Where'd That Come From?

I don't really know what precipitated yesterday's post, but I decided this morning that I needed some time out on the ocean, so I hauled the "little yellow kayak" down to the beach and paddled around the bay a bit. Of course I brought my camera with me and shot about 50 photos on the calm water. I'll make this fairly short as I am energized to get my studio cleaned up and start a couple of projects that I've been putting off.
We got Vern's sailboat on the mooring and it's nice to see it sitting there today. The bay is busy this morning with not just me out there, but the fishermen setting and hauling traps and some clammers heading for the flats at the head of the bay as the tide goes out. The serenity is not in the least interrupted by these activities as they are just a part of the system and flow of energy that is Flanders Bay.

I hear the water running out of "Intermittent Stream" as I walk along the shore and it seems as though that sound is the epitome of the rainy weather we've had lately. I'll post a few of the photos from this morning, and I'm starting to look for shots that are descriptive of all this rain.

Too Many Negatives

All these negatives make my heart crumble... you'd think it would break a little bit, wouldn't you? But I think because it has become so brittle that it is just a lot easier for it to crumble. Tears, pain, discomfort, anger, surprise, anxiety, support, astonishment and yes, even joy and relief all filled the day for those of us at 65 GHR. Even the image I offer today is a negative, and as you can see, occasionally that is not a bad thing, only a steady diet of it is bad!

Rodents Everywhere

There must be a dozen chipmunks and squirrels around the house now. They use the "squirrel feeder", which is really supposed to be a bird feeder. Another task on my list is to get a cone around the pole the feeder sits on that will disable the rodents ability to climb up and get to the bird seed. The particular subject of this photo seems to have some grooming problems and may even have other difficulties, and it's interesting that when I look at these pictures after I have taken them that I often see much more than I did originally.
We got Vern's sailboat (25' Cape Dory - nice little sailer that can sleep 4) in the water today and he is fierce to get some time on it this summer. I hope the weather holds out because I would really like to get some time on it as well... we'll just hope for some good breezes and maybe a little sunshine this summer at some point.
Feeling a little better today and felt the best during my workout this morning. It's interesting how the body reacts and conditions itself to certain systems. Using muscle and bone makes it easier to use I think, but the evening brings on greater congestion and aches and there's no way I really want to go for a second workout tonight unless I had a real good reason (which I don't).

Sore Day

All I know is that it was really hard getting up this morning... must be this doggone cold. I was sore all over, head stuffed up and just feeling generally achy. We got the axles back on the boat trailer at Vern's this morning though. David and I did the welding and I think it went pretty good. The rest of the day was odd jobs around the house. Picnic is in the works for Jenn's mom tomorrow, her 90th, but we are doing a "Sweet 16" party at her request, so mowing the lawn yesterday and cleaning up around was part of the process.
I'm posting three pictures; "the kind of day it was", "nothing else to do" and "how I'm feeling" and calling it good enough before I head to bed. I imagine tomorrow will be better.

Battling Cyclones?

At least it seems like that's what I'm doing as I begin to consider the first steps toward cleansing my studio. I have about 2 dozen projects in mind to begin working on at any time, and they include a wall hanging (fabric), sagging glass, a couple of ceramics pieces, painting/drawings, some new experimental gelatin ideas and several digital photo pieces. I know it sounds like it will be a busy summer, but I need to get a boat in the water (repair out board motor) and get some landscaping done in order to fulfill my sunshine needs for the season. I also got a "flip" video camera from school and I need to teach myself Final Cut Express over the summer as well. These are all things that I am now looking forward to without the stress of school overtaking my mind.
My studio is maybe worse than my art room was, as you can see from the above photo, and I'm not sure where to begin, but I do know that I need to apply the "5 year rule" to a bunch of things/objects. Good luck with that, "packrat Charlie" !Oooh look, the last page of the blog is in the photo on the computer screen to the right. Did I just pass through a time/space continuum warp of some kind? So often I wish I could.

Why What Happens to Us & Defense Mechanisms

I really don't know why the things that people have to deal with in their lives happen, but because they do I believe the best approach is to simply deal as well as you can. I had a student last year who had rods in her back to straighten her spine and she taught me so much about dealing with adversity and maintaining a positive attitude while making life count. I had to dedicate my last art-making of this school year to her as I laid out a cyanotype from an x-ray negative to burn while I loaded my car with my stuff to work with over the summer. It really was the very last thing I did and I will embellish it into a mixed media piece over the summer. I need to think about why our bodies succumb to tragedy so often, whether it be mind, muscle or bone and look back at the strengths it creates within individuals. If it weren't for the obstacles in life, it would seem that life would not be as interesting for us humans. The process of creativity adds even more to our lives.


