Trick Arrrrrrr Treat

It is October in Northern Virginia, and that means one thing above all else: the pirate house has gone bananas*.

Why, yes that IS a life-size Johnny Depp figure atop that throne. Doesn't everyone have one of those?

We make it a point every year to see the display. There's a neighborhood contest for Halloween decorating, and this house is so far past what anyone else does that they've taken themselves out of the contest after winning so many times that it just didn't seem fair to compete anymore. This year, there was a small sign in the yard indicating that the house was in the neighborhood Hall Of Fame; I've never heard of such a thing, which leads me to believe that they invented a new category of prize just to have something worthy of presenting to this display.

We've watched the pirate house Halloween display grow for three years. This is a new feature.

I've been there in the evening, usually on trick-or-treat night, when there is a police presence directing traffic on the street, because otherwise cars will just stop and stare, and nobody can get through. Even the cops I've seen on this duty will spend a lot of time looking over their shoulder, as though they still haven't managed to take in everything.

I think the bar is also new, but some of the patrons are regulars.

Two animatronic skeletal pirates flank the sidewalk to the front porch. Trick-or-treaters have to make it through that gauntlet.

On Beggars' Night the homeowners have a party for their friends, everyone in costume, and they take shifts handing out candy while the rest of the guests stay inside, enjoying whatever pirates enjoy. We want to become their friends just to get in on the action. Outside, the yard gets methodically trampled as hundreds of people wander through, gaping and taking pictures. The display takes at least a month to install, and nearly as long to get re-packed after Halloween. (I have seen the pirate ship re-fitted as an enormous Santa Sleigh for Christmas)

Even the ship has grown over the past couple years.

A couple years ago, Hurricane Sandy slapped the bejeezus out of the East Coast. We didn't get the worst of it here, but we still had our share of ridiculous rain and lots of wind. The timing was really bad for the pirate house; they had almost finished the display when the storms began, and they had to hurry to get everything inside and protected. We happened to walk by the next day and saw a woman on the porch, shaking her head and looking tiredly at the sodden figures left on the lawn. I was impressed more with how they rallied: the storms abated about a day and a half before Halloween, and by the time the trick or treaters arrived, you couldn't tell anything had been removed. The entire pirate-witch-zombie-skeleton crew had been restored to their positions, and all the light and sound had resumed. I can only assume they had lots of help from their party guests.

In addition to the yard full of pirate madness, there's also a coven of witches cackling off to the side, welcoming victims/guests to their cauldron.

* this is the same as going apeshit, but with less processing.

Puttering along the Potomac

I took a lot of early-morning walks along the Potomac through the winter and early spring, and I was surprised by how much cool stuff I saw by revisiting the same stretch of very urban river nearly every day.  For instance, for six or eight weeks, I could reliably see bald eagles almost every single day I visited.  One day, I went back in the afternoon and saw two adults harassing what seemed to be a juvenile bald eagle until it dropped whatever treat it was carrying.  It was an impressive aerial performance, and once the prize was released, one of the adults deftly snatched it from the air and departed. Naturally, I didn't have a camera that day.  But sightings like that encouraged me to take the camera often, in hopes of seeing something else interesting.

The Potomac briefly froze all the way across.  I was pretty sure I could walk it, but had the good sense not to try.  A few days later, the thinner ice made strange piles that looked like volcanoes.

I spent a few minutes watching this hawk chase a squirrel through a tree.  The squirrel is what originally caught my attention; I heard it squawking at something, then noticed the hawk, which would move close enough to scare the squirrel to a different part of the tree, wait a moment, then move again, trying to herd the little rodent to a place she could attack.

If you look very closely, you can see three bald eagles in this picture.

I was amazed how patient this great blue heron was with my photography. This is not the only shot I took, but it's the best of the set.

Random sightings

None of these incidents are big enough to warrant their own post, but they're all things I wanted to share, so they get lumped together here under the generic heading "Things I Saw In May."  Soon there will be a GOBA post, and that will probably run counter to this one, with lots of text, and fewer pictures.

