[HN Gopher] The Canoe Commuters of the CIA
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The Canoe Commuters of the CIA
Author : marymkearney
Score : 78 points
Date : 2023-04-27 12:16 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.mensjournal.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.mensjournal.com)
| jebarker wrote:
| This is cool to see. I used to run past that island all the time
| whilst doing long runs on the C&O canal trail. I noticed the
| little ferry and always assumed there was something of interest
| on the island itself. I also never realized I was far enough
| north from the city to be directly across the river from the CIA.
|
| On the CIA side of the river there's another trail (Potomac
| Heritage trail). I was always surprised that you could freely run
| in the woods there so close to the CIA but also that you could
| see no sign of their "campus" from the trail.
| samstave wrote:
| Is it a trail filled with tears?
| marymkearney wrote:
| Full disclosure, I lived on the island part-time for 10 years.
| There's a stationary rope affixed to the mainland and to a tree
| on the island. You get there (and back) by pulling the little
| ferry hand-over-hand along the rope. It was my commuter
| vehicle.
|
| There was a lot of unmediated information. :) Perhaps we passed
| each other on the trail.
| brunosan wrote:
| Down the river, right after DC its the Naval Research Laboratory,
| in front of Alexandria. I worked there, and some crazy folks from
| Alexandria sometimes crossed the river in canoes to the NRL
| pier... That got terminated after 911, so they had to bike or
| drive all the way up around DC and down through Anacostia Air
| Force Base. Quite a much longer commute.
| cafard wrote:
| When an aunt worked there, in the 1950s, there was a boat from
| National Airport or thereabouts for NRL employees from
| Virginia. The boat wasn't very nice. It was an open boat, and
| in rainy weather, a sheet of plywood served to shelter the
| commuters. They were always glad when the boat was out of
| service and an Air Force boat replaced it.
| ticos wrote:
| Reminds me of this guy
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-DLqc9Vplg
| 226_ebro_treaty wrote:
| Honestly, if I was that guy, I'd put a description of that
| commute on my resume/CV.
| RajT88 wrote:
| I am highly amused by this.
|
| I lived in downtown Chicago for a bit, and did indeed consider
| buying a folding kayak to commute to work, since I worked in the
| Merchandise Mart where there was river access across the street.
| ghaff wrote:
| I've owned/own folding kayaks. The problem is that they're
| really not all that quick to tear down or (especially) build
| up. IMO definitely not the sort of thing you want to do day-to-
| day. (The other issue is that these companies go out of
| business and it's hard to make significant repairs without
| parts.)
| dangerboysteve wrote:
| I had a chance to canoe to the office for 4 months. The place I
| was staying at was on the river and they owned canoes. I would
| pop out at the park, chain up the canoe, then a 3 minute walk to
| the office. Going to the office was downstream but going home was
| a workout at times.
| samstave wrote:
| Did you ever Canoe to work and then it started raining during
| the day and you had to Canoe home in the rain?
|
| Yeah, thats what biking to work daily for over a decade was
| like.
|
| LPT: Check your bike into a hotel baggage check with the
| bellhop, tip them $20 and they will protect your bike in their
| storage for at least a week, longer if you build a report with
| them.
|
| I used to lock my bikes up at various high-end hotels in SF.
|
| 1. The millenium tower : ring the guard button in the valet
| port coche and they buz you into the garage near the dumpsters
| and they have a bike-rack-tree to lock your bike to, and its
| behind cams and security doors.
|
| The intercontinental and the W hotel allow you to store your
| bike for a week. (make sure you tip well, and get the name of
| the host)
|
| sometimes you need a bit of social engineering when you arent
| staying at the hotel - like a good tip... but also its just
| being amenable and friendly, and you talk them up first and tip
| at the end of the convo....
|
| but you can do this with any large hotel, and so long as you
| tip well...
|
| So come in and say things like:
|
| " _I am in town for a conference, and only need to store this
| here a day or two_ "
|
| " _I am checking into the hotel later, but I have to go to an
| interview right now_ " (Tip this one good (($20)) as it will
| make him less likely to get upset if you dont return the same
| day.
|
| I have had so many bike components, and whole bikes stolen from
| me in SF, Santa Rosa, San Jose ubtil I learned this trick.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > going home was a workout at times
|
| Like going to the gym after work to relieve the stress of the
| day!
