April 27th 2014: Deep Sea Fishing in Hampton NH

My friends and I woke up really early this morning to head to Hampton NH, where we were to embark on an all day deep sea fishing trip with Al Gauron Deep Sea Fishing and Whale Watching. It was raining just a little this morning, but everyone thought nothing of it, excited at the prospect of catching big fish out in the ocean. I grabbed a Ham Egg and Cheese Sandwich from Al Gauron's Luncheonette along the way.

Our fishing boat, the White Star,

was moored in the Hampton Harbor,

and after everyone had got onto the boat and tied their rods to the side of the ship,

 we were off.

They had to pull up the bridge for us to pass through.

After passing under the bridge,

the boat sped up,

leaving the land far behind. That was when things started getting bad, as the seas were choppy and constantly rocked the boat. I thought I would be alright, and seemed so for quite a while while my other friend immediately started vomiting a few minutes into the wild ride. Unfortunately, at one point, the food I had eaten this morning at my friend's place suddenly decided to escape my stomach back into my mouth, and things went downhill from then on.


By the time the boat slowed down and buckets of squid bait were placed out beside the rods,

I had already thrown up almost everything left in my stomach, but it did not get any better. I struggled to do some fishing, hooking the squid to the line,

then putting the rod out to sea and controlling the descent of the weighted line into the water after releasing the catch, using a finger on the reel to control the descent. No need for casting like in lakeside fishing. After lowering the line, it was then time to wait for the fish to bite.

Unfortunately, I could only do this for about 10 minutes before I started vomiting again, and I gave up for the rest of the trip. My friend wasn't affected, thankfully, and he was able to catch 2 fish, one of which he had to throw back into the ocean because it wasn't big enough to be kept according to government regulations. The other people were more skilled at this, and all day long they kept catching all sorts of stuff, as the boat moved from spot to spot, like Mother-in-Law Fish (cabezon),

cod, which has a white lateral line,

haddock, which looks like cod except that it has a black lateral line instead,

and Acadian redfish, which have poisonous spines and must be handled carefully.

I was just relieved when we finally headed back for home, and the fishermen started cutting up their catch, especially the redfish.

Strangely, the boat ride back was much smoother, and eventually I got a little better, enough to take this picture of the rainbow as we arrived back at the harbor.

I was still a little woozy, but I managed to drive my friends back home, then headed home myself, too sick to do anything else for the rest of the day. All I can say is, deep sea fishing is definitely not for me. I don't know how I am going to fare in scuba diving in the coming weeks.

November 2nd 2013: Visiting the Rhode Island Comic-Con

Today, I had a Bronze Pass to go to the Rhode Island Comic Con, held at the Dunkin Donuts Convention Center in Providence RI. After arriving, I saw the line had already formed. Having a Bronze Pass, I thought I could bypass the line, heading all the way to the entrance past everyone else. As it turned out, the entrance for Bronze people was on the other side of the building, and I had to walk all the way back to get there. After signing in and getting my free poster,

I entered from the second floor, where the crowds were only starting to gather.

There were a few familiar vehicles on display in the outside area.

Inside the exhibition hall, there were several interesting things on display.

Of the many celebrities that were here, including the Power Rangers, the only one I could still recognise after so many years was Winston from the Ghostbusters.

It was also interesting to see a live crocodile and other reptiles inside the exhibition hall.

Other than that, the exhibition was a collection of vendors selling their wares and artists promoting their work, and of people in costumes milling around. I don't know why, but it doesn't quite appeal to me. With that, I headed back into Massachusetts, where I had a dinner with friends in Cambridge later. You can read more about it here.

October 14th 2013: Learning to Hang Glide in Charlestown, NH

Early this morning, I had an appointment to learn how to hang glide at Morningside Flight Park in Charlestown NH. It is at least 2 hours from where I live, so I had to get up really early to make it to the lesson on time. The scenery of the fall foliage along the way was awesome though.

I was really early, so the hillside where the lesson was to take place was still pretty void of gliders and people.

When the place finally opened up, I went inside the shop and waited for the lesson to start.

I had one other person learning to hang glide with me, and when he arrived, our instructor took us into the other room, where he taught us a little bit about the physics behind hang gliding, and the various components of a typical hang glider.

It was then time to take out our gliders and assemble them.

After unwrapping the cover encasing the glider,

the king post is first pushed up

before spreading open the wings on each side of the post and strapping the rigging wires to the top of the king post.

Taking out the battens which are of different sizes, one set being marked black and the other being white to signify which wing it is on,

the battens are then slit into slots on the wing

and strapped down to form its skeleton,

the longest one being the closest to the center, naturally.

The rigging wires are then secured to the keel.

With the gliders all set and ready to go, it is time to perform an inspection on the gliders to ensure there is no damage to it or potential for collapse during flight.

After ensuring that the probability of me dying during this experience was minimized, it was time to go get our helmets and harnesses.

Before putting the harness on, our instructor showed us what was the proper way to hold the glider on our shoulders,

and how to pick it up.

This I found pretty hard to do, especially getting the poles onto the right positions on my shoulders and balancing the glider properly.

Then came our first run flight on level ground, without being attached to the glider, where we start running with the glider to give it thrust with the glider being at ~12 degrees above the direction of the wind, keeping constant eye contact with our target destination, then we change our hold on the glider when we feel it start to fly, holding the bars close to our chest and continuing to run even though our feet might leave the ground, then finally push the bars away to slow down and land.

My first attempt went well enough, but I was so eager to go airborne that when I felt the glider lifting, I decided to lift my legs as well instead of continuing to run, so I got my jeans soiled instead.

After the first trial run, we put on the harnesses,

then strapped ourselves to the glider itself.

Besides repeating the first run, we also learnt how to change directions, by looking at our new destination and shifting our entire body in that direction.

After we were deemed to be successful, we moved slightly up the hill, and I managed to carry the glider all the way up.

From here on, it was practice run after practice run. On the last one, I managed to get at least 4 feet above the ground, so I guess that was pretty good for a first time. Apparently it takes tons of tries to finally go higher, when the instructors think that we are good and safe enough to progress to the next stage.

It was cool to see other hang gliders and paragliders in action today as well.

I definitely a long way to go to become this guy.

If you thought that was the end, you thought wrong. There always is the cleanup phase, which involves doing the reverse of assembling the glider.

After putting the gliders back in storage, it was time to call it a day. The day was still young for me though, so I decided to drive back to Massachusetts, and the rest of my Columbus Day can be found here.