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.