July 4th

Instead of the usual July 4th fireworks photos I thought I would do something a little different this year. Melanie and I ventured to Purcellville, VA. to a family orchard where you pick your own fruit and pay by the pound.
It's strange how when I lived in Arkansas the thought of picking fresh fruit, often in our own backyard, was the norm and I would have never thought to grab my camera in the process. Now, living in NOVA, it is a nostalgic experience that warrants at least a few hundred frames. More than anything it was the smells that seemed to hit home.
It has been a long time since I've caught a whiff of peaches ripening on the tree, or the dust kicked up by a slowly passing tractor mixed with exhaust from an old engine that burns too much oil. To be honest it made me a bit homesick.

On to the photos.... I thought I would try a few different actions and editing techniques. The two sign photos are done with actions similar to a "digital Holga."
BTW, if you would like a real plastic Holga you can now purchase them at Urban Outfitters for $75.00. For some reason the camera lost a lot of its appeal to me when I noticed that a few days ago. What's next, Leica digitals at A&F?
Strangley enough I came home that night and started playing with Holga actions on these pics. Hey, I never claimed to be a trend setter.

Alright, that's enough nostalgia for one post...

CAYMAN LIZARD

I shot this from our hotel patio while in Cayman last week on vacation.
If anyone knows what this thing is please let me know.

Happy Memorial Day!!!!

Center Chute at 5.3'

Saturday morning paddlers in Center Chute with the Little Falls gauge running about 5.3 feet.

April 24, 2008 Chute Out

Here is a link to the Photos taken yesterday during the first Chute Out of the year.

The Potomac was running around 6.1' with lots of play action to be had on Center Chute!

Time for the Maryland Chute out!

Since 1999 the Potomac River has played host to an annual play boating competition series known as the Maryland Chute Out. The series is the last Thursday of every month April- September and the location varies depending on river levels.
If you are interested in entering, or just showing up to watch, check out

http://worldkayakblogs.com/throwdown/register/18/
or
http://valleymill.com/VMKS/?page_id=6

North Branch of the Potomac River

Several times each year the Mineral County Parks and Recreation in WV. does whitewater releases from the Jennings Randolph Dam near Keyser, WV. These releases are typically about 1000CFS for the whitewater releases and since the water comes from the bottom of the lake it is cold!

Steve, Lex, Roger and myself, among others, made our way up to the release this past weekend to get in some paddling on Saturday and Sunday.
The campground is only about 3 hours away from Leesburg, but with the county putting a few unexpected detours in our way we ended up arriving around 11pm. The great thing about this place is the cabin rentals. They are pretty basic, sleep up to six (with two on the floor or front porch) have no running water and only two light bulbs. However, they are located 70' from the river bank and the one we were in was about 100 yards from the launch. All of that combined with the roughly $32.00/night price tag split between a couple of paddling bums makes for a heck of a deal when storms are in the forecast.

Upon arrival and settling in for the night it was apparent that Steve’s dog, Eli, was in no mood to sleep and was anxious to get out and enjoy the night. If not for the probability of the dog cold nosing someone out a deep sleep while trying to get into their tent we would have likely let him out. Instead we got to hear the click-clack of Eli’s claws on the hardwood floor of the cabin and the constant whimpering because Steve was out of his reach on the top bunk.
I guess next time we know not to be so stingy with the bottom bunk.
With a few hours of sleep and some extra strength coffee we got up and ready to hit the river.

Roger showed up Saturday morning and had planned on setting shuttle with us when he arrived. As he and some folks from the Baltimore Canoe Club got their gear together Roger discovered that he had forgotten a fairly important piece of gear in the form his PFD.
Upon asking if we had an extra, which we didn’t, Steve having never been on this river immediately offered up his to Roger because “It’s only a class III,” in Steve’s words.
With a day of sitting at the take out avoided, Roger headed back to get geared up and Lex took off to set shuttle.

