a smell grows in Brooklyn

We've been lucky enough to have a short break here at HAWSEPIPER's Afloat Global HQ/fitness center. To put the cherry on top of that, we are lying to at a lay berth in Brooklyn that has shore access, which means that little things like my daily walk aren't limited to a dizzying and soul-grating series of hours spent walking in circles to get my daily walk on. Instead I get to go ashore. Which I did. Morning and evening, I did a 5-mile circuit through Red Hook, Park Slope and Cobble Hill, past Project high-rises and $3 million brownstones in the same 2 hour walk. I managed to get 3 of these walks in in a little over 24 hours. Later this afternoon it's back to cargo ops, which is fine for me, as I'm bloody tired between the walks, being on a pretty strong calorie deficit, and the upper-body exercises which are shamefully kicking my ass roundly.  By next weekend I have high hopes for hitting the weight I had in my sophomore year in college.

The one observation I can share about Brooklyn is that regardless of whether I was passing through the 'hood or upper-upper class Brooklyn, the whole borough as I experienced it smelled the same. In the morning it smelled like hot garbage, that cloying, not-quite gag-inducing smell that makes you want to frown. In the evening it smelled of dog piss and shit, as the awful people here seem inclined to keep large dogs that belong on a fucking farm or in a rural area in apartments slightly larger than my bathroom at home.

 Seriously, as the sun goes down, the ammoniac smell of piss was pretty pervasive. I saw a lot of Great Danes, Bernese Mountain Dogs, grayhounds and Mastiffs.  Poor fucking dogs, living like that in an urban area. As a kid, we had a husky that would gnaw on the kitchen table if it stayed inside for more than 90 minutes.

        Still, in a life full of unpleasant smells (bunker fuel comes to mind, which is what we carry), trading the sulfur stink of heavy fuel for the smell of sad 120-lb dogs is a lateral move to me. At least I got to do some people watching.