New Territory and Shifting Plans

Today, there was a robotics competition held at a local community college, and that led to an opportunity to explore some relatively new territory on my morning hike.  I've poked around this particular area in the past during sporting tournaments, but this is the first opportunity that I took to really explore the perimeter of the campus with some degree of rigor. Given the time of year, the time of the week, and the general layout of the place, this was perhaps not the most scenic of walks, but I did discover some new places that may bear further engagement in the future.

Anne Arundel Community College Campus from the south hilltop

I do not have a great deal of experience with community colleges, but this particular campus strikes me as a relatively large well funded facility.  The first picture was taken from a hilltop on south perimeter of the campus.  This is the area of the astronomy building, and I was actually surprised to learn that the school had an entire building dedicated to astronomy.  I'm not sure if there was a telescope in the building and it was a little small, but it's heartening to see a dedicated facility to look outward from earth and dream. I harbor hopes that the next generation takes up the mantle of human spaceflight with a renewed interest that seems to have withered to a degree. I believe that it's time to shake off the low earth orbit blues that we've been singing for the better part of four decades and reach farther into our solar system than we have to date.

A Hill that Begs to be Revisited

"Sled at your own risk."  I was surprised to find this sigh at the peak of the best sledding run that I've seen in the county.  It begs to be revisited at the first real snow of the season.  There is ample parking in the area both at the top of the hill and the bottom.  Clearly, there is some hope of speed given the permanent nature of the sigh. The valley to the left of the photo also appears to be a serviceable archery range with some neatly stacked hay bales also begging to be riddled with arrows. This archery problem that I'm looking to solve may manifest itself in the coming weeks and at the very least, a fall back plan has been revealed. More to follow on that little "problem," but there is a potential solution in the offing.

West Campus Courtyard

The robotics competition was held in the building shown to the right of this courtyard, and the building to the left is an arts facility. At the top of the stairs and to the right of the flagpole there is a Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial as well.  This was a great area to bask in the warmth of the sixty degree weather we had today, and my male roommates enjoyed tossing a football on the stairs.

Parade of Lights Boats bottled up in the Harbor

This evenings plans shifted a bit because the boats in this photo were supposed to be out on the water participating in the parade of lights. Unfortunately, this event was cancelled by the city because one of the yacht clubs that participates in this event had its primary clubhouse burn pretty extensively in what ended up being a three alarm fire that took a little over three hours to contain.  There was a thin pall of smoke downtown, but the festive mood had not been dampened appreciably, and it looked to me like the boaters were making the best of things by shifting the festivities to the dock rather than out on the water.

Once again, my walking took me to places I would not have likely seen had I not been putting miles under my feet, and another great day has passed into the books.

Frenetic Friday

Rory and I were talking this morning about the unfolding of the holiday season and how our propensity for cramming a fairly large number of what would normally be enjoyable events into a rather compact time frame associated with "the holiday season" works at cross purposes to the relaxing camaraderie that those events should generate.  Today was a little like that, so instead of boring you with the gory details of trying to stuff too much fun into to small of a fun bag I'll let a couple of pictures tell the tale of the more enjoyable parts of the day.

Unsurprisingly, these are photos taken during two of three pedestrian periods I fit in around the baskets of holiday fun.

Anacostia Sunrise

This morning, the stillness of the air was perfect for capturing the reflection of the sunrise and the ex-USS Barry in the surface of the Anacostia River.  If you had asked me to draw or paint this scene a year ago, I strongly suspect that I would not have even noticed the reflections in the water much less been able to capture them in my rendering of the scene.  Today, though I still would struggle with representing the reflections, I definitely notice them all around me.  I attribute this "sensitivity" to observing the reflected directly to the time I"ve spent out on the trail plodding along.  I see reflections everywhere now, and not just while walking.  They are beautiful and exponentially increase the interest of any particular scene in my opinion.  If I hadn't slowed down a little,  I truly believe that in the interest of brevity my brain would have continued to filter this "excess" data being collected through my Mk 1 Mod 0 I-Ball.  I'm glad I slowed down.

Anacostia River Afternoon

On my lunch time amble, I tried to capture the same scene from this morning with afternoon lighting.  I think I did a pretty credible job of it, but I beleive the morning shot was probably taken a little (though not much) farther east than the afternoon shot.

