Halfway Round Alameda in a Kayak

A week or so back I paddled halfway round Alameda, an island off the coast of Oakland.  People paddle all the way around the island occasionally, a trip of about 15 miles.  A complete circumnavigation is something that can be done in about four of five hours and is a good way to kill a Saturday when you figure in drive time to get to the launch point and a stop at a restaurant afterwards. 
I dont often do these kinds of paddles because they take up too much time.  Usually I drive the half mile to the boat ramp closest to my house and put the boat in the water for a short, less than an hour paddle.  The truth is that I dont much care for paddling any amount of distance.  Distance paddling is quite frankly boring.  It is like driving on the interstate across Nebraska.  Lovely, but unvarying views.  It can be done if one works oneself into a trance.  I much prefer playing around in waves, a little surfing, some rolling and just enough paddling to get warm.  Then back to the car.  But the bay has no surf, just short waves and when there are waves, there is also an unpleasant amount of wind.  Tribulation exceeds excitation.
The trick when trying to paddle somewhere solo is to get oneself locked into some sort of no-return situation where one has to finish the trip or might as well finish the trip when the temptation is to turn back after half an hour and go somewhere for a beer or a cup of coffee. 
This is how it was on this paddle.  My plan was to endure paddling for an hour and then turning back for a total time on the water of about two hours rather than doing the usual turn around after 20 minutes which would have me back at the boat ramp in under an hour. 

The view at the Grand Avenue boat ramp in Alameda.  The nose of my kayak is visible in the foreground. Beyond that, the estuary which in this region goes by the name of Oakland inner harbor. The white ship in the background is one of the coastguard cutters tied up to the pier on Coastguard Island.  To the left lies Oakland Middle Harbor and the Bay.

As it turned out, I was ready to turn back after half an hour of paddling but hung on and kept going down the estuary and in the general direction of San Francisco bay.

A nice purple boat house about two miles down the estuary.

Some more boat houses.  Jack London used to tie up the Snark somewhere around here before he took off for Hawaii.

The Snark on the estuary.

 Having paddled two miles, I would normally turn back without having wasted too much time and gotten some exercise and taken in some of the sights.  Unlike the scenery on land, the scenery on the water is always changing due to the mobile nature of the nautical bricabrac that floats in the water.

A tug tied up to a barge.  The big white thing behind it is one of the floating dry docks at Bay Ship.  Off to the right, the iconic cranes of Oaklands container port, images of which turn up on tee shirts.

The SF to Oakland ferry passing by a scrap metal carrier.  The soundtrack here is of big chunks of metal being dropped into the metal hold of the ship, creating much clanking.

 And here, in case you never read the country of origin labels on the stuff you buy is a picture of where your stuff comes from (China) and how it gets here (in containers) on top of a big ship.  Most of the ships are black (American President Lines) but sometimes also blue (Maersk). 
Returning to the journey, at this point I was about 45 minutes into the trip.  This would have been a good time to turn back.  I could have been back at the boat ramp in another 45 minutes and would not have done too much damage to the day.  Instead I kept going forward since I could see the channel marker at the end of the estuary, just another mile or so off.  Also, at this point I considered the option of paddling around the tip of the island over to where my shop is, taking the kayak out there and riding my bike home.  More paddling but I wouldnt have to look at all the same stuff I looked at going out.  And so I went.

I did it.  I paddled out into the bay and rounded the corner of the island.  Off to the left, newly installed steel pilings to prevent toxic trash from decades past from washing into the bay.  The VA intends to build a hospital here on top of the toxic soil so the deal is to bulldoze about six feet of untoxic soil over the top of the toxic soil and thats that.  When it rains, water moves in a downward direction so the toxins move down or sideways, but not up.  Anyway, thats what they claim and their lawyers approve.

The view west across the bay, about two miles distant the bay bridge and beyond that, the red lead primer painted Golden Gate Bridge. At water level, decommissioned warehouses where cargo used to be unloaded the old-fashioned way by longshoremen. Now the warehouses are home to restaurants and circus troupes.