The parking lot at the campground is fenced with wooden slat board fencing and 2’ tall posts made out of 4” timbers. That also happens to be the height of the bottom of the quarter panel on Lex’s truck.
Lex now needs a new quarter panel on his truck.
After a second attempt at setting the shuttle we were on the river and having a blast. The river is basically a fast moving wave train with tons of playable waves and holes on the way down. The surfing ledges come up very quick after the launch and if you miss the crowds you can spend a good part of your day surfing a succession of waves and wave holes from one side of the river to the other and back.







After a few more rapids and wave trains a concrete wall comes into view on river right while you negotiate through a boney section of the run. This signals the “lunch spot.” The lunch spot is popular with just about everyone as it has a great play wave-hole and a rocky beach to hang out and watch the action from. It’s a very social perch as you can sit 50’ from the wave, munch on a Clif bar and watch people get tossed around at the same time. During a warm weather dam release it is common to have 30 people hanging out on the shore and another 15 waiting in line to play.

Saturday night brought plenty of rain, cool humid air and some much needed sleep for us. We were all thankful that Eli kept quiet, but when I rolled out of bed Sunday morning I found that the joke was on me. Sometime in the night Eli had decided to hell with the plywood flooring and drug my spray skirt and PFD into the middle of the cabin and used it as a doggie bed. Oh well, no harm done minus a furry PFD.

The painted gauge was showing just over 1000cfs at the put in Sunday morning. We had managed to pick up another boater, Jim, who was looking for a crew to paddle with. By the time we reached the ledges it was obvious that the river was slightly higher due to some features that were washed out. The river right eddy service onto a short wave on the second ledge was no longer there and the almost river wide wave was gone as well.
Further investigation into this as we went downriver proved us to be right. The wave trains were bigger, bouncier and much more fun in places. In several sections we simply kept our boats pointed upstream and caught as many of the chaotic and sporadic waves as we could.



















The biggest change we encountered was Robins Nest. While Saturday had it at its normal level, Sunday brought it up a noticeable amount. The overall size of the hole was larger and nastier looking as we made the moves on river right. All of us, that is, except Lex. He decided to run the whole thing right down the center and I don’t mean with a right to left move. He center punched the meat of the hole and actually made it through in his 4Fun without getting tossed.




All things told the weekend was as close to perfect as one could hope for. The weather was great. The crowds were manageable. No one complained about Steve not wearing his PFD on Saturday. Actually only one person seemed to even notice he was without it. And for once there were no major injuries, but it sure was fun watching each other roll in rapids that were a foot deep!

MD. Chute and Great Falls at 3.7'

A few people have been asking me about the kayaking around the DC area so I figured I would shoot some video of us at the Maryland chute on the Potomac river. The "chutes" are just a few miles upstream of the DC line and a few miles downstream of Great Falls.



As you can probably tell from the video, Great Falls is a serious class 5 run with some very high consequences if you screw up and miss your line. The most common line on river left, shown in the video, is usually run at a lower level than shown here. The boaters at the end of the video really give you a sense of how big this water is.

The chutes are a very popular play spot on the Potomac River that sees a lot of kayak traffic, especially in the summer months. It is common to have 15-20 people hanging out here waiting for their turn to surf the wave on any summer Saturday.

After we had our fill of the chutes, Steve, Lex, Jacob and myself loaded up and set shuttle to run from "S-Turn" back down to the chutes for a few hours of playtime on some fairly pushy water with some nice waves around Rocky Island.

I was demoing a Jackson Superstar this past week on the Potomac. After a few tweaks to get it dialed in to fit I have to say I was very impressed with it. I am not much a play boater by anyones measure, but this boat is awesome!
I was paddling an '06 Jackson 4Fun which I could never seem to get a taste for for various reasons. The Superstar is a bit bigger, but much more nimble and requires a lot more attention to keep you from catching an edge in bigger, pushy, fast moving water. Being the relative newb that I am, I had a few concerns about heading into the confluence of the Potomac and fish ladder and then into S-Turn. (Give me a break, it was my first time paddling an all out play boat somewhere besides the chutes!)
Long story short, after we got back to the truck I took the demo back to the Valley Mill boat shop and went home with my very own Superstar! Thanks Jim :)













It's the Maryland Chutes Super C1 paddling team.

Half the Boat, Twice the Sexy!