As can be seen by the flag and the wind ripples on the water, the breeze had kicked up, and although I like the afternoon shot the muddied reflections off the water make the scene a little less interesting to me compared to the morning scene.

In spite of the drive to maximize fun to the point of fatigue, today was another enriching experience, and I look forward to another.

The Power of Incremental Progress

Recently, one of the things that I do at the beginning of the morning walk is to listen to TED Talks for about the first mile or mile and a half.  It usually takes about that length of time for Rory to get out and about and walking.  To be fair to him, his time zone is an hour behind mine, so he's out and about at an eye watering early hour.

This morning the topic of the lecture was the lessons that Roz Savage has learned through her practice of ocean rowing.  Ms. Savage is the first woman to row solo across the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans. She has covered over 15,000 miles in over 500 days alone on the ocean, and her story is one of inspiration for me.

I sense a kind of kinship between her rowing and my walking.  Clearly, she's taking the bigger risks, but the part of her TED Talk that I especially related to was the power of incremental progress.

Anacostia River Walk Bridge - East Side

When I first started training for the N2N-TCP, I had it in mind to stick with ten miles per day for thirty days because I felt that would be a sufficient amount of time to convince myself that this crazy idea of mine was just that...a crazy idea.

Anacostia River Walk Bridge - West End

The walking was very difficult in the beginning.  I did not have to correct shoes and socks, blisters were a daily struggle, shin splints took a mile to get loosened up, and, since I started in the fall, the weather taught me some tough lessons about what was appropriate clothing and what wasn't.

Through those first thirty days, what I didn't see right away was that from the very beginning, I was making incremental progress.  One short step at a time, I was learning along the way.  That learning hasn't stopped, and instead of convincing me of my own lunacy, walking has become part of what I practice daily and part of my life in a way I never imagined.

There is great power in incremental progress, but that power can only be accessed by taking the first small step and then carrying through to take the next one.

Mark 1 Mod 0 Wednesday - The Best Day of My Life

I'm pretty sure I've told the story of the response this one guy at the gym gives me every time I ask him how things are going.  He says, "This is the best day of my life."  It took me a little while to pick up on the pattern, but after I started picking up what he was laying down, I decided that his statement is both true and very useful.  From the outside looking in, today was a pretty standard Mark 1 Mod 0 Wednesday for me, but even though it felt fairly routine, it was the best day of my life. The past is history, the future a fantasy, but whatever happens right now is just as it should be and pretty glorious.  I wish I hadn't spent this long figuring out that truth, but here we are.

The Google panoramic shots from yesterday finished navigating the ether, and greeted me this morning on my commute into work.

Anacostia Sunset

Not the most spectacular sunset, but the waves from the wake of a boat really caught my eye and caused me to capture the images that made up this view.

United States Supreme Court

I spent some time trying to get the right shots to center up a theoretical panoramic mash-up, and it looks like things turned out about right.  The first panoramic that I captured of the Supreme Court was offset to the right of the picture a little too much for complete satisfaction.  This one is much better I think. This morning at about 0630 there was a larger than usual crowd lining up to attend the oral arguments centered around questions of affirmative action at the University of Texas.  I enjoy the fact that I get to see where the news that I hear on the radio at the end of the day happens.

Capitol Building

I had a really difficult time capturing a good image of the Capitol Building both yesterday and today.  This picture is a pretty far departure from some of the higher quality shots of the past, but it's the best I could get in the bag yesterday.  It's still pretty cool, and I'm still looking forward to the construction staging coming down later this winter.

Capitol Building from the second cross street west on the Mall

I took a little shorter route than my normal walk this morning, and it put me on the second cross street west of the Capitol Building on the Mall.  I had high hopes of being able to capture a good shot of the Capitol Building from a slightly different perspective, but I was thwarted to a degree by the fuzziness of the dome that I've been battling for the last couple of days.  Not bad, but not spectacular either.  

Submarine Sunset

The sun setting behind the submarine sail monument on the Washington Navy Yard has been a favorite view of mine for awhile, but this is the first time I've tried to photograph it for reasons I don't completely understand.  This may become a more regular feature going forward.

Ancostia Sunset

Yet another Anacostia sunset to round out the day, and since I've been plagued with slow photo download response during the missive this evening I'll finish out the best day of my life and I'm looking forward to the next.  It's going to be fantastic.

