Sunday, October 29, 2023
Allen and Benner Islands - Georges Harbor, Maine,image by Peter Ralston
Monday, October 16, 2023
Soundview private island home in Long Island Sound up for auction – NBC New York
It's got a getaway feel, though it's just a mile from New Rochelle's Glen Island Park. I have wondered about it from Pelham Bay Park's Hunter Island where we take the dogs to run on the salt marsh.
It's a little fortress, but as you can see - it's a rich man's getaway. Once listed for $13 million - it's now up for auction to the highest bidder. Could be a bargain.
Private island home in Long Island Sound up for auction – NBC New York
Monday, October 2, 2023
Cassius Takes the Helm
I've had Cassius on North River 2 since he was three months old - July 4, 2020! Sometimes he likes it, sometimes he wants to go on the "fast boat, not the sailboat". But I'm hopeful that yesterday was a turning point. He got to steer. Taking command increases confidence. A soft steady breeze after days of rain from a passing hurricane Ophelia.
With Taisy at his side Cassius rose to the occasion.
- GWC
Two kinds of people: the motion of a boat is like
being rocked in a cradle and those for whom it is NOT.
Sunday, October 1, 2023
Profile of Gunks Climbers Liza Mills - Climbing/Outside
So I usually post about adventures at sea. But these two - son and daughter in law of friends of Marilyn from tai chi - are sailors too. They circumnavigated in a 35 foot boat. We'd heard about that but only recently discovered their history as climbers. As parents of two, she climbs, the other doesn't - not anymore. Open ocean is low risk for this pair.
- GWC
Liza Mills has climbed 25 Grade V (or harder) walls, had epics with Lynn Hill, sailed across the world in a 35-foot sailboat, taught art in a city dubbed its state’s “murder capital,” and, at 48, still climbs 5.13. And she has big plans ahead.
Risk is fickle. As nice Jewish girls from Brooklyn know.
Ask Liza Mills.
On Mills’s second big wall she found herself partnering with Lynn Hill, a dear friend from the Gunks, who, after moving from New York to Yosemite, passed the mantle of top Gunks woman climber to Mills. Still, Mills recalls, “When we’d walk around Camp 4, climbers looked at me, like, Huh? Who’s that?”
“Meanwhile everyone knew Lynn. She was climbing’s rock star.”
Their route, El Cap’s West Face (VI 5.11c, 20 pitches), should have been a stroll for the duo. But as Mills knew from her childhood in Brooklyn: Risk is everywhere.
Example: Hydration backpacks.
Mills explains, “Neither of us had ever used one and couldn’t tell how much water was left in them. It was a super hot day and by the tenth pitch, to our horror, we ran out of water.”
Hill adds, “But with half the climb left, we had to keep going.”