Poly at the Dog Park

Sherry and I took our little dog Polly to the West Park Dog Park for the first time today.  We had met up with our neighbor Mandy, and her dog, and Polly's friend, Lucy, as we were just starting our morning dog walk with Polly.  Many and Lucy were on their way to West Park, so we decided to join them there.

Poly, near the center, with red collar

We found the people there very nice and friendly, and responsible about looking after their dogs. Polly had never been around multiple other dogs before, and had sometimes had issues with other dogs. But she got along very well with the other dogs in the small-dog area. We were really pleased for her to have an opportunity for socialization.

West Park Dog Park

2018 Gasparilla 15K

Gasparilla 15K  February 24, 2018

Time: 1:50:01  11:48 minutes/mile

20/38 in my age group

20 Years Ago

1998 Gasparilla 15K Finish

Straightening the Tree

Hurricane Irma left our little oak tree bent over.  We had put this tree in just two years ago, replacing a previous small oak tree that had died.  I really didn't want to lose another one.

I contacted the Hillsborough County office of the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences Extension Service ( http://hillsborough.ifas.ufl.edu/ ) asking for advice on how to straighten a bent over tree. I received a prompt reply with "how to" advice:

Steps for standing up trees that have fallen

1. Keep roots moist.

2. Excavate a hole to accommodate roots.

3. Use sharp tools to make clean cuts on jagged or torn

roots.

4. Pull the tree up as straight as possible, taking care to

not damage the trunk or roots.

5. Fill the hole with soil from the site, but avoid burying

the area where the trunk meets the top main root

6. Irrigate the tree with the same frequency as for newly

planted trees, approximately three times/week for

the first several months. Also, apply water during dry

periods. Do not fertilize for one year.

7. Install staking system. Remove or adjust stakes after

six months to one year.

I had been watering the tree regularly ever since we returned home. 

Inspection showed that the tree itself was not bent.  The root ball was rotated, with the side next to the street raised and the side next to the house depressed.  I dug around the root ball in order to give it space to move back.  But I could not budge it by hand.  

I hooked up the car to the tree with a heavy wire, using a length of hose to prevent the wire from digging into the tree.  In the picture below, the wire is not visible because it is so thin, but the hose is visible.

The car was easily able to pull the tree back to an upright position.

I staked the wire to the ground to prevent the tree from rotating back to the bent position, and added a couple of boards to help prop it up.

I hope I have not damaged the roots too much, and that the tree can survive.  Time will tell.

Folding the Jib

Yesterday I attempted to prepare our sailboat, SeaQL, for hurricane Irma (as best I could.)  I had wrapped the jib sheets around the furled jib to help hold it.  But the sheets only went around the bottom half of the jib.  A neighbor across the dock warned me that 100 mph winds would unwrap the jib and then rip it to shreds.  He advised me to remove the jib from the furling and stash it inside.

With great effort, I removed the jib and basically wadded it up.  There was no way I could fold it neatly on the deck of the boat.  And I could barely lift it after wadding it up.  I put in onto a dock cart and took it to the car and managed to coax it into the back seat.  After two hours of hard work out in the sun I was so exhausted I could hardly walk.  I finished tying down the boat, and started back to Tampa at about 4:30 PM.  It took me an hour and a half to get home.  (Normally a 45 minute drive.)  I suspect that most of the delay was just normal rush hour congestion rather than hurricane traffic.

Today, I drug the jib out of the car and spread it out on the driveway, in an attempt to fold it neatly.  I had no idea how big that jib is until I had it spread out on the driveway.  (It doesn't look that big on the boat!)

Sherry helped with the folding.  I could not have possibly done it alone.

Progress!  Not really professional looking, but better than yesterday.

Final result.  Still a bit of a mess.

I took it into the garage and stashed it on the bottom level of the storage shelves.  If we get water in the garage, the jib should survive it better than most of the stuff stored there.

Unfortunately, the boat is not so secure.  The neighbor across the dock said that the weather forecast was predicting an 11 foot storm surge.  If that happens, there is little chance that the boat will survive. The water would be above the tops of the pilings in the marina.  But I think that prediction was based on the projected path two days ago, when they were expecting Irma to go up the Gulf coast of Florida.  Today the forecast is looking a lot better (for us), with Irma projected to go up the Atlantic coast.  If that projection holds we should get just moderate wind and rain and essentially no storm surge.

Polly has decided that she should eat at the table, like the other people.

