Brian Ulmer’s Web Site

Sailing lessons

This past weekend, I took sailing lessons along with Jason and Melissa, at Belle Haven Marina. We learned on a Flying Scot, which is a 19 foot boat that’s very stable and pretty easy to sail. After about 10 hours of class, I’m now certified to sail the wild Potomac now! Check out this video of Jason and Melissa “jibing”.

Hiking, Kayaking, and Cave Tourism

I returned today from a 3-day weekend adventure. I took Friday off work and headed to Massanutten with some friends on a trip we’ve been planning for a while now. We rented a house at the resort and left early Saturday morning to do a hiking and kayaking trip.

The hike started in Bentonville, VA and took us up Massanutten Mountain and south on the Massanutten trail, then back down to the Shenandoah River where we met up with our boats and kayaked and canoed back the the outfitters where we started the hike. It was a beautiful day and we ended up hiking about 10 miles and kayaking 12. The river is pretty much completely flat water and the most treacherous part was trying not to get stuck on shallow rocks.

Today, we had a more leisurely morning, packed up, and then visited Skyline Caverns on the way home.

Here are lots of pics from the hiking/kayaking and the caverns.

Roundtop Vertical Trek

Yesterday, I went with a group of friends to do the Vertical Trek at Roundtop ski resort. They have an assortment of summertime activities set up there, including a smaller adventure course, bumper boats, and OGO balls. The OGO balls are giant hamster-style balls you can roll down a hill inside of. We watched a couple people go down and then realized we had run out of entertainment and still had 2 hours before our time on the Vertical Trek course.

So, we headed off to a nearby park in search of some trails to explore. We hiked for about an hour and came across a nice vine to swing on, then returned to Roundtop.

After a short ski lift ride, we set out on a series of zip lines, cable and net bridges, and short hiking sections back down the mountain. In all, we probably did 10 segments of ziplining. Our guides were a lot of fun and we only occasionally rammed into them at full speed… Lots of pics here and video below.

Independence Day

I just finished up a great 4th of July. I spent the morning running errands and preparing for the festivities, attended two cookouts in the afternoon, and then did some kayaking on the Potomac to watch the DC fireworks. We ended up with a group of nine. Five kayaks and one rowboat/cooler barge. We had a nice picnic dinner on the dock at Jack’s Boathouse and then headed out for around three hours on the water. We managed to float pretty far down stream so the trip back was a haul. It was a fantastic way to watch the fireworks and will hopefully become an annual event. I got a bunch of pics you can see here.

Classic Arlington Wednesday

Work, three-course wine bar lunch, Starbucks, work, Eastern Mountain Sports storewide sale, upscale local restaurant happy hour, Whole Foods in the rain. Just a typical Wednesday in Shangri-La…