now that fall is here, dogs are once again allowed on local beaches. my sister was taking hailey to wingaersheek in gloucester and asked if i wanted to join them on another unusually warm november day. my mother was still home when i showed up in belmont in the late morning. she finally finished knitting her koolhaas hat. it was difficult enough that she wanted to keep it for herself, although if she ever wanted to knit another one it'd be much easier now that she's got her practice.

i had my key fob camera and tried to attach it to the top of hailey's head with some velcro straps. she was having none of it though, and pulled it off immediately with her paws. so much for my dog cam idea.

it took more than an hour of driving to get to wingaersheek beach on the north shore. since it was the off-season, there was parking only by entrance gate, requiring a short walk across the empty sandy cracked asphalt parking lot to get the beach itself. the small lot was nearly full (about a dozen cars), not too surprising given the beach friendly weather (60°+). all the people there were either parents with young children or pet owners with their dogs (some would say they're one and the same).

wingaersheek is the beach my sister always goes to when she feels that hailey needs a dose of sand and ocean. i've come with them twice, once when it was high tide and there wasn't much of a beach to visit (lesson learned, always check the tide charts), and another time when there weren't too many birds for hailey to chase. come during the off season and the beach is free.

we arrived around 2:30, with only about 2 hours of daylight before sunset. low tide was at 3:30 so the water level was already pretty low. there was also plenty of seagulls for hailey to chase. someone there seemed to be less dunes than i remembered; my sister said the recent hurricane swept most of them away.

hailey ran around at first. occasionally she'd attract the attention of other dogs but she'd always ignore them. later she started chasing the birds, and when she couldn't catch them, started chasing after the feathers blowing on the beach (and eating them too). my sister also entertained hailey by kicking the ocean so she could catch the splashes.

we left around 4:00. there was still plenty of people showing up, which was surprising, since there was only about another half hour of daylight left. driving back in a southwestern direction, the setting sun was right in our eyes, blinding us on more than one occasion.

it took an hour to get back and by then i was carsick with a mild headache. opening the windows helped a little bit, also keeping my head tilted. my father was home and cooked up some chicken wings and pan-fried dumplings. i ate some before i rode my motorcycle back to cambridge. the cool air helped to get rid of my headache. in the sky was the full moon next to starry jupiter.

marco came home around 8:00 right when i was preparing dinner, yesterday's leftover chicken salad. he went out for a run before coming back and heating up some leftover pasta for dinner. i learned some more about his research, something to do with magnetoresistance, which can potentially be used in magnetoresistive random access memory technology.

i finally ordered the replacement 7-speed shimano freewheel for my bike along with the freewheel removal tool. in order to pad the purchase to $25+ so i could get free amazon.com shipping, i bought a large thermos bottle, a 40 oz. stainless king ($20 on sale). this will replacing the dunkin' donut glass vacuum insulated thermos bottle i'm currently using. i found out today that that bottle only holds 26 oz. (i thought it was at least 32 oz.), which isn't enough to twice refill my normal 16 oz. contigo insulated drinking bottle. 40 oz. is a better size, and dimension-wise it isn't any bigger than the donkin' donut bottle. 40 oz. is also perfect for my electric kettle, which can heat up 50 oz.