Not long ago I received a letter from a sharp-eyed reader. He’d noticed a canister of HALT! clipped to my handlebars in a photo that I used to illustrate an earlier article. (NB The colored circles identify my bar-end shifters, not the HALT!)

He’d been carrying his HALT! in his handlebar bag, where it was all but impossible to grab hold of quickly when he needed it most. Now he figured he’d found a better way. He was right. And here it is:

The “HALT! Holder” was sold by online retailer Nashbar. It was a simple but effective design, keeping a canister of HALT! at the ready, within easy reach, yet clasping it firmly enough to hold it in place on the roughest of rough roads. It was also dirt cheap. But… You’ll have noticed that I used the past tense. That’s because it’s no longer available. Not at Nashbar. Not anywhere. An online search yielded plenty of glowing reviews, but not one seller. And that’s what I had to tell my reader.

The moral of the story? Modern marketing places little value on product longevity. So if you find something that works, and if the price isn’t prohibitive, buy a couple more than you need—just in case. And if you own a HALT! Holder, guard it with your life. You won’t be able to replace it if you lose it.

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Only two weeks ago I was shooting photos as wet snow fell and clung to every surface. Now spring has arrived, ushered in by line squalls, thunderstorms, and summertime heat. I’ve yet to see any wildflowers or butterflies, but Contributing Photographer Pat McKay has seen both during his travels through the Delmarva Peninsula. If you look carefully at his photo of a swallowtail butterfly, you can even see a yellow haze of pollen on the leaf:

And here’s a pink lady’s-slipper that Pat spied earlier in the week:

 
Spring! It’s always good to watch the land come to life again. Thanks, Pat, for giving us two great portraits of the season.

Right-click on any photo to see an enlargement in a new window.

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A small group of Pacific islanders pushes a canoe off the beach and points the bow toward the open ocean. Their destination? A land beyond the horizon, a tiny speck in the vast sea, known only from ancient tales retold by village elders. Now picture the islanders’ craft in your mind’s eye. Big by the standards of modern recreational canoes, it’s all but lost in the wild immensity of wave and wind, a narrow dart launched at an invisible target, guided to its eventual landfall by the steersman’s knowledge of stars and swells and seabirds. Nothing else. No GPS. No compass. Not even a chart.

And then there is the sea itself. Dead calm one day. Blowing a gale the next, with waves taller than the hills of the boat crew’s island home, marching in serried ranks across a boundless waste of water. How can any canoe survive in such a sea? How, indeed? Few modern paddlers would brave the open ocean in a canoe. Conscious of the ease with which a single dumping wave can swamp even a well‑designed boat, we cross big lakes with trepidation, knowing that PFDs and float bags can go only so far in keeping us from harm. A canoe is a long, lean, round‑bottomed (more or less) craft. That makes it fast and agile, to be sure, but these virtues come at a cost. Canoes are not textbook examples of form stability.

So just how did early islanders in open canoes survive thousand‑mile treks across the somewhat ill‑named Pacific Ocean? Part of the answer can be found in one word: Outriggers…Read more…

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