The end is in sight.  The structure ahead is in line with one of the disused runways of the former Alameda Naval Airstation.  Runway lights were mounted atop this structure.  Now it is used mostly by aquatic birds.  Gulls, cormorants and on this day, one great blue heron. Visible in back and to the left, the Shop, where the aquatic portion of my journey ends.

So that was it.  For he last part of the journey I had the wind in my back, wind out of the north with me heading south, then for the last mile, the wind off my left flank as I headed east. 
Total mileage according to google maps, 7.6.  Elapsed time, roughly 2 hours.  After that, four miles home on my bicycle.
Since I dont get out in the kayak all that much, I was pleasantly exhausted, with my mind empty of thought, a wonderful state to be in, but came at the cost of spending two hours in a kayak. 

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Qaqamiiĝux̂ Traditional Foods and Recipes from the Aleutian and Pribilof Islands A Review

I got my copy of Qaqamiig?ux? in the mail the other day.  I was expecting a smaller book for some reason.  As it turned out, the book is hard bound and a full 8-1/2 x 11 inches in size and has 382 pages. 
The content is just what the title advertises, a description of traditional foods and how to prepare them.  Nutrition information on various foods is also provided along with safety tips. 
Contents are grouped by food type, marine mammals, fish, birds, caribou/reindeer, plants, tidal foods and other.
If you are not an Alaskan Native or a guest of Alaskan Natives, marine mammals will not be accessible to you, but all the other foods are available to the general public. 
If you were raised outside of Alaska, much of this food will look alien to you, but if you live in Alaska most of it will look familiar.
The book contains a good deal of historical information on how animals were hunted and caught, something that might be of interest to kayak builders given that one of the primary uses of kayaks was as a vessel to hunt and fish out of.
The book contains lots of photos both color and black and white of how the food is gathered and prepared and gives you a good sense of contemporary food culture in the Aleutians.
My only complaint about the book is that it is missing the customary picture of the author.

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Why I stay away from High Tech

The title is maybe just a little extreme.  I dont stay away from high tech entirely.  I have a telephone and a computer and I drive a car.  But when it comes to me creating my own technology, like kayaks, tents and paddles, I prefer low tech.
My main reason for preferring low tech is that it has a short supply chain.  That is, tools and materials needed to produce low tech goods are generally available in the immediate environment and do not require complex layered technologies to support them.
I generally prefer hand tools to power tools because they are not dependent on electricity or batteries.

When I make things for other people, like paddles for instance, I use power tools because they cut down the amount of time it takes to make them so that I can price them competitively.
On the other hand, when I make paddles for myself and have no urgency about completing them, I can use salvaged wood and do the carving with an ax and a draw knife, no sanding needed.
I have a sufficient supply of hand tools to last me the rest of my life, but should I need some new tool, I know enough blacksmiths to have them make it for me.
I sharpen my own planes and chisels and can make new bodies and handles for them as needed.
Saws are a little more difficult to maintain.  I do not have the tools to keep them sharp.  Perhaps I should.
So what is it that makes me want a short supply chain?  It is pessimism about the stability of supply chains I guess.  High tech goods follow fashion and dont have a very long life span.  As soon as you learn how to use a new high tech tool or material, it is replaced by a newer version and you have to learn all over, wasting time and assuring a consistently low grade product.  But never mind.  The high tech tool or product does not have to last.  It will be superseded by a new version making the thing you made obsolete before it breaks down.  No one should care that the thing you made them will only last three years as long as you bring out a new version every two years.
But I like things to work reliably for as long as possible and high tech is short lived.  Nor is high tech gear expected to work right.  I remember a tech rep doing something to a mass spectrometer in a lab that I was working on in school.  The professor whose spectrometer it was grumbled about reliability and the tech retorted,  "What do you expect?  Were pushing the state of the art here."
I guess I would prefer something to work at the cost of not pushing the state of the art.

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