Amsterdam, July 24, 2016

Sunday, July 24, was our third day in Amsterdam, and the day the Rhine cruise was to begin.  But the cruise would not begin until early afternoon.  So, in order to make the best use of our remaining time, our local host, Rita, arranged for a guided tour of an area outside the city.

The first place our guide took us was the Zaanse Schans (ZAHN-ze skhahns), a re-created 17th-century village in the town of Zaandijk, on the Zaan River, about 12 miles northwest of Amsterdam.

https://www.google.com/maps/@52.4250244,4.8350399,13z

Zaanse Schans is an open air museum, reminiscent of Colonial Williamsburg and Old Sturbridge Village in the U.S.  There are stores and workshops, and a lot of reconstructed windmills, all staffed by volunteers from the local area, all of whom speak English fluently.

(Click on any image to see a high resolution version.)

Sheep May Safely Graze

A bit of kitsch

This is a workshop where the volunteers talk about wooden shoes, how they were used and how they were made.  They demonstrated making a wooden shoe with modern equipment.  (Quite a bit faster than the 17th century methods!)  And, if you like, you can buy a pair to take home.

The windmills all have names.  This is "Het Jonge Schaap" ("The Young Sheep").  It is a working sawmill, constructed between 2005 and 2007 from drawings of the original, built in 1680 and demolished in 1942. Except for a modern crane, the workers used the same tools and materials that were used to build the original.

We took the tour and saw a demonstration by one of the workers who built the reconstruction.  He showed us the mechanism that converts the rotating motion of the windmill to the up and down motion required by the saws.  This was a Dutch invention and valuable trade secret in the 17th century.

By Quistnix at nl.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3891095

After Zaanse Schans, our guide took us to a working cheese farm in the same area,  the Henrik Wilig farm at Jacobs Hoeve.

This is a serious manufacturing operation that sells cheese around the world, but it also caters to tourists. Their web site says that over a million tourists visit their farms each year.

A pretty girl showed some of the cheese making equipment to us.

This is a storage room, where cheese is aged before being shipped.  The wheels are color coded according to variety.

On the way back to Amsterdam, our guide took us by a beautiful old village.  This is a real village, where people live, not a tourist attraction.  He dropped us off to walk around a bit and take pictures, something he probably was not supposed to do.  After we got back to the van, he seemed to leave in a hurry.

Back at the hotel in Amsterdam, we said goodbye to Rita, our wonderful local host, and boarded a bus to be taken to the ship, the S.S. Antoinette.  The cruise line took care of our luggage.  We just attached tags with our names and room number, and they took care of getting the luggage to our room on the ship.

Our stateroom was small, about like a typical moderate priced hotel room in New York City.

The room did include a "French balcony".  This is a small area with two chairs and a coffee table, and a window that can be opened.  It is essentially taken out of the area that would otherwise be part of the stateroom.  There are sliding glass doors between the French balcony and the room.

 Ours was a mid-price room.  More expensive rooms have a real balcony, and a lot more space.  But they were much more expensive.  Less expensive rooms just have a window, and were not much less expensive than ours.  This seemed like a good price point.

Finally underway.

The Rhine does not go to Amsterdam.  The first 45 miles of the cruise are on the Amsterdam-Rhine Canal, which connects the harbors of Amsterdam with the Ruhr industrial area in Germany and is said to be the busiest canal in the world.  http://www.routeyou.com/en-nl/location/view/48678495/amsterdam-rhine-canal


First bridge.  The word on the sign is Amsterdamsebrug  or "Amsterdam Bridge".

View from the top deck, looking from back to front of the boat.  There is only about five feet of headroom in the rooms on the top deck (a restaurant and a bar, not open at this time.)  The tops have been lowered to permit the boat to fit under the bridges on the canal.  Once we are on the Rhine, they will be raised, and we can comfortably walk around in these rooms.

A load of scrap metal, going to Amsterdam.

We saw a lot of barges like this, carrying stuff to and from Amsterdam.

A low bridge.  Felt like I needed to duck.  
The tall guys must have really cringed.

In most places along the canal, there were levees on each side of the canal.  Often the water level in the canal was well above the level of the surrounding countryside.  There were obviously planted trees all along the levees.





I generally think of the Netherlands as a densely populated, highly industrialized country.  But from the canal, you would think that it is essentially an agricultural region, and a rather beautiful one.

The boat was incredibly smooth.  There was essentially no sense of motion.  The scene outside seemed to be just passing by, as if we were watching a movie.  We slept well, and would wake up the next morning in Germany,