Down to the Seas: Heavenly Bodies, Beaches, and Bikes

Today we learned about Celestial Navigation, or navigating by the stars. It's so neat to imagine sailors in the "days of yore" as our professor kept saying using only the horizon, and the 'heavenly bodies' to determine their longitude and latitude. Today it's so easy to just look at a GPS and not think about how your location is determined.

Anyway, I thought the lecture was appropriate given that most of C House woke up early this morning and biked or ran the 1.3 miles down to the beach on Nantucket Sound to watch the sunrise. I'd been watching the weather to see the next clear dawn (not as common as you would think) and today was it. I'll admit, I am not used to getting up before the sun, even though I did it all the time in high school, and it was chilly biking down to the beach, but it was so worth it. The beach was quiet with light waves, and it was amazing how accurate the online prediction for the sunrise was. At precisely 7:08 that big ball of fire came up over the horizon and proceeded to rise very quickly. We didn't talk that much as we watched the sun rise and a ferry cross the Sound from Woods Hole to Nantucket, and I'm glad we decided to do it.

I've been spending a lot of time at the beach or on a bike lately. Last night the moon was still pretty full, so I walked down to the Racing Beach with a couple other people to look at the stars and the moon. I rediscovered long exposure on my camera and the results were incredible I thought. The stars are clear here; I can't wait until we're in the middle of the ocean and there are no lights around to disrupt the light from the stars. After class today, Kaitlyn, Laura and I took bikes to the public library in Falmouth (and walked around wearing our helmets and work out clothes, completely out of place), a beautiful building. We intended to go to Coffee Obsession, then got distracted by the historic district of Falmouth and ended up at the library where we worked until it was dark. Finding our way back in the dark was quite the adventure, as I was the only one with a headlamp and we were all wearing dark colors and had to guess where the bike path was since we didn't feel comfortable taking the main road back. I think we stumbled onto an entirely new culture of night bike riding, passing 4 people on the bike path. There are some hardcore bikers in the area, though it's a bit unnerving riding past something when the only thing you can see is their light. Waiting for us when we got back, however, was hot soup and fresh bread and snickerdoodles after.

As Charles Darwin said about the Pacific: "It is necessary to sail over this great ocean to comprehend its immensity."