Adventures in Learning

Remember my comments about how my sister is one of those people who researches everything thouroughly? She is also a big fan on learning from a pro.

So off we go to Maine for a weekend of camping and kayaking with the author of "The complete Sea Kayaker's Hanbook" Shelley Johnson and a gang of women sponsored by Wild Women Outfitters. Beautiful campground and a group of relative newbies to the sport of kayaking, perfect!

We spend the first day setting up camp, going over the itinerary, hauling our gear and having it checked for safety and generally getting acquainted. We retire to our tents to get a very early start.

I find out my sister snores.

Or maybe it was me.

After a quick breakfast and some last minute instructions, we climb into our wetsuits and follow instructions to move out into a cove to practice a number of drills including the most important...rolling.

Now if you're an avid watcher of extreme sports, you've witnessed those rolls in incredible conditions as some wild person flies through the narrow chasm with pounding waves and huge rocks and comes up laughing with exileration. So how hard can it be to do it in a protected cove with gently lapping waves with a bunch of adventursome women to keep you safe?

When being given instructions by a professional on how to save my life, all my smart aleck nature goes into hibernation and I am completely attentive. I listen, understand and prepare to do as instructed: in my kayak with spray skirt attached I am to list to the side until my kayak rolls over and I am upside down in the water. I am then to lean forward "hugging" the boat bottom and striking it so those I am kayaking with will hear the noise and know I am underwater. This same movement will release me from the seat and I will then swim up to the surface. (Please note: this is my recollection, do NOT attempt without professional instruction...or at least keep reading so you understand this cautionary statement!!)

OK. I've watched several of my fellow classmates roll and come up the side and learn to reenter their boat. One of the coaches floats along side and asks if I'm ready to go...you bet! So over I go. I'm not sure what happened between the fun feeling of rolling over and opening my eyes in the cold murky water but I realize I haven't fallen out and I push back in my seat to try and release myself. I'm stuck in the seat. I shove back again and feel a searing pain in my finger...I then realize my ring finger is caught in the rigging. Real panic sets in and I gasp. Bad, bad move when you are underwater.

Somewhere in my head a loud voice yelled (over the one saying ohmygodi'mgoingtodrown), stop and think. I stopped shoving myself backwards and leaned forward to hit the bottom with the hand I could get free. My body drops out of the kayak and I come to the surface coughing and gaging water. The horrifed faces of my sister and the newly certified coach greet me. When I stop choaking and reassure them I will live (if the humiliation doesn't do me in) I get my hand untangled from the rigging....I still to this day, do not have any idea how that was even possible.

I hear all about "the hand of God" which is what was getting ready to happen when I didn't surface immediately....the coach would have reached below the boat and dragged me up. I manage to climb into my kayak and try to calm myself. My sister and I exchange reassuring comments and wisecracks to break the tension. Because she and I know what's coming.

Sure enough, Shelley drifts up along side and asks how I'm doing. "You know you have to do it again, right?" I do.... in my logical mind... but I now, for the first time in my water loving, always swimming life, understand why some people are afraid of the water.

I feel my heart racing and feel fear of the water myself for the first time in 47 years. I hear her calm voice reassuring me. I really want to cry and get out of the boat but I know if I don't, I'll never get it in again. I know my sister is somewhere nearby but all I can see is Shelly's hull and mine. I get ready and freeze. I look up and and see a face of calm understanding. "You'll be fine. I'm right here". She has me talk through the sequence again. And waits for me to make that decision.

I take a breath. I roll over. I'm underwater and I think, ok, lean forward, smack the hull and as I do so I feel my butt drop out of the seat, the spray skirt releases and I come up along side my boat. And now I do cry. I did it. We go on with the lessons of the day.

Shopping with my Sister

Now most people go shopping in a mall. But my two sisters are jocks with a capital J (so I should have written in that way I guess)....I, of course, represent the couch potato contingent.

So after an exicited phone call from sister #2 (aka Lisa) I joined her in NH to shop for a kayak.

And all the stuff you need to venture out in one....life jacket, paddle, harness, safety light, whistle, dry bag, compass, sponge, paddle float, sprayskirt, spare paddle, rescue sling.

I'm starting to notice a scary theme in the add ons.....hey, I'm just planning on floating down the river! Doesn't all this stuff sound like something bad could happen? Well, lets get the kayak first and worry about the reality stuff later!

That should be easy. Pick out a color and I'm good, right? Hear a buzzer sound here?

Pick one from each section of the following limited list and design my kayak:

1. single or double: single

2. fiberglass or plastic: (I loved the salepersons explanation when I asked which was better...."well if you hit a bridge abutment, the plastic will bounce back better"). Am I setting myself up here? Plastic it is. (and really that is my interpretive listening making it simple...its really composite and a host of alternatives and polyethylene aka plastic which was my choice)

3. How long? the number of absurd answers that pop into my head suggest I ask for suggestions and guidance. I'm sorry I ask....there are 2 kinds of length: length overall and length at waterline (LWL...laugh with lunacy). Why do I care?

"kayaks with longer waterline lengths will track better and be potentially faster or more efficient as they move through the water" from "the Complete Sea Kayaker's Handbook" by Shelley Johnson.

Can I have the one that won't fall over and drown me? Short with a flat bottom hull.

4. hatches and bulkheads? ok, sure, why not...how many does it sleep? (one in the front, one in the back, my sister instructs the owner and rolls her eyes at me.) For my edification she notes that I will be storing my dry bag and spare paddle in these compartments.

SIDE NOTE ON SISTER: I shop this way....need item A...hate to shop....find first close replica of item A...buy it....return home to good book or doggies.

Sister shops this way....need item A...research endless variations of item A....compare products....stability curves and hydrostatic measurements understood and analyzed...educate self in all aspects of product....compare prices...buy it...return home and continue reading on subject.

Do we really have the same parents??

5. Take each final option out on water in harbor and make final decision. ok, this is the fun part. I paddle 6 boats (yes, my sister insisted) and pick the blue version of the red one she's already ordered.

Hey she did the research!

Just a wish

For many years as I drove over southern Massachusetts as a real estate appraiser, I'd cross over a meandering river. The dichotomy of that peaceful scene with the rush of traffic on Route 3 made me promise myself that someday I’d be on the water instead of the road.

Fast forward through many months and years of life moving on, still making that vague promise, to a phone call from my sister. She’d bought a kayak. Hmmmm…maybe that would work where the canoe didn’t.

My husband had bought me a canoe for Christmas to replace the old one destroyed in a winter storm. (note to self….do not store a fiberglass canoe under the following conditions:
Hanging on supports
Beneath the steeply sloped roof of a garage
In New England
During the winter.
In a record snowfall year.)

Like many fantasies realized (if we had a canoe, we’d camp more, we’d take long adventures blahblahblah), reality sticks in it’s ugly head and shows you why you should evaluate your personality.

Our first time out with our beautiful, 17 foot Pensobscot canoe (that I’d begged for) we couldn’t work out our strokes, we couldn’t resolve who should steer on which side, we nearly flipped over said canoe and as husband can’t swim hysterical wife retreated further into crazy behavior. We hadn’t checked the weather and its was extremely windy making the return of the “we’re never doing that again” canoe to the roof another lesson in personality differences in a marriage. OK, no canoe.

But a kayak! One person. No arguments. Off to NH!