Starfish on Parade - More Snorkeling

We have not seen many starfish on the island.. a few, but not many. But suddenly, there were dozens of them in our bay this week.



Even saw the rare - STARFISH of David



This poor fellow got flipped upside down by the current or one of his moremischievousfellow sea creatures. They can right themselves, but it takes a lot of effort...



I was afraid the parade would pass him by, so I turned him over.





We all need a little help some days...



Saw a couple of other new things, like this HUGE hermit crab. They have to find a bigger shell when they outgrow the one they wear. Gonna be hard for this guy, as he is already wearing about the biggest shell i have seen.



And I really like this shot of a ray getting all hurrumpy by blowing dust at a fish that was picking at his hide. Lots of drama under the sea.

Just another day in paradise

A Garden Addition?

The photo on the left is my herb garden where I hope to do the wine bottle project.  Details below.                                                                                                                                                           
This is a garden at the manor house where we stayed in Williamsburg; Powhatan Plantation.  The gardener had outlined this herb garden in upside-down wine bottles.  
I thought that was such a clever idea, and one I could do in my herb garden.  So I'll start saving my bottles and should have enough by Christmas.  Kidding!  I'll put the word out and have all my kith and kin collecting too.  Except that most of my family are teetotalers, so I'll have to ask my kith!

Paddling at night, inevitable and pleasurable

The days are getting shorter; sunset comes ever earlier. We're bemoaning the loss, but we're also taking advantage of the opportunity to do more night paddling long before bedtime.

Paddling the Chicago River after dark.

It's beautiful. The streetlights and headlights are wistful; the building lights are lonely and lovely. People are working, commuting, eating, sleeping. And us? We get to paddle!

Paddling on Lake Michigan, with the skyline in the distance.

There's a lot to learn at night, too. We've discovered that some running lights are brighter than others. (Our current favorite: the Kayalite.) We've discovered that the captains of the frightening Seadogspeedboats are far more friendly and professional than we thought, and that hailing them on channel 16 is an effective way to let them know where we are and make sure we aren't in their path. We've discovered that it's hard to switch to the channel they suggest if your VHF radio doesn't have an illuminated display.
We've also discovered that afterwork paddles are a great opportunity to get out with friends who aren't available on weekends. And paddling on Wednesday, in particular, is like a mini-weekend. Two days later, it's the weekend again!

A Tribute to Stay-at-Home Mothers

The occasion was the 80th birthday party for my Aunt Carolyn. She's the one in the black & white photo. My Aunt Louise is the one laughing, and my own mama is the middle lady in the other photo. A small get-together to celebrate the life of one of my aunts.
I grew up down the road from Aunt Carolyn's family where three of my first cousins lived. Another set of first cousins lived between us. Mama's parents lived across the road from us, so I really had four mamas within half a mile. Sometimes I found that oppressive. Especially when I was up to mischief, which was often.
I remember one conversation with my Aunt Louise (who lived in Atlanta and was therefore much more knowledgeable about life) when I was in college and knew everything. It went something like this: Aunt: What are you going to do when you get out of college?
Me: I'm not sure yet. I don't want to be a housewife.
Aunt: Why not? (laughing)
Me: I wouldn't have anything to do. Don't you get bored?
Aunt: (Really laughing now) I don't have time to be bored.
I went away from that conversation a little shaken, partly because she was laughing at me, or so I thought at the time, and partly because I was afraid she might be right. I wanted a career. I didn't want to be 'stuck' at home.
I think that conversation was pivotal for me in opening up an avenue I had never before considered; that of a stay-at-home wife and mother. For the next few years, God brought different people into my life to show me what that would look like. They were also grace-filled women who were well-educated, created peaceful homes of beauty, and stayed home full time. My eyes were opened to the realities of this most important calling.
I saw that women could be appreciated and loved within the context of their homes. That children could be well-behaved and not little monsters, and that disciplined children were happy children. Thank God for these examples in my life. I think things would be much different if I hadn't known them.
This quote by George Elliot is what got me thinking about women in the shadows. It's from Middlemarch and is speaking of Dorothea: Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on these around her was incalculably diffusive; for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half doing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life and rest in unvisited tombs.
So this post is for the aunts in my life, and I have many more than the two pictured. You helped my parents raise me when I was a hateful, mischievous little girl. You loved and guided me into young womanhood, and you are still leading me into the unknown paths of middle and old age.
And when this world plays its siren song of You Can Be and Do Anything, you help give me strength to say back, "It's enough to be a stay-at-home mom. I do have it all. It's enough."

