TGR Films: Legend Has It

It’s that time of year again, winter is so close you can taste it. It’s time to go wax and sharpen your skis. Find your goggles, gloves and balaclavas. Dump last year’s dirt out of your boot bag. Check to see what needs to be replaced, what needs to be tossed in washing machine.

Legend Has It poster

And it’s time to get your head in the right space. It’s time to get stoked. The best way I can think of to do that is to show up at a ski movie. There are a handful of production companies out there making ski movies and doing theater tours. Not all of them make it to the New York area but Teton Gravity Research does.

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Safety Kayaking the Hudson River Swims

Early this summer, Ripitz reached out to me about the Newburgh to Beacon Swim. He was swimming to help raise money for The River Pool in Beacon. He asked if I’d be interested in volunteering as a kayak safety escort. I thought it was a cool idea so, once I’d checked that my schedule was open. “Where do I sign up?” Rip directed me to their website.

Long Dock Park
Long Dock Park

Before the day of the swim the organizers had a meeting which I joined via Zoom. They explained things thoroughly. Our job was to keep an eye on the swimmers, provide something for them to grab onto if they needed to rest and call in a jet ski or motorboat if somebody needed to come out of the water.

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Monksville Reservoir Kayaking

Monksville Reservoir in Ringwood NJ is right in my backyard, but I’d never heard of it until the other day. Somebody saw my kayak on top of my car and struck up a conversation on paddling. When we were done discussing what we liked about our boats, we shifted to where we paddle and he said he always goes to Monksville.

Monksville Reservoir boat launch

Huh, really, where is that? I punched it into Apple Maps and realized I’d driven over it many times on my way to Mountain Creek Ski area. It looked like an cool spot so I went ahead and pencilled it into my list of stuff to do on my week off. So I looked up the stats.

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