Yesterday [rowing]

Yesterday was utterly exhausting.

In the morning, the club's juniors program had a scrimmage up on the Mohawk River. That meant that coach Y couldn't coach the morning masters practice. We asked another coach if he could step in, but then he hit up against other scheduling pressures and couldn't make it, either. So I did the necessary. I know my teammates were grateful.



Then I came home, got warmed up, and headed back out again for the 10th annual Riverkeeper Sweep.

I figured I'd kayak out to tackle sites along the Rensselaer shore, since it seemed like there was a good number of people helping out along the bike path on the Albany side.

A number of people found a spot to slip under the fence and work on the enormous amounts of litter from the freeway that separates Albany from the river. The sign was one of their finds:



Motor vehicles are damaging in more ways than one.

From the other side of the river, we get a different view of the train bridge:



I like how there's one long vine holding onto the bottom of this fallen-down tree:



Three bags full of trash was about what I could manage, stamina-wise and load-wise:


That was a lot of bend-and-snap.





(The organizer kindly sent me these last two photos)

I had so many Thoughts while picking up the flotsam and jetsam. I can't tell you how many little pieces of styrofoam and how many beverage containers I picked up. I was reminded of that cleanup ages ago in college on the Malden River where all we could do was skim off the top layer of trash. Thankfully a huge number of caring people have continued to work on the Malden and it is transformed from what it looked like when Tufts first started rowing there. A part of me always feels like a one-day effort to pick up trash is so small compared to all of the forces that send pollution into the Hudson River and so many other bodies of water. And yet it's important to keep getting out there, whether as part of a public effort or something done quietly day in and day out.

Not a ton of fun finds, but I did find one sparkly pink slip-on sandal and a suit jacket (not pictured).

I also found a number of golfball-sized balls composed of some unknown substance. They were strange enough that I collected two inside of a glove to bring back and investigate further. But after I took the two photos of them I got grossed out and threw them away.





My best guess is that they are some sort of "fatberg" substance. I was thinking they could also have been clay but I don't know if clay behaves in this fashion. I didn't check their buoyancy, so I'm just not sure. But this section of the Hudson River still experiences combined sewer overflows, and I did pick up multiple plastic tampon applicators. It could also easily be some byproduct of an industrial process from a bygone era. One of those things where you both want to know what it is and kind of don't want to know what it is.

There was also a Ride Against Racism scheduled for Saturday along the bike path. Originally I had told my Bicycling students that I'd meet up with them at the Corning Preserve Boat Ramp for company if they wanted, for completing their bike ride homework assignment. But no students appeared. Instead, one of my colleagues happened by!



We posed for a photo op but then I just headed home because I was so exhausted from the long week.

Sunday Kitchen Things [food, mostly]

I made it over to the grocery co-op Saturday evening in spite of everything. For some reason I bought sorbet, gelato, raspberry cider, and rhubarb-apple soda. I guess being exhausted made me crave sweet, fruity things.

I also finally resolved a household issue. A couple of months ago, the grocery co-op stopped carrying my favorite kind of dish soap in bulk. I love this particular dish soap because it isn't diluted out to hell, and I think S has come to appreciate it as well. I really hate cleaning products and lotions that are diluted out with too much water so as to force consumers to buy more product. In any case, it was gone from the bulk section, replaced by some other kind of dish soap that is vexingly weak.

The thing is, you can't order the good dish soap online. It is only available through the businesses it is distributed to. Otherwise I totally would have gone that route.

But yesterday while at the co-op I happened to be wheeling my shopping cart down the right aisle and glanced down at just the right moment to discover that I CAN still buy my favorite dish soap, just in a 1-gallon jug now instead of in the bulk section.

It might seem silly, but it's little things like having the good dish soap that makes everyday life just that much better. This stuff is the best.



Even better, if we use up 6 jugs of this dish soap, we can send all 6 bottles back to the company and they'll reuse the bottles and reimburse us for shipping. Reuse > recycle.

That's only going to take like 12 years.

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Not nearly as much cooking this weekend for Meal Prep Sundays. I made muesli and Dad's buttermilk pancakes, with some rhubarb sauce to use up the rest of last year's rhubarb. I made another batch of peanut soba salad for lunch to use up the other half of the block of tofu. One of these days I should really just make massive batches of peanut sauce and freeze a bunch, except I haven't yet found a recipe that I love that much.

And then for dinner, I made some pretty darned delicious vegetarian mushroom gumbo. I found a recipe for a vegan mushroom gumbo that has a clever lazy efficient trick to it in that you make your roux in the oven instead of standing over the stove for hours and hours. That worked very well for me. A bag of frozen okra went in, along with a bag of frozen green beans, celery, onion, bell pepper, and a combination of a handful of crimini mushrooms plus dried shiitake plus some of the delectable Foraged and Found wild mushroom mix.

I still miss being part of a CSA and having a random assortment of vegetables that need to be used up every week.

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Only 3 lab reports graded so far. But at least I have started.