Days 21 - 24: Revisiting Owasco Lake, BayCreek, and NYC

This weekend I met up with Maya at her grandpa's lake house on Owasco Lake where we spent the day kayaking with her brother Kiran and sister Mallika. We launched from the lake house (east side of the lake) and paddled north. Back in 2010 I paddled around the southern half of Owasco, so much of this territory was new to me.

This will be a new tradition for future Finger Lake paddles

Maya recounts her experience in the bullets below, which she wrote while we drove to NYC on Sunday night... [Nena's comments in italics]

• Nena is supposed to get to Owasco Lake at 8 a.m. Maya wakes up at 8:30 a.m. and is very miffed when Nena strolls in at 10 a.m. [Sleeping in was worth it. Also, the drive was longer than I expected!] Maya angrily eats pie for breakfast.  
• Nena arrives! We chat in the cottage for a while. She catches up with Liz, KK, Maya, Kiran, Mallika, and Grandpa. We talked about [The!] Netherlands – about Vermeer the painter.
• Nena and Maya sat on the dock with lemon mint iced tea (mint picked on the side of the road leading to the cottage). Joined by Mallika and Kiran, we talked about previous blog entries – Maya proves she reads Nena’s blog diligently by remembering the beer Nena drank in [? okay maybe not that diligently...] was strawberry beer. [The strawberry beer was in Bismarck, ND! I am very impressed. Maybe someone actually reads this blog]
• After freezing on the dock because the sun hasn't reached the lake side of the cottage yet, we decide it will be best to start the kayaking excursion right away, to get out into the sun and embrace the day.

Kiran, Maya, and Mallika fresh and full of energy

Nena feeling overly geared-up.

• Kiran and Maya lug three kayaks from the porch down to the shore, while Nena prepared her much more professional grade kayak and paddle for the trip. Maya and Kiran frantically search the cottage for life jackets and paddles – there is a time crunch, because Mallika is on call for her job at Anthropologie and if she has to work, she will have to be back in a half an hour. [How can you have 3 kayaks and only 1 paddle?]

Mallika calling Anthropologie to see if she has to work - the answer is no!

• We begin our journey. Maya soon needs to use the bathroom. The sun is bright but it's at our backs. We pass the YMCA camp and various seagulls. 
• We see a bald [is it actually bald?] eagle. Exciting stuff. 
• Maya uses the bathroom on the side of the lake, in a very scenic area. [FYI... it's not called the bathroom when you're peeing in the woods...]

Kiran, Maya, and Mallika

• Soon after, another kayaker approaches us using a Greenland style paddle. We discover the Greenland kayaker’s name is Mike; he lives on the lake, and a friend made his paddle. Nena and Mike discuss paddles, talk about Lake Ontario and the Rough Riders, discuss Hudson River paddling. They discover they have a mutual friend: Dennis Mike, Facebook enthusiast. Mike writes Nena’s name on his boat. [This seems odd in retrospect. Maybe his boat is a giant whiteboard.] Nena claims she will someday make her own kayak. Whether this is true or not is yet to be seen. [It will happen some day!] Kiran, Mallika, and Maya contribute nothing to the conversation. We don't even know how far away we are from our own cottage. 
• Mike, finding the latter three kayakers’ skills and speed wanting, departs after exchanging names with Nena. [No silly! He decided to turn around when we were going to check out the creek!]
• We decide that instead of kayaking around the curve and landing at the shore beneath Tom Thumb, the most famous ice cream shop in all of the Lake Owasco region, we will stop before the curve and explore an adjoining creek. 
• Some brief rough waters attack Maya’s boat and fill it with water, the first sign that our trip is quickly devolving into a series of hardships and anguish. We decide that we are going to continue an additional “unit” north. Nena has begun to describes distances in "units" in order to militarize our supposedly fun trip and make us regret our decision to join her on this endeavor. [ :) ]
• We reach our destination and curve right into a creek area [Dutch Hollow Brook on Burtis Point], where we are greeted by two older gentlemen, anchored in their rowboat, fishing, and smoking the reefer. They greet us, and we try not to disturb the fish as we sail past gracefully (Maya hits a rock with her boat, and she and Mallika fall back, complaining about heat, hunger, thirst, the need for ice cream, etc.). 

Nena is happy before she finds out her water bottle is filled with contaminated water

• We take a quick break on the creek, past the two friendly gentlemen. Exhausted and craving hot dogs, Maya and Mallika rest while Kiran and Nena explore the remainder of the creek. We discover Nena has filled her water bottle with toxic tap water rather than purified thermos water. Is this the beginning of the end for our ill-fated crew?

Kiran courageously paddles up the rapids.