Stumbling across the Bluff Riders Charge

While out biking yesterday afternoon, I came across an odd scene on the Red Jacket Trail.
Now, I've ridden on that trail enough times where I kind of know what to expect. I can usually count on seeing crowd of dog walkers, a few runners, the occasional rollerblader and a steady stream of recreational cyclists. The nicer the day (and yesterday was beautiful), the higher the trail traffic.
But the traffic yesterday was even higher than normal. There was an inordinate number of mountain bikers decked out in racing gear, sporting bib numbers and riding on the trail with a "warming up for a race" look on their faces.
As it turns out, there was a good reason for this. Yesterday was the annual Bluff Riders Charge mountain bike race at Mount Kato, and close to 300 riders were on hand to test their mettle on the considerable trail system the ski resort has to offer.
I'm going to be brutally honest: I had no idea the race was going on and barely even knew that it even existed.
While I am a HUGE advocate of cycling and spend more time out on the trails than I'd care to admit, I haven't really gotten into mountain biking. This is mostly due to the fact that I don't own a mountain bike. If I tried to ride my road bike through the trails of Seven Mile Creek, it would probably fall apart faster than Vanilla Ice's music career.
But that shouldn't suggest that I don't have an appreciation for mountain biking. Far from it. I think it's a wonderful activity that takes the exploration aspects of cycling to a whole new level. As a matter of fact, the first non-training wheels bike I ever owned was a 15-speed Schwinn mountain bike, and it lasted all the way through high school for me.
So with some time to kill before work, I decided to cut my ride short and watch some of the race. As luck would have it, I got there right as the elite racers were lining up at the starting line. After asking around, I found out that the elite riders would be doing five loops of the trails (trail map here) for a grand total of 23 miles. Most other races were four loops.
Once the race began, I followed a few spectators on some trails to find a good viewing spot for the race and came across a BRUTAL drop-off point in the race course. I remember asking the people around me "Wait, do they actually BIKE down that?!" as I contemplated whether or not I would be able to hike up it without mountain climbing gear.
Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera on me to help illustrate to capture the moment (photos on this post are actually from previous years racing), but I will say this about the particular spot I was viewing: It was a doozy. Even the elite riders were struggling with the drop-off, as a couple of them took a tumble down it and more than a few opted to simply walk their bike down the hill rather than risk it.
I wish I could've stayed long enough to see the finish of the race (the athleticism required to navigate those trails is truly a sight to see), but I had to get back to my apartment and get ready for work. Since I'm a big believer in giving my readers as much content to chew on as possible, here's a Bluff Riders Charge-related links to browse at your leisure:

• Complete results (congrats to Jenna Rinehart of Mankato for taking first in the Elite Women's category!)
• Free Press story on the Bluff Riders Charge
• 2007 Free Press story on the Bluff Riders Charge

I might have to start scouring the Internet for a mountain bike I can call my own. It looked like a lot of fun.

Early morning traffic

Very early indeed - 6.24 a.m. The Grand Princess cruise ship glides silently up the Firth of Forth on Saturday morning. She will anchor off the Forth road and rail bridges, and passengers will transfer by tender for a day's shore excursion.

I'm still not sure if watching this vast wedding cake of a ship moving up river was a bonus on our early morning walk by the shore. We were heading home from Edinburgh airport, where we'd just deposited our son for the start of an inter-railing holiday in Europe (first leg obviously not by train!). His route, we now realise, seems to have been planned to take in as many cities as possible that are currently being evacuated because of flooding...

But back to the Forth! The structure that looks like a very long Toblerone bar is the tidal causeway linking Cramond Island with the mainland. Despite living in Edinburgh for over 25 years, I have never visited Cramond Island. It was heavily fortified in World War II - you can see a gun emplacement in the first picture.

I'll leave it up to you whether you prefer the scene with cruise ship or without - tho there is a slightly more low key oil tanker in the last shot.



Over the past month I have hardly opened my laptop. My daughter and I have been to Turin for a post-exam holiday, a hall of residence room has been cleared and contents shoe-horned into home, daughter has had university friends to stay en route to their homes abroad, son has been home briefly to pack and is even now looking for somewhere to eat in Geneva - not an easy task apparently on a Sunday night. And it is the best time of year in Scotland - long, light evenings. I still carry my camera with me wherever I go, and am stacking up photos, but there has always been something else to do which has got in the way of putting them on my blog.