Some industrious neighbor(s) tied this string of sweet clover blooms. It was over 190 feet long. At 2-3 inches between blooms, that's almost 1,000 knots.

The pot  of gold is not quite at the end of the rainbow, but no parking was available over there.

This bald eagle built its nest close to where my dad lives.  It has become a local media sensation.

If you look very closely at the nest, you can see the brown head of one of the eaglets.  (click picture to enlarge)

An older couple was escorting this box turtle off the bike trail when I saw what was happening.  The week before, my aunt had successfully shepherded another box turtle to a nature preserve.

During the same ride that I saw the turtle, I found this black rat snake taking his sweet time crossing the trail's warm surface.  I waited with him to make sure he'd get across safely.

Admittedly, I also hung around to get some good close-ups of him.  Quite the looker, don't you think?  I decided that if he wasn't off the trail by the time I put my camera away, I'd move him along myself, but by the time I was ready, he was nearly clear and moving faster.

Ka-bloom!

It has been very cold, and very slow in arriving, but spring is making dogged efforts to arrive.

shiver me limber

The plan was to get my week's long run in this morning, so I can have the rest of the day to run errands and bake things for this weekend's outing.  This plan started to test me at 3 AM, when I awoke for no particular reason and stayed that way.  At 4, I succumbed to my growling stomach and the knowledge that the longer I was awake before my run, the more I would regret not eating before it.  I had a piece of the sausage-mushroom quiche left in the fridge and burnt the roof of my mouth on the first bite.  These things happen.

When I went back to bed, I still couldn't sleep, so I finished reading a book, then started reading a new book.  The alarm went off at 6; Wunderground forecast a 100% chance of rain (math is not my strong suit, but that is a near certainty) for the next 15 hours.  It was 34 degrees.  I dressed in a single layer, knowing I'd warm up as I ran, and still trying to convince myself that it was a good idea to go at all.

It wasn't easy.

I even had a long hesitation outside the front door when I confronted the rain and cold and nearly turned back to the door, but I'm stubborn, and sometimes that works in my favor.

It still took me a couple miles to warm to the idea.  Pun intended.

The thing is--and I always forget this, or have to forcefully remind myself of it--I like cold runs.  I even like rainy runs.  And, if really pressed, I kind of like cold, rainy runs, too.  I'm not sure why, but there's a list of hypotheses.  The crappy weather distracts me from how I feel, and how terrible I generally am at running.  I don't overheat; sweat hardly ever stings my eyes when it's that close to freezing.  I'm not as hesitant to plow through puddles because my lovely (new!) shoes are already soaked, so it can't make much difference, and puddles--as every three-year-old knows--are fun.  I like watching raindrops jet from my face when I pant through pursed lips.  I like the idea that every car who sees me thinks I am either nuts or a Real Runner (though in my mind, there is very little difference between the two), even though I usually see very few other runners when things get that nasty outside.

I like the feeling that I've made the challenge just a little bit greater by going up against bad weather, especially when I find that the bad weather actually helps me.

Sure, when I got back and iced my shins, I had goosebumps all the way down my legs, my fingers were tingly and numb (though they were fine during the run), and even with a blanket, my shoulders still felt cold, but during the run, I was great.  During the run, the weather didn't matter at all.

I need to remember that.

The local hawk

Saw this gentleman (gentlewoman?  gentlebird?  ferocious flying feathered fiend?) walking back from the library a month ago.  I know, I know, my posting schedule is erratic, but I have a good excuse!  I've been working on a Secret Plan B Project.  With any luck, I'll be done with the bulk of the work soon, and maybe in a few weeks (or months) it can become my Publicly Acknowledged Plan B Project.  I'm very excited about it.

In the meantime, I'll try to catch up with some of our recent adventures, and show you this hawk that visited my neighborhood.  It was perched less than two blocks from our building, making un-hawklike noises which drew my attention.  I've seen a lot of hawks in the area when we drive out of the city for hikes, but I've never seen one this close to where we live.