Defense mechanisms? What do we have to defend ourselves from? Emotional damage is always a "biggie", but why put out those sharp barbs like the thistle plant to keep others at bay? Obviously the thistle doesn't want to get eaten any more than people want to be hurt by others, but we are often hurt by circumstance and not others. I think the trick is to trust in the inherent goodness of all (that does exist, believe it or not) and understand that what may seem to be "hurtful" can be part of circumstance or even filtered by our own attitudes. Real is real.

I saw a butterfly in the middle of the road today, just lighting there where the white line begins as I took a left onto the Mud Creek road. It was a beautiful yellow thing, and as I passed it another car was coming toward me and I momentarily worried about how it would fare, but as I looked into the rear view mirror I saw it flutter up and fly off to the side of the road. Something in me knew it would be a good day, and it was.

Fog, Fog... Sun

Another day working on my room(s) at school and trying to sort through what is needed and what is not. I figure that if I haven't touched it in the last 5 years I've been teaching in the room, then I probably don't need it. Books, you ask? Why books when every student has a laptop and prefers to gather (some of the books I discarded today dealt with things "modern computer graphics" and were published in 1992) contemporary information that is pertinent to them. So, anyway I threw a lot of stuff out and just toward the end of the day began replacing things back into cabinets, suggesting that I was approaching completion. Of course this year I have 2 rooms to do this to. I am not really complaining because I know it will save me a lot of time in the long run to do this as far as organization and knowing what I have to work with, having an inventory, and knowing where things are.

It was foggy on the way in this morning and foggy on the way home, and I still love the way the fog nestles and holds and leaving tiny drops of moisture on everything. I stopped in Sullivan Harbor to shoot a photo of "The Island"... I know it has a name, and it has probably been photographed a bazillion times, but I had to take one more as the shore was so visible at low tide and the fog was thick enough to almost completely shroud the island.

And then, sunshine... and I wasn't all that impressed because it was intermittent and the clouds were really still in charge, but I enjoyed photographing the light on the young maple we planted a couple of weeks ago. The leaves are translucent in the strong light, which lasted for about 10 minutes and now it has shut in thick of fog again as night approaches.
I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow and I am in hopes he will remove a cyst on my left arm as it is bugging me no end.

From Seduction to Chaos

I really find the rain drawing me into its charm and expressive qualities after all these days. Seductive in the sense that I am finding certain aspects of it very appealing and distinctive, there is an energy to all of that water falling from the sky. Gravity and wind, flow and drainage, all the elements that affect the view and surroundings have taken on a new meaning and I suspect I will miss the rain once the sun comes back out. So above is the scene on the way to working on my room this morning, misty and moist, with the distances shrouded in gray, mysterious.

And below are a couple of the shots of the extreme chaos that I find myself attempting to make order from. There is stuff here left from Anna that I have been reticent to dispose of and I can no longer afford that luxury, I have to organize and contain because of the teaching demands placed on me. I would waste far too much time otherwise. So I continue today and probably most of tomorrow to place some structure to my teaching environment. It is not a difficult thing, just time consuming and finding that time between everything else is not always easy. There, my late 10 minute lunch is over.

Schoodic Scenes

Hey, I figure one might just as well embrace the rain, after all it is what it is... the power of our planet and its ecological system is so much greater than what we frail humans can muster up (with the exception maybe of the atomic bomb - but let's not get into the weapons thing) that the more I see of nature the more humbled I am. What beautiful creatures with which we share the planet. I am just waiting for what Mom always called the "parboiled" wrinkles of extended submersion in water that would form on my hands to make themselves evident as proof that it has in fact rained a little bit more than really necessary.

We took Matt to Schoodic yesterday for a "Father's Day Ride", which could have been a blog entry in it's own space, but my days are now out of sync (as I am becoming) because of the end of school. I got some great pictures down there, shot almost 200 during the day, and will share a few here. The emphasis is on the wetness and it's quality in the photo. There is something about moisture in a shot that I can't quite put my finger on, but those shiny surfaces that bounce light all over the place really work well.
I'm not sure which photos are actually "the best", but I select ones that I like (the waves seem a bit of a cliche to me after all the years of watching them), and I think I need to take some shots from closer or from the water backside.