| ghaff wrote:
| It would have been utterly impractical given, as I recall, the
| distance was about 40 miles and would have involved a few
| portages around dams. (So probably more than 12 hours even at a
| pretty good clip.) But I live within about 1,000 feet of the
| (North Branch of the) Nashua River which joins the Merrimack
| River in Nashua NH and, for about 8 years, I had an office right
| in downtown Nashua.
| marymkearney wrote:
| This quote from the original article by Robert Sinclair, the CIA
| analyst, is one of the most profound things I've ever read.
|
| "What do I get out of all this? For a moment, I get to evade
| modern man's almost complete dependence on secondhand
| information....We have come to rely on what others tell us about
| the world beyond our narrow boxes.
|
| "The canoe commute does give me a first hand glimpse of what is
| going on beyond the various manmade containers I inhabit. I
| benefit from regular access to information that clearly is
| unmediated."
|
| PDF of original article embedded here: https://slate.com/human-
| interest/2014/09/history-of-the-cia-...
| Scubabear68 wrote:
| Agree on the quote. I love that our house is bounded on three
| sides by 100 acres of undeveloped wilderness in Western NJ. In
| a two minute walk I can get away from houses, see the mountain
| park across the valley, hear the coyotes and owls, maybe spot a
| fox. At night, the stars are bright because we have no street
| lights here.
|
| Humanity can intrude, but even that can be sounds from a bygone
| era, like the steam train blowing its whistle as it's leaving
| the New Hope station across the Delaware from us. There are few
| sounds more warming than a train whistle echoing off of
| valleys.
|
| By comparison it takes some getting used to driving into even
| moderate suburbs.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| I read that airports grate on people because there's an
| omnipresent chance of something occuring that's completely
| outside of their control, and that possibility is therefore
| always in their mind.
|
| Nature, for me, is the antithesis of that -- things move and
| happen in the physical rather than the potential. And that's
| relaxing!
| bombolo wrote:
| Ah yes plane crashes are out of control. While earthquakes
| instead are completely under control!
| xpe wrote:
| Undeveloped and protected? Or undeveloped only for now?
| ravi-delia wrote:
| Underutilized for the time being one assumes
| realce wrote:
| Obligatory paranoia quote
|
| "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when
| everything the American public believes is false." - William J.
| Casey, CIA Director
| dpflan wrote:
| Ah, so being outside in nature...
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| A friend of mine lived on one bank of the river and worked on the
| other bank a short distance away. She bought a kayak to commute
| with occasionally for fun.
| acheron wrote:
| Admiral Grace Hopper would talk about commuting by boat to Navy
| Yard, IIRC. Didn't know about this one.
| swalling wrote:
| The Silicon Valley version of this is the SF2G (San Francisco to
| Google) bike route. https://sf2g.com/
|
| Instead of riding miserable Caltrain or driving the 101, biking
| 40 miles with friends is an absolute pleasure, even if you have
| to start pre-dawn to get in the office on time.
| omnibrain wrote:
| Oh, this is fun. Not familiar with the area I tried to check it
| out via Apple Maps on my IPad Air (3rd Gen) with iOS 16.3.1 and
| as soon as I switched to the satellite view my Apple Maps App
| closed. :)
| ethanbond wrote:
| I spent some time in Basel, Switzerland recently where locals
| would travel via a lazy float down the Rhine. They'd tow along a
| floating "fish bag" which holds their clothes and equipment dry
| for the commute. Seems like a ridiculously pleasant way to start
| or end your day! I figure many cities in Europe do this, but I'm
| not sure I've seen it elsewhere.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| An enduring mystery: former CIA director William Colby's death in
| a canoe
|
| https://apnews.com/article/b383af025d66de91e4688caf602e7253
| decafninja wrote:
| Reminds me of the occasional stories about people commuting into
| Manhattan by canoe/rowboat/paddleboard because they're fed up
| with the poor public transportation.
|
| Something I've noticed more often these days is people commuting
| from New Jersey into Manhattan via electric scooter.
|
| This is done by first going to Fort Lee, crossing the George
| Washington Bridge, then down the Hudson bike path to wherever
| their office is. They say it's faster and less stressful than
| doing the traditional bus or train + subway commute. I believe
| them.
|
| There is also the financial benefit which is you get to avoid
| paying to cross the Hudson River, which is expensive whether you
| cross by car, bus, train, or ferry.