However, I did see a large red-tailed hawk perched along the Mt. Vernon trail as we drove back from this morning's long run (10 miles--we're getting ready for a half-marathon in March)

sights unseen

One of the reasons I started this blog was because I kept seeing things in my neighborhoods that I wanted to share with someone--anyone, really--and I needed a good place to do it.  Naturally, I usually forget my camera.  I'm getting better about that, so I'm sharing two quick views from recent walks.

I first saw these gingko leaves two weeks ago, when they were still spread across the sidewalk, glowing golden in afternoon light as I hit mile four of a run.  Then I kept neglecting to go back and shoot them, and by the time I revisited them this week, they had all blown to the side, and the light wasn't as nice, but I still liked them.

This just appeals to my sense of unconventionality, and seems to continue a trend in bumper sticker battles.

distance

There was a time when my running goal was "run for an hour straight."  Despite having already completed two half-marathons by then, I felt that it was a good fitness goal because I hadn't run in a long time.

I felt it was an achievable goal because I had already finished two half-marathons, so it was easier to keep going.  There was no "there's no way I can do this" moment.  This was while I still lived in Bend, and I remember being excite the day I went for 45 minutes and still felt good enough to keep going.  I knew I was close.  Before leaving Bend, I ran two 5ks, a 10k, and my third half-marathon, in no particular order.  Most of those were in the course of a year.  I know for a real runner, that's an unimpressive pile of very small potatoes, but I'm not a real runner--I'm just some shlub who runs.

This morning, without even realizing I was doing it until I finished and looked at my stopwatch, I ran for just over an hour with no trouble at all, and remembered when I considered that a lofty goal.  It felt good.

A friend (the same one who convinced me to run the first two) got me to sign up for a half-marathon in the spring.  I think I'll be ready.

joy of discovery

It doesn't matter which day of the week or what time of day I go for a run--morning, afternoon, after dark, weekday, weekend, national holiday, Wednesday around lunch--I always see other runners.

Well.

Almost always.

Last Tuesday it was raining when I woke, and just over forty degrees.  I had intended to go for a run, and I don't mind running in the cold, or in the rain, but it's hard to convince yourself to run in cold rain when you're not that motivated in the first place.  I got ready anyway, telling myself that any chump could run in good weather--it took a heartier soul to run when it was miserable.  I sometimes like bad weather, anyway.  Several years ago I had a great time wandering around Boston one morning in driving cold rain.  I was waiting for a marathon to start--you may have heard of it--but that's another story.  After I finished my usual pre-run regimen I went downstairs and opened the door to discover that in the time it had taken me to psych myself up to running in the light but steady drizzle, it had strengthened to real rain.  For the next half hour, I didn't see a single other moron running in the rain (but The Girl ran the day before Sandy made landfall and saw several runners.  Go figure.).

Planning on a shorter run, I set out with only one goal: find the secret park.  On an earlier run the week before, I had gone very near a local park and didn't realize it until I returned and mapped the run to find out how far I had gone.  There, tucked in neatly where I should have seen it, was a decent-sized park, just a green blob on Google maps.  For the next week I walked and ran through the area, but despite knowing exactly where it was, I never managed to find the park.  This time, I was armed with the knowledge of exactly where the entrance should be.

When I arrived at the designated coordinates, I still didn't see it.  I stopped running when I realized I had passed it and looked around, carefully seeking any break in the residential scenery that might offer egress from the street.

If I hadn't known it was there, I never would have found it.

A few years ago I read a book which described an entire house that couldn't be seen when you were looking at it--if you saw it at all, it was only through the corner of your eye.  Douglas Adams describes a similar concept with the Somebody Else's Problem Field.  This felt similar, except that I did have to look directly at the entrance to find it.  It was narrow, unmarked, and could easily have been the gap between two properties, overlooked during the land surveys.  If I hadn't seen the steps, well on their way to becoming invisible under the gathering leaves, I might not have noticed it at all.

The park itself was narrow, just a gap between two streets of houses, but it had a path and a stream, and I have to admit I was pretty excited to find it, though that may have been borne of triumph over challenge.  Now I refer to it as the Secret Park, and I've gone through it on every run since.