Happy Father's Day...

... to any man who has had the pleasure and joy of seeing a child come to life and watched them grow into thinking, creative human beings. The women that nurture and incubate them should be equally congratulated. I know that there is a "Mother's Day" as well, but I sometimes think that one should be a week long.

My two sons (picture I took in 1978) grew up as two opposites; the one always excited and willing to try anything, with a sense of where and how he was most of the time - the other always excited but more careful and moderate. One making movies as soon as the VHS recorder was invented - the other playing a single snare drum in an open field. One spending the night on top of the Deer Isle bridge towers - the other spending the night in an abandoned house in DI village.

They argued and fought all the time (just like my brother and I - must be "gene proximity"), but there was never any doubt in my mind that they loved one another. Now, with one very dependent on his parents and living at home - and the other working for Apple and calling once every few weeks, they are still as different as can be. I love you, boys!

Rain, Rockpiles & Rivers

Yeah, rain and more rain. I didn't mean to jinx the weather with the post the other day on shadows, but it seems like it might be quite a while before any sharp shadows form in these parts. David and I never let the rain bother us when we were building the house, so we just headed out to the pit where we knew there were some rocks for our retaining wall for the east patio (with permission, of course). Loaded up the Ranger twice, the first time right even across the body with the front wheels barely touching the road. We found a couple of axles for the sailboat trailer, and will go to Winter Harbor tomorrow to help my brother move a 28 footer into his shop and then get him to weld them up for us in trade.

We got the second load of rocks, not so big, and then I headed into Ellsworth with Jen. We need another car for me to commute with and are going to look for something more economical like a Corolla or a Jetta (we looked briefly at both) but I need to bring whatever we want home to get up on the lift and inspect thoroughly. Oh, well I always hate buying cars but it only hurts for a little while.



Just plain rain, but plenty of it. I won't even go into what it is doing to my attitude here because I am coming down with a cold and really feel like the rain is simply a compliment to my being stuffed up and not feeling right on top of everything.

Whew...!

Things started out pretty well today even if I ended up deciding not to ride share and take my own car. The energy was good at school, people seemed ready to take a break and enjoy time doing things other than directly in the classroom. I never seem to get as much done as I would like to but sharing with colleagues and just "picking away" at cleaning and rearranging is what it's all about at the end of the year.
The Summer Arts Festival event is coming into the school right after the 4th of July and they usually make quite a splash! Some call it a mess and it always makes more work for me when I get back in the fall, but it is a good program and it introduces the high school to a lot of younger kids.

I always seem to get into a mixed melancholy funk as I clean, going through student work I thought they should have taken (it was pretty good!) or seeing some things that weren't finished but were sooo close to being really well done. What if I had the kinds of opportunities in the arts that these kids have today? I think I might have accomplished more in the sense of becoming and doing something with my art... would I have tried to be a "bigshot" in New York City? Would I have created my own niche of art works? Probably it wouldn't have made any difference at all, but I think that somehow it might have.

An Interesting Cloud & The Last Shadow

Well, the last shadow for a few days from the looks of things in the weather report. Shadows tell us so much and so little at the same time. They are always there (when supported by a light source) and there's no escaping their presence. They describe perfectly a shape, but when projected on a varied surface can distort and deform. I'm reminded of remarks one person might make about another, the things said perhaps true, but also maybe interpreted and turned by bias or emotion. A shadow can be a metaphor in its own reality for a number of things, but after all is said and done it is only a shadow, no matter how interesting.


Speaking of interesting, I caught a cloud (caught a cloud, hmmm?) yesterday that I found fascinating. Although it had changed slightly by the time I got the camera (why don't I just carry one with me at all times?) I still saw a figure in a skirt (female?) moving to the right with a large right hand in front sort of pushing away. Whether pushing something or pushing away from something I couldn't get, but she wasn't grounded as there were no feet and as clouds tend to do, there was a sense of floating. Cloud watching and identifying could be a sport I think, at least an intellectual contest!

Whatziz?

