Training Log Archive: CleverSky

At the risk of jinxing this, if it's correct, I want to present a theory of mine.

This year I have seen more turkeys than ever before. In the past I saw family flocks maybe once or twice, but now I see them regularly, a few adults and a bunch of chicks of various sizes. If I go out for a bike ride, it's not unusual to see turkeys more than once.

At the same time, although I have spent quite a bit of time outdoors this year, I have found very few ticks. The number is probably in single digits, and I haven't found one on me in months.

I think the turkeys are eating the ticks. I've heard that keeping guinea fowl is a useful strategy for limiting the tick population in your yard, and turkeys seem like similar birds to guinea fowl. If I'm right, I consider that to be a good thing.

(I also haven't been bothered by FDFs very much this year. I don't know if that might also fit into my theory, or if I just haven't been frequenting the places where FDFs prevail.)

C • I've noted an increase in t... 4

Throne Hill, with Nancy. I think I'd only been up here once before, about 20 years ago, and maybe that was in the dark. Quite a delightful bit of forest.

To Ravi's house. I'd been hoping all summer for an opportunity to do this, but up until today it hadn't worked out. Once a week I have a one-on-one meeting with my boss, and when we were working at the ofiice, that meeting would (weather permitting) take place on the walking path around the campus. I figured we could do the same with a walk around his neighborhood, and I could get to and from the meeting by bike. This was the trip over there. There's a little glitch at the start because I got about 500 m down the road and checked to see whether I had my tool/phone bag, but I didn't, so I went back for it. Arrived almost exactly on time.

And the trip home. It was windy on the way over there, although it didn't feel like a tailwind. Definitely a headwind on the way back, though. And when I got home, I threw out the dribble-glass water bottle that I got at some canoe race 20 years ago.

C • tailwind 2

I got my new compass in the mail today, with built-in SI chip. Ho long will it be before I get to use it?

A loop to Timberlee, after having made an overdue repair to the recumbent seat over the weekend. All went well except that something needs lubrication, becausw when I shifted into the big ring, it wouldn't go back to the middle ring. I quickly did a mental scan of the rest of my route to see if there were any hills that I didn't think I could manage in the big ring, though after a little thought it occurred to me that I could always stop the bike and see if I could nudge things (and I had tools with me as well). But I nudged the front derailleur with my heel and got it to shift, and left it in the middle ring from there on in. The recumbent is a little funny in that you can't look down to see the rear cluster, so unless you keep track in your head, you don't know what gear you're in (whether there are any left to shift down to). It's three rings in front, five cogs in back. It also uses a slightly different set of muscles, so there's fatigue in novel spots.

Little bit: finished dismantling the small shed (except the floor) and carried all the wood over to the dumpster pile.

Baldwin Hill BYOM training, Red, 6.1 km. What a train wreck. Nancy and I went out there late afternoon on an overcast day, right on the edge of a bunch of rain to the SE. So it was really dim, especially under evergreens, and the brown on this map is too faint (my fault), making it hard to see the contours. In addition, J-J looking for orange streamers is not a good match, especially in low light, and summer vegetation decreased the visibilty. And I had fogging issues with my glasses. It might have been a good plan to use the GPS cell phone app, so that I could have just proceeded when it beeped, instead of hunting around.

I had a little trouble getting to the first control, but I arrived in about 10 minutes. Then it took me almost another 20 minutes to find the streamer. At one point I heard Nancy, who was looking for the same one, but never found it and just went back to the car (she was having even more trouble reading the map than I was).

2 through 6 went okay, then on 7 I got to what I was pretty sure was the right spot, but I found no streamer. Relocated on something solid, came back to the same place. Gave up looking for it, and everything matched up on my way out.

8 and 9 went okay, although I can't remember if I found streamers, I think I didn't for at least one of them, but I was confident that I was in the right spot. 10 I saw the depression but didn't see a streamer, went to find a nearly solid attackpoint and came to the same spot, and then I found the streamer, which I may have been looking at edge-on the first time.

11 I basically spiked, didn't see anything, went to some nearby spots to make sure I was in the right place, came back and was certain, and I can't remember if I eventually found a streamer or not. On 12 I climbed up the hill and knew where I was, and I looked at the clues and saw that I was looking for a depression. I couldn't see anything in the circle that looked like a depression, just mush. I might have given up except I looked up and saw the streamer right on front of me, maybe 10 meters away.

The rest went fine although I didn't find a streamer at 14, but knew I was in the right place. Somewhere on the way down near 15 I heard a squeal of tires, and wondered if it was going to end wi-BANG! Yes, it did. I was surprised that on our drive out we didn't encounter the accident scene, I didn't think they could have cleared it up that quickly, and it sure sounded like the kind of thing that was going to require a tow truck at the least.

I actually cam pretty close to my predicted time of 2 1/4 hours. (Nancy points out that I had said 1 1/4 hours, but that's a subtle difference.)

splits

C • Streamers 6

Crane Beach with Nancy. She had gotten a beach pass, but it turned out to be a cool and overcast day, not ideal for sitting in beach chairs, so instead we went for a walk through the back section and returned on the beach. Sandals went on and off a number of times in the trails when we'd get to stretches that had a lot of sticks and stuff. Harder effort than usual because of the soft surface

OK, so what were these birds? There was an enormous flock of them in the semiforested area behind the dunes. Small birds, I'd say noticeably larger than chickadees but much smaller than robins. Dark on top with a light-colored underside. Squarish, slightly forked tail. They were madly clustering around a bunch of bushes (maybe there were some berries there), but also flying around in a diffuse flock. In terms of coloration, I think they looked something like Eastern Kingbirds, but I don't know if you'd expect to see a few thousand of them together or not, and maybe that's too large a bird. Any experts want to take a stab at what they were? I think Nancy tried to get a picture with her phone, but that may have been futile.

C • Puzzlement 5

Willard Brook, a provisional Brown course (3.9 km) that I had sketched out to see if the proposed Day 2 start and finish locations would work. Pretty fun course, and I think something like this will do just fine, and I have more flexibility for the other courses. I used a 1:7500 print for an authentic experience. One small miss in a low-visibilty area, but if there had been controls out there, I might have seen it before overshooting.

Little bit: dismantled the roof of the small shed.

Yet another road loop, this time going on some roads that I don't remember ever having been on before, certainly not in the last four decades despite the fact that they're within a couple of miles of my high school.

Although, actually, somewhere in here was the site of my first "orienteering" experience, in 10th grade. We were put into groups, and started at different spots along Wallace Hill Road, with (I think) a USGS map and a compass, and we were supposed to follow a bearing to get to some lake (probably Heald Pond), where we had a picnic. (And since it was French class, we were supposed to speak French the whole time.) I don't actually count it as an orienteering event, but it is where I first encountered the word.

Little bit: mowed the rest of the lawn.