my limitations, and to be fine with them.

We had some rain and wind
At this point, I could handle her fine

The wind calmed down as we approached the New Jersey coast. We went into the Delaware Bay, and up it as far as the canal that connects to the Chesapeake. Sadly, this was my second time on Pride through the canal and the second time it occurred when I was sleeping off watch.

Monday at noon found us in the Chesapeake, well south of Baltimore. The first plan, based on a forecast of light winds Monday and Tuesday had been to anchor and spend the evening swimming off the boat before heading to Baltimore on Tuesday, beating Ida who would show up Wednesday. But the wind turned lovely and favorable for Baltimore, and the captain "proposed" (without any real discussion) that instead we sail all the way into the harbor that night. He noted that rain and thunderstorms were now forecast for Monday night, so the swimming would not be so great. 

We got to Baltimore around 5 pm on Monday, and while we were welcome to stay on the boat until our scheduled departure on Wednesday morning, the siren song of my shower, air conditioning, and bed were just too much for me. I got a ride to the train station, rode down to DC and metro'd back home. I was clean and in bed by 8 pm, and slept ten hours.

Tuesday, the grass I hadn't mowed before leaving was just too gross to ignore, so with a burst of energy I got the worst of it cut down, and then just chilled for the rest of the day. Wednesday, I worked out with my trainer, got my post-travel covid test (results just in, I'm clean), and bought some food, as waves of big rain passed through. 

As often happens, it seems I retain water when traveling, because Tuesday's weigh-in was very high, Wednesday's was two pounds lighter, and today was lighter still. But it's time to really focus on what I'm eating, and to work to get even stronger and in better shape. There might be more cruises in my future!