Sometimes (as I was watching a very long cloud hang in the sky) what we see is not what we see, but a figment or an interpretation based on who we are, our mores, our culture and sometimes our fears. This photo was an accident, but it makes me very philosophical in the area of defining description. The camera doesn't lie? But PhotoShop can turn the real into lies and has been guilty of such (with human assistance of course) numerous times. People's perception is varied and often faulty, and in knowing this I have to wonder how we live our lives, and to me the answer is "the best we can". Let's not fault one another for erroneous perceptions, let's clarify as needed and move on with a smile.

Just Plain Water

Sometimes beauty is just beauty. Enough said.

Art and Technology

I am so involved with how technology can work through the arts and the arts through technology that I often find myself losing sight of what is possible now. Yeah, now. I know what was possible yesterday and the day before and the decade before that, but keeping up with the progress and the things that make the arts "swing" and accessible to all is an at times daunting task. The good news... I have students to keep me up to speed. All I have to do is keep an handle on the basics and they fill in the detail. All this talk about the "digital natives" is sort of silly (even though I am sure they have different brains than I do) because I was there, I was there when it started, when it began to grow, and when it reached the point of spontaneous combustion and exploded all over the place. And I'm still there now. Megan asked me today if I had a card reader that would read her thumbnail-sized 4 gigabyte (yes, 4 GB!) camera card... and I did! Thank goodness for digital photography and thank goodness that I just bought a couple of state-of-the-art card readers.

Floral Sunset

Ahh... now I find myself trying to capture two of the classic subjects in one photo. I kind of gave up on the sunset as it wasn't much without anything in the sky in the way of clouds. But I had been looking at the wildflowers and noticed the combinations of colors thinking that the flash might be a cool thing. I was pleased with the result right away. That's really something I like, the quick result of the digital format so I can make immediate adjustments. These were shot with a Sony DSC-H50, and I really like this camera.

Morning Road

Back on the bike the last two days in the morning and loving it! I almost wish at times that I could just drive off the end of the earth and keep on going to the next astral plane. I was wiping the fog off my glasses every few hundred feet so that I could see where I was going. A part of me really doesn't care where I'm going as it seems like that time is "in the moment" time and I am not aware until I see something worth taking a photo of and then my attention is gathered, my focus shifts to the present reality, I smell the roses, shoot the photo and climb back on the bike. What an existence to have from 4:30 to 5:30 in the morning, and I'd do it every day if I could get to bed in time each night.

Music on the Way Home

I carry a box full of CDs between the seats of the truck and I suggested to George (who car pools with me many days) that he see if there was something he might like to listen to on the way home tonight. He perused the box for a minute and then came up with an album of Roy Orbison's Greatest Hits and they were all there; Leah, Dream Baby, Workin' For the Man, Blue Bayou and all the rest. It was a good ride home. I like George, and he has a liberal and what I believe to be a progressive attitude toward life, so we get along well and find a lot of common ground. It was a good ride home and the music brought some reminiscent conversation to the trip. "Young men talk about the future and old men talk about the past." I read that somewhere today.
People and the way they sometimes think fascinate me, and working with kids in a fairly good-sized school leads to all sorts of understanding and empathy for people and their attitudes and opinions. This is a time of year that is an interesting blend of excitement and apathy for many students and they are really kind of fun right now. The difficulty is to make sure they don't forget to complete assignments and tasks that allow them to complete their academics in good standing. I am having a lot of fun with most of them right now and I can't believe another school year is almost over.

Graduation 2009...

...pretty much filled up my day. Which, by the way, I feel like I am behind 24 hours or so, (although the above photo was from 4:30 this a.m.), the last couple of posts are of the day before... maybe I can straighten that out soon! Yesterday was graduation and I went to school early to get video equipment ready to record the event.

I had a student, an eagle scout who was featured in the news last winter and is a great kid, help me do sound checks and adjust cameras throughout the ceremony. It would have been next to impossible to do without help. We ran three cameras with a switcher and pulled a feed off the main mike for our sound, and then fed picture and sound (as we were taping - or DVDing) to the air conditioned auditorium for people to watch live in a bit more comfort. The gym is always hot with almost 2000 people in it.




The valedictorian was an arts student (rainbow tassel showing NAHS) and she used a Tibetan "singing bowl" during her address... it was beautiful at a number of levels. My helper and I broke everything down and I got home by 6 o'clock to see one of my old college roommates here for a short visit as he was spending the night in Ellsworth.

Outdoor Day...

