LIFE IS, INESCAPABLY, ALL ABOUT CHOICES. We make choices and decisions hundreds of times every day, millions of times over the course of our lives. Both yesterday and today were brilliant, mild-weather days in the mid-Atlantic. On each day I considered going for a ride, to start the new year off on a positive note vis-a-vis cycling. And yet, in the end, on each day I chose not to ride.
New Year's Day began for me at my cousin's house, where we had spent New Year's Eve as per long-established custom. By the time we had a lazy breakfast and got back home the morning was already nearly spent. My early bubble of ambition had somehow collapsed, leaving me without the drive necessary to change into riding clothes, get all my gear together, and get the heck out the door.
Instead, I pretty well frittered the day away, accomplishing little beyond starting a roast cooking in our sous vide pot. For those unfamiliar with this method of cooking, don't be misled into thinking it was any particular effort. The sum total of what was required was: fill a large pot with water; drop the frozen, bagged roast into the water; put the sous vide circulator into the water; set the target temperature and cooking time (several hours, in my case); turn it on; walk away and give it not another moment's thought for several hours. All of the "work" required took, in total, about two minutes. Hardly a valid reason for not going for a ride.
Oh yeah, I did get something else accomplished. We're leaving early this coming Wednesday morning (day after tomorrow) for a trip to Hawaii, so I needed to sift through the bag of SCUBA gear, validate that the dive lights all functioned, change the batteries as needed, separate gear I plan to take from items to be left behind, and pack. All of that took enough additional time that there wasn't a lot of the day left for riding, and of course it used up what little ambition might have survived to that point.
So that was New Year's Day, gone without a pedal turned. What about today?
The weather was still mild and the day started sunny. Both my wife and I were recognizing the need to do something to stir our sedentary blood at least a little, since while we're in Hawaii we'll be on a walking tour. Best get some steps in, then. Rather than go for a ride we elected to head down to the C&O Canal National Historic Park and take a decent-ish walk. Our walks don't in any way compare to the epic treks Rachael Anderson does on her non-riding "rest" days but they're more ambitious than a mere stroll around the block, so there's that.
Arriving at the park we took our position at the end of a lengthy line of cars waiting to enter; evidently we weren't alone in our thinking it was a good day to be there.
The lineup of vehicles waiting to enter Yellowstone wasn't this long when I was there, back in July.
Soon enough, though, we were in and parked and ready to start walking. Strolling past the Visitor's Center, located in what was once a canal-side inn and tavern when the canal was in commercial operation, we crossed over the canal and onto the towpath via the bridge built for that purpose when the place was turned into a National Historic Park.
The Visitor's Center is still decked out in its holiday finery.
As the traffic had indicated would be the case, there were all sorts of folks milling about. Being an "old Canal hand" (I volunteered in the park's Bike Patrol program for several years, before life interfered) I knew that heading upstream would quickly separate us from the majority of visitors, who tend to concentrate at the falls themselves when they enter via the Great Falls entrance. (There are numerous points of access to the Canal scattered along its 184.5-mile length; only at the Great Falls entrance is an entry fee charged. I have an annual NPS pass, though, so we got in without paying today.)
The river is full of trees, which tend to snag on submerged rocks and collect into larger and larger rafts, especially when the river level is relatively low.
This couple found a place where they could relax with some degree of privacy, or at least without being disturbed by the people walking and cycling on the towpath itself.
We hadn't covered a half mile when my wife twitched my arm and brought my attention to a great blue heron, stalking in the shallows of the canal bed for something tasty to eat. This was the perfect opportunity for me to field test my newly-acquired camera, and particularly the 60x built-in optical zoom that had been the main reason for selecting this particular brand and model. I'd say it passed muster with flying colors.
The lens let me fill the frame from across the canal, a distance of fifty feet or more, without spooking the bird or even reaching the full extent of the zoom.
I had hoped to see more avian life but, apart from this lone heron, we only saw a couple dozen mallards, a hawk that swooped across the canal and disappeared into the trees on the far side, a lone Canada goose, and another bird too far away for me to identify. I heard, but never spotted, a woodpecker of some sort drumming high up on a tree a few yards from the towpath.
We saw several pairs of mallards all along the route we were walking, in little groups ranging from one pair to three or four pairs.
This was the best shot I could get of the mystery bird. There were three of these, a couple hundred yards away. They'd dive, stay submerged for 30 seconds or a minute, and re-surface only to dive again within a few seconds. [1/3/2023: I've been told, by someone well positioned to know such things, that this might be a male bufflehead duck.]
The remainder of my photos were of the still life variety: a moss-covered rock, the thinnest skim of ice on the surface of the canal, a nest of some sort high in the trees on the opposite side of the canal, fungus on a downed log, etc.
There's almost no current in the canal, but the red stuff (I assume an algae of some sort) had clearly been ponded up by the fallen tree blocking the surface flow.