One of the Most Effective Antidotes to Fear is Action

There is quite a bit of nuttiness in the air right now, and my hypothesis is that the irrationality of it all is being principally driven by fear. There have been people killed. They've been killed in a violent and sudden manner, and it's brought out every tin pot mini-dictator that can garner a platform to tell the world that they should all be afraid. The fear peddlers are out in full force because they've read their history, and they know beyond a shadow of a doubt that if they can drum up enough fear they can capture some power.

The most dangerous thing I did all day was commute into work. In today's day and age, even that isn't too terribly dangerous thanks to good folks at places like the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) working to use science and engineering to bound the risk. Even though pulsing down the highway at the sporty pace of seventy five miles an hour was by far my greatest risk today, that's not what the fear peddlers told me to avoid.

If one chose to listen to these fear based power consolidators, you would have heard dire warning of the inevitability of further shootings and bombings. You would have heard them tell you to avoid places with large crowds that might prove to be a tempting and easy target for the miscreants skulking around just waiting for the opportune time to send you to the great unknown at the wrong end of an "assault style weapon" or pipe bomb.

Instead of listening to their breathless predictions of the potential dire consequences and their solutions for things that I have no hope of solving as an individual, I exercised my right to make them be silent and metaphorically pressed the Off button on their hyperbolic rantings.

Instead, I got outside, and in an act of rebellion to their terrible advice, I went to one of those heavily populated places that they seem to dislike enough to target.  This is what I saw...

Center Arch Christmas Wreath and Fellow Traveller
With a Pizza at Union Station

Union Station is a spectacular place. The architecture competes well with other monuments in the area, and the dynamic environment of a major transportation hub is exhilarating. A friend reminded me that there is a display of model holiday trains just inside the door behind me from where this picture was taken, and I'm saddened to report that I didn't go in to see it this evening.  They were just setting up the display when I popped in several days ago, so another trip seems to be calling.

Same Wreath from the Outside Looking In

I'm happy to report that nothing bad happened.  I didn't see anything suspicious, so I kept my mouth shut. I was blessed with participating in life on a spectacular autumn evening, and the anxiety dealers were still trapped in their little television shaped cells.

Supreme Court of the United States

I was heartened to see that I'd been joined by a host of like minded citizens intent on exercising the freedom that our system and institutions protect. Come join me outside in the midst of our fellow travellers who refused to be cowed by the miscreants and the fearmongers. Action is the Antidote to the poison they're pushing.

Stepping Out in Faith, The God Pocket, and an Interesting Proposal by Rory

Since getting him to post directly in this journal seems to be a task greater than I am capable of pulling off, you, dear reader, are left with my inadequate narrative when Rory says something in one of our many conversations that is particularly noteworthy.  Today out of the blue, he brought up the concept of being God's Pocket in some capacity during out pilgrimage.  I did a quick Google search of "in god's pocket" to get some additional context, and that little phrase led me to places that I don't believe are in keeping with what Rory was proposing.  I hope not anyway.

The gist of the idea is to provide in some small way for the needs of the people we encounter during the pilgrimage. I suspect he picked up the concept from a book by Bruce Wilkerson titled, "The God Pocket." The subtitle of the book is, "He Owns It. You Carry In. Suddenly, Everything Changes."  Wilkerson has some critics that accuse him of pushing "prosperity theology," so I suspect that some further research is required, but the thing that I do like about the idea is the moving out in faith with action, while it is unlikely to lead to some quid pro quo financial prosperity, strikes me as a bit of an individual test. It's a challenge, and as such can be a powerful antidote for fear.  Based on my life experience, that in and of itself is a great reward.

I've written before about the distinction between faith and belief, and I hypothesize that belief is based on evidence, and faith is based on acting even though one is afraid that things may not work out.  It interests me a little because the evidence of a power greater than me (some call that power God) is waiting to help anyone in times of need. I've referred to the same concept in the past by suggesting that the universe is conspiring to make you successful or to manifest your dream.

This morning, I saw ample evidence to support that proposition.

Anacostia River Sunrise

Instead of the cold fog that prevailed yesterday, this was the view that accompanied the beginning of the day today.

South Capitol Street Bridge over the Anacostia at Night

The end of the day was equally stunning. I don't fool myself into believing that the weather will always be great, but it is good an awful lot of the time.  In fact, there is such as thing as good weather, and the corollary, counterintuitively, is that there is no such thing as bad weather...only inappropriate clothing. My real take away from the last two days is that if you continue to act on faith or belief, the universe will conspire with you to materialize your dream.  That's why the giving part of being the pocket of god appeals to me in some way.  I believe it will work out, and it would be an interesting test or challenge to put that belief to a test.