Saturday was a busy day and I would have had an entry last night if it weren't for the "champagne blues", which I came down with at Roberta's (up the street neighbor) house showing. The cool thing was that there were a bunch of artist types there and I had a chance to talk a bit of aesthetics with people who understand (and weren't at all pretentious). She had built a substantial addition to her house about the same time David and I started this one, and she had invited the "neighborhood" to see what the new addition looks like. Cheese, crackers and champagne, the latter of which I am not at all used to, were the fare, and even though I was on my bicycle and rode home fine, I was extremely sleepy after supper.

David and I went up first thing in the morning to jack up Vern's sailboat (hopefully we can get it into the water this summer) so that we can weld new axles under it. One of the old ones broke in half two years ago when I was hauling it out of the water and they both need to be replaced. It's fun to work with Vern and get some things done.

The next thing going on was to put a corner drain under the steps in front of the east wing bedroom, and that went pretty smooth as we had planned to do this and have the steps in two parts with the top just setting on the lower frame. We pulled the top off, dug down to give room for the drain box, covered everything back in, and that job was done. We just need to cut a grate into the steps for water to drain through.

The third thing was the drain pipe that was sitting on top of the front lawn. It looked pretty ugly sitting there, so we dug a trench, pitched it toward the shore, set in the pipe and now it's all underground and out of sight. The only thing really showing is the stone diffuser we made at the end of the drain, but even that looks like it grew there. It was a good day and I usually enjoy working with David. Sometimes it is good to just do things and stay away from the emotions.

After we finished I washed my hands, pulled on a clean pair of jeans, and went over to Roberta's for the "party" as the lone representative of our household. I enjoyed myself and the view from her place is as gorgeous as ours, only her entire field to the shore is all lawn and very green. That's our house through the woods on the left.

The Long Line of Cars

Well, here I am sitting in traffic on the way to the Island this morning. It's 8:06 and I've been moving very very slowly for more than an hour now. I keep shutting off my truck, but I notice that a lot of fellow travelers just keep the old motor running, gobbling up $2.60 a gallon gas and spitting noxious fumes into the environment. Oh, well, I guess each to their own although I do feel like I"m setting an example - I notice the guy behind me is shutting his Jeep off now too! I called school and talked to one of my colleagues who usually arrives very early and he made it through before the accident on the bridge, he gave me some details, but I suspect the news will fill in the blanks for everyone.

I can't help but wonder how the rain affects people based on circumstance, for instance sitting in a line of cars (by the way, the radio just said that traffic is backed up all the way to WalMart in Ellsworth) can be stressful if someone has important things to do in their job or if they have nothing to do while they are just sitting. I really haven't seen any examples of anyone over-stressing, but I'm just a small part of this huge line. There were some people that turned around at the beginning of the backup, but.... ooooh the trucks that crashed just came by... "ouch"!... both vehicles were smashed in right on the driver's sides. Awful! It looks like they were both going traffic speed, which for the bridge is 50 mph. The agony of what humans can do to each other numbs my mind. Traffic is moving and I must now as well.

OK, so I'm at school now and have chosen a couple of pictures I like from this morning... they express the feeling of the day and the mood (for me at least) of being superficially connected to a serious accident. Celebration for our principal has been postponed until after school today and I will photograph and video... ahhh, the rain!

Long Day, Late Night

It seemed like I was running up and down between my 2 rooms all day today, but having some fun with my photography kids doing cyanotypes on paper and fabric. The sun burst through for us today and so development required little or no guesswork. Students really keep me busy and this is even non- graded stuff that is just new for them and may move some of them towards my Art II class next year where I am planning to feature several printmaking units as there really hasn't been printmaking offered in recent years at school. We are using a laser printer and just printing out various sizes of digital prints onto overhead transparency sheets. Students that I have had for Fiber Arts are excited about printing on fabric to sew together and a couple have brought in t-shirts to print and then paint on. All of this to end the school year and keep me frantic.

So the outside of class stuff today was me having to move the school web site to the new Mac servers and then set up the gym with video recording equipment so we can produce a DVD of graduation to have to sell (always fundraising) this summer and next fall (when I will be around). I had a student help me run cables and such and the theater director plugged me into the theater so that people could go into the air-conditioned auditorium to watch graduation. I managed to get out of school around 5:30 and run some errands in "Hells"worth before I got home (late). So I've been watching the Yankees and Red Sox play ball as long as I can stay awake up here in my studio, but am heading to bed as soon as I finish this. I feel good, but I'm tired.