Class IV Beatdown

This is Lex. He had an interesting encounter while kayaking the James River in Richmond this weekend.



After successfully counting all of the fish in a nasty hole (a hole is whitewatereese for a recirculating hydraulic) he qualified for the James River Swim Team by running Hollywood Rapid (Class IV+), sans kayak. He then went on to test his new helmet against the boulders in the bottom Pipeline Rapid. Needless to say, the rocks won.
After emerging from the now bloody froth, Lex was pulled to shore by a local paddling hero who administered life saving CPR using only Duct Tape and sweaty bandanna.
After a brief stay in the Virginia College of Medicine Emergency Room, Lex was patched up and back into the swing of things with a well deserved cold beer and big bottle of Neosporin.


"If your going to be stupid, you better be tough."

Tree Sap

My friend Lex and I decided to head out to Annapolis Rocks in MD. to do some climbing yesterday. For some reason Annapolis Rocks is nowhere near Annapolis. It's on the other side of the state... go figure.
After a 2.25 mile approach hike on the Appalachian Trail we arrived to find the rocks on were on the opposite side of the mountain than we thought they were which put the climbing in the shade.
This, combined with 40mph winds and temps in the 20's, made for a cold, cold day. About the only climbing we did was some bouldering in the sun in an area out of the wind.
On the way out I shot this image of the frozen water and tree sap hanging out of the side of a tree next to the trail.
I think next time we need to double check the direction the rocks are facing before we head out on a 2 mile uphill approach with high winds blowing us off the trail and temps well below freezing.

Beer Can Stove

Not my best photo work, but I just had to post of pic of this contraption. It is an alcohol powered beer can cook stove. I got the design by looking at a similar stove and came up with my own idea for this one.
Basically it is a cut down beer can held together with high temp gasket silicone. There is an interior chamber built out of aluminum from another can can that allows the fuel vapor to feed out of the jets on the side and on the tapered part near the top.
It runs on denatured alcohol or HEET (yes, the stuff you put in your cars gas tank) Pure grain alcohol works well too, but who wants to waste that as cooking fuel?
The whole concept of this is for ultralight backpacking. Less weight on the back while in the woods equals a happier backpacker. The stove has a dry weight of less than an ounce.
Fuel is carried in an everyday 20oz plastic soda bottle. Boil times for 16oz of water seem to stay in the 4.5min range depending on air temp.
Real world tests while backpacking in the White Oak Canyon area of the Shenandoah National Forest a few weeks ago proved its durability. Several of us brought stoves for cooking and melting snow due to the temps being in the teens. The Jet Boil stoves seemed to fair very well, as did the beer can stove. The MSR Whisperlight and Pocket Rocket didn't seem to do so well for various reasons and I ended up burning more than twice the fuel I anticipated melting snow for drinking water. Snow and ice conditions seem to be the Achilles heel for this stove. It works fine, but due to an unpressurized design it is not very efficient and that shows when you are forced to spend several hours melting snow for your water supply. The extra weight you have to carry in fuel for this also offsets the ultralight concept.
Overall I am very happy with it and will continue to use it. I even sent one to my buddy in Arkansas to play with and report back on.
...and for my next trick, the solar powered spot light!

Vintage Action

For the past several days I have been trying to get Photoshop CS migrated over onto our new iMac. The Migration Assistant that comes with OS has not been working for me and, long story short, I had to spend a lot of time trying to figure out what goes where to get the program to work. Once I was able to do that I started copying the old actions over from my G4 Powerbook.
After going out and playing with the camera today I decided to try out some of the actions to make sure everything was working O.K.

Melanie and I went out to Burke Lake Park and spent an hour or so walking around and looking for interesting images. This was one of the first things I saw and after running it through the "vintage" action I got from my friend Ernie I decided to post it up. Enjoy!

Barbed Wire

Here's another one from today. There is no telling how long this barbed wire has been here, but it's runs through the center of the 16" oak tree that has grown around it.

Stream

I was out walking on some nearby trails today and came across this leaf floating in a stream with a perfect beam of light streaming though the canopy, so I figured why not.