chesapeake
By anders pearson 03 Sep 2002
lani, me, and two of lani’s coworkers/roommates kim and yura, left DC friday afternoon. by dark we were at our campsite at jane’s island state park with out tents set up and a dinner fire started.
saturday morning we went into town and got some breakfast. then we wandered around, checked out “Meatland” and the docks. we also happened to be in the right place at the right time to catch some kind of parade. shriner’s in their mini cars, firetrucks, cheerleaders, the whole nine yards. we even saw “miss crustacean”.
went back to the park and tried our hands at crab fishing. apparently crabs are about the stupidest animals there are. to catch them, you just tie a chicken neck to a string, dip it in the water, wait for a crab to grab a hold of it and then pull them up into a waiting net. you don’t need hooks or traps; once they get a grip on the meat, they won’t let go. it sounds all too easy.
after about 2 minutes, lani and i had both pulled up crabs. they’re not kidding. it really is easy. unfortunately, they have to be over 5 1/4 inches. for the next hour or two, we caught dozens of small ones. eventually kim caught one that was 5 1/2 inches, battle-scarred and missing a claw. we ended up giving to some kids who were fishing next to us; one crab wasn’t really worth cooking.
we’d planned on staying till monday but on sunday it was raining and threatening to get even worse that night. so we packed up the tents and got ready to leave. naturally, as soon as the tents were down, the sun came out. so we put everything in the trunk, crabbed for a while longer and then went and rented some sea kayaks. lani and i never entirely figured out how to steer the two-person kayak, but we still had fun zig-zagging around the bay for a couple hours. afterwards, my arms felt like they were going to fall off, my hands were blistered and i had a sunburn on my nose.
went out to a local restaurant to finally get some crab since we hadn’t really been able to catch enough to eat ourselves. unfortunately, the restaurant we went to was out of whole crabs. so we had to settle for the “world’s best crabcake” and a pitcher of beer. slept in the back seat of the car for most of the ride home as it started really pouring.
when we got back to DC, lani took me out and showed me the <a href=”http://abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s663636.htm”>über vending machine</a>.
monday lani and i went to the Hirshhold gallery to check out some photography and the <a href=”http://www.artmolds.com/ali/halloffame/ron_muek.htm”>Ron Mueck</a> exhibit. then we walked to Vegetarian Soul Exodus for some vegan soul food. finally we met up with mark in dupont circle for some dessert.