Transformations

Today's weather progressed in a way that I hope is analogous to some happening in my life.  The day dawned cold and foggy.  The mercury in the thermometer indicated a temperature that should have been warmer than what my fingers in the light gloves I was wearing were telling me. At the beginning of the walk, I headed north on a high bridge over the Severn River hoping to capture some snapshots of the dense cloud bank that had settled right down on the surface of the water.  As I marched up the bridge, frost began to form on the outside of my  fleece pulling ice crystals out of the fog.  The thermometer said this shouldn't be happening.

Fog on the Severn River Bridge Path

The last several days has seemed like I was travelling in a cold fog.  The source of this semi-dire outlook has been a sense of anger at how certain aspects of my life appear to be unfolding at the present moment. I've been living far to far out in the future, and my predictions and expectations, really my imagination, have gotten the best of me.  I've projected that things happening now will be interminable, and that's resulted in behaviors that make that imagining more likely than not.  Like my cold hands at the beginning of the walk, I should know that things can change over time.  The sun can rise.  I just have to be patient enough to let it come up and do the slow work of dispersing the icy cold fog.

Severn River Fog

When I arrived at the north end of the bridge, the situation did not seem to be getting any better.  The fog had laid in, my hands were even colder having been stripped of their all too thin gloves in order to take photos, and I could not even see the other side of the river from which I'd just traveled.  As I contemplated this unwelcome development, small glimpses of progress began to materialize.

Sunrise over the Severn

A dirty yellow smudge appeared on the horizon.  No warmth penetrated the mist, but this was the first indication that improvement was a certainty.  My hands were still clammy, but my metabolism had begun to ramp up, and the first tingles of increasing circulation began to make themselves known.  It takes me about one and a half miles to really start warming up (if I've dressed appropriately for a medium duration walk), and I'd only covered about one and two tenths miles at this point in my journey.  I put on my gloves and moved forward.

Hospital Point, in the Fog

As I turned my back on the north side of the Severn, I noticed that the fog was receding.  It was being pushed south by the rising sun.  When I arrived back at the south side of the bridge, this was the scene that greeted me.  I doesn't look like much improvement, but I'd noted that on my way past heading north, the satellite dish had been barely visible.  There was not reflection in the water, and the photos I took barely registered the massive metal structure at all.  The sun continued to rise.  The fog continued to clear. The frost on the ground exploded in growth, and then slowly began to recede from the scene.

Annapolis Frost

As I came back across to the south, my hands had warmed up so I headed onward.  Less than twenty minutes passed before I crossed another bridge, but this time the view had completely transformed.

College Creek

Whispy vestiges of the icy fog hung lightly in the shaded areas over the water, but the bulk had burned off. The sun had prevailed, the wind hadn't risen, and I began to think that I might just be a bit over dressed.  I'd shed my gloves completely at the three and a half mile point shown in the photo above, and I have not put them on for the remainder of the day.  It's amazing the difference that a little bit of light and a little bit of time can make.

The day progressed, and I covered some credible mileage.  I even jogged a little.  At the end of the afternoon on the last mile of the day, the sun that had cleared the fog settled in the west, it's work done for the time being.

College Creek Sunset

The sky over College Creek was on fire with the waning of the sun.  The air was still calm, and it was nearly impossible to tell where the water ended and the sky began.  The real giveaway was that in the water the trees appeared upside down.  I'd really hoped that Google would give me a panorama to wrap up what ended up being a glorious day.  Animation was the rule of the evening. As the Rolling Stones observed, "You Can't Always Get What You Want."

More College Creek Sunset

When it was all said and done, I did get what I needed.  I suspect that life works a whole lot like the weather today worked.  That is to say, I should have a little patience, understand that my projections going forward are at best imagination and at worst a complete fantasy - good or bad, temper my anger - or ecstasy as the case may be, and believe that the universe is conspiring toward success.

Still More College Creek Sunset

By the way, that linked YouTube video of the Rolling Stones is the 1973 version of "You Can't Always Get What You Want," recorded live in Brussels during their European Tour, and it is FANTASTIC.  Check it out, and buy their albums.  They are one of the top five rock and roll bands of all time, and it would not be out of line to say they are the best ever.  Just a thought.