• Nena and Kiran return approximately five minutes later, claiming to have reached rapids. We doubt the veracity of their tale. [Rapids may have been an overstatement.] The crew decides to turn around and hit the lake again. We pass the two fishermen again, and they inquire after the stableness of Nena’s boat, Big Purple. “Your boat, it’s different than… that yellow boat. I think I have that yellow boat. Just the way your boat is… it’s very… narrow. Is it hard to balance?”

Maya and Mallika looking slightly less energized

• We reach the main body of the lake, where we are despondent to remember that we have to kayak back the way we came. Famished, dehydrated and suffering from heat stroke, we make our way back. As we pass a green house, we see Mike. Somehow, he catches up with us in his kayak (we are traveling slowly due to aforementioned heat stroke). We learn that he, too, lives on Wide Waters. He offers Maya a lighter paddle and she declines, but he insists, so she accepts. He and Kiran and Nena chat. 
• Mallika flounders toward the back of the group. Maya splashes water on herself in a feeble attempt to revive her senses. 
• When we finally reach the lake house, Maya and Mallika jump into the water. We return to the cottage for some iced tea, kosher hot dogs, yellow rice, tortilla chips, salsa and corn on the cob. 
• The three siblings are traumatized and vow never to kayak again. Meanwhile, Nena plans her next kayaking trip. 

Date: Sunday, August 10th, 2014

Distance: 8.5 miles

Duration: 3 hours

The Non-Kayaking Portion: Just a quick recap this time since a lot happened and most of it wasn't kayak-related. On Friday (the day after Rough Riders - the previous post), I went into the kayaking shop with Dave, Morgan, and Jeff, where I spent the day working remotely, blogging, and uploading pictures. Since my last pair of Chacos ripped a couple weeks before leaving the Bay Area, I bought a new pair. Normally I'm not a huge fan of blue, but these ones matched the foot-finger lakes so well:

It was a typical day at the shop. Charlie was there paddling around his SUP. I made 2 trips Wegmans - the first with Jeff to pick up BBQ foods for dinner and the second with Morgan to return recyclables and unsatisfactory baby diapers. Morgan was working as hard as ever, even though her baby is due in 3 weeks. She even led a 2 hour nature tour in the evening.

Dave photographic morgan during her nature tour

The shop is looking spiffy these days, with new storage bins and a solid sun-roof over the porch!

In the evening we all returned to Dave & Morgan's house in Rochester where we met up with Pat, Mike, and Mindy. Dave grilled up some chicken with his favorite marinade (State Fair Chicken Sauce), Pat sauteed the squash and zucchini to a very soft consistency (a.k.a. Jello Squash), and I made a Caprese salad. Mindy and Mike brought some amazing desserts and a spicy salad. It was quite the feast!

One of my favorite activities: Porch sittin' at D&M's house

The next morning we were all back at the shop by 9am. We said some sad goodbyes and took goofy photos before I headed off to Syracuse to visit Marika.

Super happy reunion with Marika in Syracuse! I finally got to meet Theo, the SnapCat, and get a tour of Marika's new apartment near campus. We visited Green Lakes State Park and drank cider while we walked around the lakes. The lakes are a crystal-clear green color and were formed by glaciers during the last ice age, 15,000 years ago. The lakes are meromictic, which means that there is no fall and spring mixing of surface and bottom waters. This is very unusual, and only ~25 lakes in North America are classified this way. Interestingly enough, Wikipedia lists Irondequoit Bay as meromictic - but it's certainly not as pretty as Green Lakes!

Next, we went for a short bike ride along the shore of Onondaga Lake, on a newly completed bike trail around the north end of the lake. My butt reminded me that it does not like bike seats, and we soon turned around when we hit a patch of rough pavement that was being re-paved.

Hanging out on a lakeside bench.

We went home and made two fantastic pizzas. Our simple experiment showed that it's better to coat the pan with olive oil than to use wax paper.

Marika had to work at 6am on Sunday, so I slept in before driving to Owasco Lake to visit Maya. See the kayaking post above for our day at the lake. In the evening Maya and I drove to NY, battling traffic much of the way. Maya's new apartment on 105th street is very cute! In the morning I had to move my car, and spent 45 minutes trying to find a new parking spot. I met up with Sam (Cornell friend) at a much-loved bagel shop for breakfast, and we strolled north through Riverside Park catching up. We made a quick stop to tour General Grant's tomb before turning around.

I had initially planned to kayak around Governor's Island and get some photos of the Statue of Liberty, but kayaking alone is not very fun and a desire to avoid rush hour traffic in Boston led me to leave NYC earlier. I'll be back next summer to do this paddle! I stopped by Maya's office in Riverdale to say bye on the way out.

Fast forward a few more hours and I'm finally in Boston, 24 days, 5150 miles, and ~85 hrs of driving later. Off to the Netherlands on Thursday!