Looking at Cleveland in the Early Morning

Even though she is a better photographer than I could ever hope to be and subtly lets me know, I still like to go out in the early morning with my sister to capture moments when the sun is rising and the natives are stirring.

She is fussy about where we go and when. She is a morning person who loves the sunrise and its quiet drama. She knows the best times and has her favorite places in Cleveland, especially places to have lunch or dinner.

I love to see the sunrise when I am on the road driving through the night. After hours of driving in darkness, there is a special sound of the sun rising which is both comforting and envigorating.

Personally, I am a sunset person. Easier light and I've always loved the way the late afternoon light draws the heat from red brick buildings. You can tell the time by the color of the brick.

We had decided to go to see the tall ships which were in port downtown on this particular morning.

When we went to pull into the parking lot, the price had gone up to $10.00 for these particular days and she would have none of that.
'We don't pay $10.00 for parking for an hour!"
"I'll pay."
"No one pays! Let's move on."
And so we moved to higher ground. But the ships were cleverly docked so that one could only get a glimpse of why they were called tall ships.

While she was busy fussing with my digital Nikon - she was out of film and was using my other camera-
I wandered into the next garden, stopped in ay surprise I had not expected, took my one shot and left.

I did not stop to smell the lavender - it was not mine to smell that morning.

I have not forgiven myself for being so timid. There was time and it was quiet. But what more was there to say with the camera?

We stood side by side taking the same photos

No question, she had the better camera...which she kept on what
we call a permanent loan, not pleased when I borrowed it back one day. I did return it unused because it needed a battery charge, which was all I had time to do with it.

No matter, I was happy with what we could see
and fascinated that we could see so much.

Cleveland has so many vantage points from which to bear witness to the life that was and the life that is.

Thanks to the glaciers and the receeding of the lake eons ago, the series of ridges descending to Lake Erie offer many different heights from which to see the city and the lake. The man-made extensions into the lake provided more flat lake shore.

It is easier to see the one of the newer downtown loop transit stations from above. Part of the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority, you can take a rapid to the flats from here.
Albeit the east side of the river which has repeated a decline but you will get a feel for the city.

Freight trains were still traveling regularly and the AmTrak passes through from time to time but that railroad runs like a clock with a dying battery. Clevelanders who don't like flying and do want to get to somewhere's else have learned to have their drop-off remain for a few minutes in the event that they need to return home for a few hours due to a delayed arrival and even longer delayed departure.



So there we were just off the shoreway and looking at the buildings behind us as they rose magestically into what I called early morning fog and she called smog. And we looked across the shoreway and knew that we had some walking to do - perhaps we could see the ships from the lake side of the stadium. After a walk down the stairway
over the railroad overpass
under the freeway underpass,
we arrived at the new Cleveland Browns stadium.
This is one of the same paths that Browns fans take regularly, filled with enthusiasm and beer they make this trek with a similar hope to ours on the foggy morning. To achieve victory.

We walked around the stadium with the sure that we would suddenly see the tall ships.




To the west there are still warehouses and working cranes. As we rounded the curve, we saw the masts, only masts. We never did see anything more than masts.

But we did see something better, at least I thought so.
While my sister walked off in search of better photos
I kept snapping photos.

This is the soliary wind turbine.
Standing tall against the early morning moon as I saw it that morning.
The sky looked busier on the warm morning, the moon peeking through the overcast.
The vanes of the Vestas 225 moved slowly and steadily.
It was imposing although it is just a scale model shielded from the lake winds by the stadium.
So much wind in northeast Ohio, so much potential.

We returned to the car and moved on down the freeway.

Sailing Lake Erie through a Storm

In another lifetime I was a very young girl whose father had just bought an old mast-heavy sailboat because he needed to find his peace on the waters of Lake Eire.

The decision followed one unfulfilled many years earlier when he had decided to buy a motorcycle. Responding to an ad in The Cleveland Plain Dealer, he went to the owner's house where he was met at the front door by that gentleman unsteady on crutches and full leg cast. He said his hellos and a rapid goodby.

Buying the boat was easier but not without problems. He bought the boat and then learned that he had to move it immediately from its current berth because the seller needed the slip for his newer, sleeker boat in a matter of days.

My father located dock space at a yacht club a few miles away. Convenient for him to sail after work because it was so close. The next day - the last day - he took his 11 year old daughter with him to sail out of one harbor over the lake and into another.

It was not a day like this one. The Lake Erie waters were neither calm nor serene. It began as overcast but not stormy. We set the sails, cast off the moorings and left the security of the marina harbor.

As we sailed through the late afternoon, the skies darkened, the troughs became ever deeper. I could look up and make out the sky between the tops of the waved high above us.

We pitched onward, we had no port behind us. The seas became rougher and I wondered if the skipper was a madman.
"Dad, I'm scared."
"So am I" he replied.

All was right with the world at that moment. My father was not crazy. He knew as I felt that this was a dangerous passage but we were together in this crashing sea and we woult either ride it out or not. The fear disappated and we made out way through the interminable late afternoon storm.

Years later when my father sailed with the men and boys in the family, my husband, who once raced hydroplanes on the Miami River, returned from a sail with Dad to tell me a small detail of that stormy day if my childhood.

After they had tied off the boat, not the huge, top-heavy one but the Dragonfly, a norse racing boat which cut easily through Lake Erie , they went for a beer at the clubhouse. This is where the oldtimes sit in their chairs watching the skies, the lake and the boats navigating in and out of the harbor. These are the same old timers who sit at every yacht club and indeed were the very same ones who had seen us sailing in more than ten years earlier.

They told the guys to look at the sky. The same storm sky they had witnessed ten years before when dad had sailed in for the first time with his young daughter.

And they looked at the sky and at each other and headed back to the boat to take her out again so that first hand they could see the waterspouts.