Today's sky report

I have a two-parter today - a report from the eminently successful Blog 'n Brew and a short report from my ride home from that event. First the Blog 'n Brew: Once again, Blogmaster Kreblog corralled a bunch of us eCoast bloggers to meet face to face. While this may seem contrary to the general anonymity of blogging, it works real well. You see, bloggers are people who have a need to express themselves, which makes for great barroom conversation - lots of witty thoughts, overlapping, meandering, opinionated, personal, and just plain funny. Anywho, some of the same suspects were there from our last BnB, including:

Contagious
Granite Rants
Mrs. “I promised I’d blog but I haven’t” Rants

Missing in action was Seacoast Perspective who claimed it was his wedding anniversary but interestingly, hasn’t updated his blog in almost a month. I think he was scared to come. During the course of the evening, he was compared to other famous no-shows such as Snuffleupagus and Weapons of Mass Destruction. And joining us for the first time (for a B’nB) were:

4 Kids, Mom, and Dad
Lnotes
You Who?

After our last B’nB, I handed out a few awards in the post that followed (Prior B'nB Awards). Contagious, jonesing for recognition, asked that she receive another award after this B’nB. In fact, she had a specific request (my award). So here we go with this month’s awards (drum roll):

Best use of too much information (what a surprise) – Contagious
Most blog groupies - 4 Kids
Most broken blog promises – Mrs. Rants
Oldest last post – Lnotes
Best grasp of local music scene 10 years ago – Granite Rants
Most likely to over contribute for chicken and beer – You Who

And a special Blogger’s Appreciation Award goes to Kreblog, who not only hosts the event but who is also instrumental in helping many of us with our techie blog questions.

And now the ride home. I had taken two wheels to Blog ‘n Brew, looking to beat the heat of the day with a cool ride home. Leaving Paddy’s, I did my usual pre-ride fiddling and diddling around: unlock your gear, insert earplugs, put on helmet, put on glasses, put on jacket, zip tank bag closed, open zippers on jacket and so forth. It wasn’t until I got underway that I finally looked up and saw, A REALLY BIG AND ORANGE FULL MOON. Right then, I knew the ride home would be nice. I threaded my way around the edges of Portsmouth to Rt. 1A. As I headed east, the big moon was in my face and acting like a spotlight – it was bright enough that the scenery coming at me was darkened by the backlight. As I shot past Odiorne State Park, the trees and buildings cleared and I was left with the flooded salt marsh on one side (tide was in) and the ocean on the other. The moon created pools of light on both surfaces. It was easy to see where the phrase “moon river” originates when there’s a wide swath of moonlight streaming across the calm ocean to the beach in front of you.

Because it was summer, I was expecting a bit of traffic on 1A. Not to disappoint me, there were several cars just poking along enjoying the moon and the sea. With precious few passing lanes, I was unable to enjoy the costal curves as you can do in the fall or winter, but the relaxed pace suited the mood of the evening. I turned off the coast at the 101 junction at Hampton Beach and headed to Exeter.

I had expected the temperature by the beach to be significantly cooler. As I traversed the narrow lane of land between the marshes and the ocean, the temperature did cool off some, but it didn’t plunge as I had hoped. Not until I reached the exit by my home did the night air actually begin to feel cool. Thus chilled from the ongoing heat wave, I was able to sleep better.