Frisket of Main Street

Please explain fireworks on 28 July

So, I'm walking Frisket on the promenade tonight when suddenly over the wilderness that is New Jersey, fireworks erupt.

What on earth are they doing shooting fireworks on the 28th of July?

Celebrating the 1945 collision of a B-25 into the Empire State Building?

The birthday of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis?

The 1976 earthquake in China (which Lisa's mother just happened to be present for)?

Why on earth were there fireworks tonight (understand that these cause Frisket to go into "the world is ending" mode and practically drag me home).

Frisket's Tidal Wave Adventure

So, this morning, I decided to take Frisket for a longer walk. I'd been walking her a block or so (sometimes a bit farther to Relish for breakie), and then turning her loose on the tidal flats. I checked the tide chart for today, the 23^rd, and decided it'd be a nice morning to try to walk out to Long Point.

Long Point is basically the tail end of Cape Cod, it arcs about two miles from the mainland back South-Southeast and protects the harbor. For about fifty years in the 1800s there was a separate community on Long Point. Starting in 1850 members of the community moved their homes and buildings across the harbor to Provincetown, with many ending up in the western end of Provincetown. These buildings now have a small enamel plaque identifying them as Long Point buildings.

So, we headed out. I admit I didn't really plan this too well, for starters I only brought a couple of bags, and didn't bring any water or a real camera. But, it was supposed to be a quick jaunt, there and back again so to speak.

So, we head out on the breakwater or seawall, whatever it's called, which is at the western end of Provincetown bay. This thing isn't exactly designed to be walked on, if anything it's outright hostile.

But we persevered and walked the mile out to Long Point.

I let Frisket frolic a bit and then decided to head back, across the bay, since the tide would be coming in soon and I didn't want it to get too high for her, let alone me.

We head out, and I notice something odd: the water was already quite high. Now, by high I mean six inches, but that's almost as high as Frisket's legs.

We continue walking. I take off my sandals because they're acting like flippers and making it much more difficult to walk than I'd like.

The water continues to rise. Frisket...she's not quite swimming yet, but the water is up to her chest, slowing her down. I look around and get an ever so subtle panic attack: the water is rising much faster than I expected, given that I've been here the full week and thought I had a good sense of how much time we'd have.

I look around and decide that walking across the bay isn't going to fly so to speak. Frisket keeps looking back at me with a sort of What the hell did you get us into? look. I decide to cut West, about 1500 feet back to the breakwater.

We start out, but I quickly am in intense pain. This part of the bay has many, many shells. Not so good for barefoot walking. So I try to put my sandals back on, without dropping my phone in the water.

We hit a patch of dry sand but it disappears pretty quickly. Just enough time for Frisket to do her standard roll-in-the-sand thing. She also takes advantage of this brief pitch of dry sand to, ahem, do her thing. Again.

We continue West and reach the breakwater. Now, I mentioned this thing is sort of hostile. It's composed of very large granite blocks, about 8-10 ft long by 3-4 feet on the sides. They're sort of organized into a 20–30 foot heap with some attempt at flat sides along the top.

It's not designed to be climbed, especially by a now-not-so-perky Golden Retriever and her pudgy, sandal-footed, dad.

So, I gauge the rocks and pick out a nice approach. It's not quite the south face of Everest, but it wasn't exactly easy either.

Frisket initially didn't believe what I was trying to get her to do and jumped off the first rock a couple of times before being coaxed to stay on the rock long enough for me to jump up next to her.

After a slow, methodical placement of our six feet, we managed to get back on top of the breakwater. We still had about half a mile of walking to do on the breakwater to get back to land, but at least we weren't out in the bay.

The bay had filled up, where we had turned towards the breakwater was now about a foot under water. Frisket can swim in that, but not for a mile. I checked my phone to see what time it was, it was barely after 9:00. We should have had more time.

We got back to the room at Labrador Landing and I checked the tide chart again.

Sure enough, low tide was around 6:30 a.m., not 7:30 as I'd thought. Of course, it is set for 7:17 a.m. on July 23^rd, which would have been fine if today was the 23^rd and not the 22^nd.

So, in the end we got a good walk (2+ miles), a brief scare, and a huge excuse for a couple of delicious cupcakes from Relish.

The photos I took are also available on flickr.

Cross-posted from ed costello: comments & links.

Splash!

Splash!
Originally uploaded by epc.

Frisket, Coco and Boo's excellent weekend

We spent the past weekend in Amagansett, NY. Lisa's brother Oliver brought Boo, his 120+ pound Rottweiler out for the weekend. Boo has been sick and is getting chemo, but did get to play with Coco and Frisket. Here's some of the pictures I took:

Frisket takes a breather after a full day of scamper

Boo

The dogs go for a scamper in the yard, Lisa stays clear of the impending collision

Coco appears to be airborne, she does that a lot. Taken in Amagansett, NY

There's more pictures on my flickr account.

Dog Camoflage

I posted this at my personal site in May but thought it more appropriate here: Ask E.T.: Dog camouflage: Whose hermeneutic shall prevail?. Tufte is a reknowned document/communication/graphic designer, his dissection of the 2003 Columbia Powerpoint slides is well worth a read if you have anything to do with presnetations (either as a producer or consumer of them).

Woooo...mmm, frozen beef heart

I was bad and didn't post any further pictures here from the week in Amagansett. I did post further on the flickr site, mostly more beach pictures.

Frisket spent the day Tuesday at Monstermutt while Lisa and I spent the day in Orlando, FL. I believe that Frisket had 100% more fun than we did.

Frisket received a special prezzie tonight from echoid Ben, a perhaps eight-ten pound frozen beef heart (brief story: a number of echoids banded together to get a couple of sides of beef, we didn't participate ourselves). Now I need to find out just how one prepares beef heart for a dog, assuming it is edible.

Frisket is getting visitors this weekend, first Alex, followed by my friends Deb & Art. Deb was my housemate at Allegheny and also served as one of my groomspersons at the wedding (I was an usher at their wedding in the early 1990s).