Internal Time Clock

We all have one of sorts, and I think kids at school often have different ones. Some are great in the morning and others suffer a thread of distraction from studies and what I manage to put on their plate. Hmmm... I wonder if their own time clocks are suggesting not distraction, but a focus in another area? I will have to ask them.

Mt time clock was in perfect synchronization this morning, as I woke about 5 seconds before the alarm went off. I can tell that stress is reduced when that happens because I haven't spent a night tossing and turning and the internal clock wakes me very much on time. I have been stressing over a few things at school, but a huge amount of that went away yesterday as the day was very productive for teacher/administrative stuff. I wonder if people in general realize how much teachers do that is administrative work? They probably do.

I dreamed (I hardly ever remember them) of being an artist last night, and maybe that's why this blog post is so narcissistic, I don't often recall dreams. I was making art, but the weird thing is that I can't figure out exactly what I was doing... it seemed like a strange combination of painting, sculpting and collage. Oh sure, I had traditional materials that I have used before like acrylic paints and mediums and ink, but I never could directly see the work I was doing. It was as if I was looking/watching myself work, but line of view was away from the work itself.

Another workout day inside, but the routine feels good and I'm glad to be alive!

Head in the Clouds

I rose well this morning without the sometimes prevalent inner voices telling me to sleep in and pamper myself, knowing full well that wasn't what I needed. The funny thing is that recently getting outside on the bike has been great for my attitude, and I look forward to the rush of wind in my face, but this morning was rain and that was fine. I drifted into the old familiar and went downstairs for my morning workout.

The day was darker this morning that it has been recently, and looking across the bay I could see the lights of Bar Harbor under the cloud cover that darkened the sky, and there I was, controlled in my thoughts by the makeup of the day. So here I am, my muse, to consider brightness within the clouds. Sure, a cup of coffee acts as a stimulant (am going half caffeine lately - with end of the year work stress as my excuse) and I can almost feel the synapses clicking into place, but a positive frame of mind really cannot be drug induced, it has to be in the head, and the heart is what puts it there. I am truly looking forward to the day!

Beauty Passes

It really is hard to believe that just a couple of weeks ago I started photographing all the blossoms around the yard and field and even on the way to work and they are almost all gone now. I really do love the apple blossoms, or perhaps any fruit tree will do, but the frailty and short life span of those delicate and tender flowers of color has left me to pause today.


Aging, so many of us become concerned to a fault with the effects of growing older that we often don't take the time to just stop and enjoy where and who we are. Oh, sure, who doesn't want to look younger (16 year olds, for one group) in today's world, especially when age does not always mean respect and maturity, but often suggests slowing down and not being able to accomplish as much as when a younger person. We can overcome those attitudes from others and their prejudices by simply keeping a positive frame of mind and feeling and appreciating who and where we are in our hearts. The strength of your body is increased through systemic use of that body and our minds are no different. Why would I ever consider working in anything but the arts? The arts evoke thoughts, feelings and conceptualizations that cannot be compared to any other discipline. I am such a lucky human being.


On a different note, fruit blossoms are now being replaced by perennials and annuals in the flower beds that David and I built last spring as well as in window boxes around the house, beauty continues. They are in-your-face colors compared to the fruit blossoms, but so intense and gorgeous! The cycle of life and the coming of summer are wonderful times...

The Manic Moon (Tidal Pull)

The "tide" seems to be going my way... things are getting done and there seems to be a flow around me that draws others to help and support. It's very hard to tell whether I am just anticipating the end of the school year or I am moving in a direction that is more focused that the "scattering school" has tended to be this last semester.

I'm watching the crows in the mussel beds with the tide way out on this moon and can hear several loons calling up the bay a bit, I don't see them. This morning was the moon shining through the cracks in the curtains, so I rose shortly after 4 and took a few pictures before I went out on the bike. Riding the roads is so much better than being stuck in the basement on the recumbent, 30 minutes on the road seems to me like 5 now. I really would like to do a couple of longer trips this summer, but maybe camping and such would be out of the question as taking too much time. Even the nearby bays would be good to do in the kayaks. Oh well, here I go rambling and planning (scheming) and not even a thought to circumstances. I guess that's the problem with living in the moment, what do you do when the moment passes?