|
| Granted even before electric scooters became common, you could do
| this via traditional bicycle. But you'd arrive at the office all
| sweaty, and most people don't have the luxury of being able to
| shower at the office, not to mention rampant bike theft. Plus
| there is an abomination of a steep hill going up to the outbound
| George Washington on your way back home.
| samstave wrote:
| I lived on a boat in the SF marina for a year...
|
| There was a guy that would commute into SF via a MASSIVE zodiac
| with (4) 600-HP engines and would do ~80MPH across the bay from
| Saucalito to the ferry building. He had a full time boat pilot,
| who he paid ~$100K/year (I asked) and he would make it from
| saucalito to SF in ~15 minutes.
|
| He was a hedgie in FiDi...
|
| As someone who has made the GGB commute all the way down to
| Sunnyvale for a time... I was super jealous of the fact this
| guy had that luxury.
| urthor wrote:
| This is brilliant innovation. Minus the need to pay the
| pilot, surely you just diy.
| samstave wrote:
| Too much [re[ and tear-down, then re-prep etc...
|
| That guy probably made $100,000 in a day.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| When I lived in Philly, I first used the subway to get to work.
| But the commute became an oppressive reminder of daily
| inhumanity in the City of Brotherly Love. I had to make a
| change. So I tried biking to work, for two weeks. The next week
| I ordered an electric scooter. The scooter is smaller than a
| bike, more nimble, more portable. I would often overtake bikes
| on the flats, and it and moves up hills with ease. I carry it
| into the office and charge it at my desk. The ride to work and
| home is serene. Sometimes I stop along the water just to sit
| for a minute and enjoy some nature.
|
| Now I'm a remote worker. I have a mild nostalgia for the ride
| home... no nostalgia for the subway. But if my office was
| somewhere with seasons, and I could paddle to work, I'd work
| weekends.
| pge wrote:
| These guys were well known in the DC paddling community. Back
| then the Potomac also froze over regularly, so they couldn't
| commute year round by canoe (now you could). Security
| restrictions eventually stopped the practice.
| marymkearney wrote:
| The river did freeze solid in January 2018. Skating from MD to
| VA was a peak life experience for sure. And seeing a guy ride
| his bike down the middle of the river.
| cafard wrote:
| There was a solid free ca. 1982 also.
| hammock wrote:
| Sadly the Potomac River is not the cleanest place to be swimming
| anymore
| marymkearney wrote:
| Interestingly, there's an app for that now. Back in the day,
| the canoe commuters had to take their chances.
| https://www.potomacriverkeepernetwork.org/community-science-...
|
| The CIA's location upriver is non-tidal, so it's clean-ish
| compared to the tidal waters of DC proper. DC's 19th-century
| sanitary sewers overflow into the storm drains when it rains.
| Yes, this is as gross as it sounds. DC Water is working on it.
| https://www.dcwater.com/css
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| I was half expecting this to be related to the death of former
| CIA director William Colby, who was found dead in a marsh near
| his canoe in Maryland after a heart attack.
| marymkearney wrote:
| I'd forgotten this story. Apparently it spun up a lot of
| conspiracy stories and theories about not-natural causes.
| Thanks for flagging this, it's interesting.
| isaidthis wrote:
| Same here, having learned of the Colby story (conspiracy?)
| recently from a hacker news link posted about the 1996 PC game
| "Spycraft".
|
| https://www.filfre.net/2023/03/spycraft-the-great-game-part-...
| arminiusreturns wrote:
| "An attempt to hire former CIA director William Colby to lead a
| state of Nebraska investigation of the Franklin scandal failed
| in a legislative committee 4 to 3 vote. Instead, the committee
| appointed attorney Kirk Naylor as its chief investigator. A
| major figure involved in investigating Franklin told WMR that
| Naylor was the most incompetent person the committee could have
| found to lead the investigation. Colby was a Vietnam War
| colleague of Nebraska state Senator John De Camp, one of major
| investigators of the Franklin scandal. Colby reportedly was
| ready to expose the CIA's own involvement in the use of child
| prostitutes for the purposes of political and diplomatic
| blackmail. Colby died in a suspicious canoeing accident on the
| Chesapeake Bay on April 27, 1996."
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUxDbgGbm9w
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(page generated 2023-04-28 23:00 UTC)