Kayak 101

[andygates]

Went kayaking yesterday for the first time (falling out of Eddie Brown's family boat at age 12 doesn't count).  Things yours truly learned over four hours, or six miles, from Exeter Quay to the limekilns and the hulk of the Helsinki and back (via the Double Locks, twice, for revivification):

1. Those foamy sit-on rental boats really are unsinkable.  But they spin like drunken ballerinas in some weird dream where you can't hold them still enough to see their faces and then they have no faces and you wake up in a cold sweat...
   
2. Oh, you need to brace your feet?  That makes sense.
3. Nothing focuses skill development like a gruelling headwind.  The return leg was unreasonably muscular - like cycling up an hour's climb in the wrong, big gear.  Position, rhythm, body movement, all that stuff only really started to come into focus once making progress was difficult.  Necessity (getting the boats back before the shop closed; getting some damn nachos) is the mother of invention.
   
4. There is no Ballmer Peak without a skill base.  Halfway cider around a log fire is however very very nice.
5. The Fotherington-Thomas angle is great - waterbird nests, swan flybys, lovely.  Even lovelier, I suspect, on a waterway I don't already know so intimately from the paths.  Kayak to a deserted island for a barbie?  Yes.  Kayak for training or sport?  I'll pass, thanks.
   

I'm really sore today.  Can someone please massage me with warmed kittens?

Comments

[ravenbait.livejournal.com]

Not me.

I'm rediscovering DOMS.

That ab machnine was Eeeeeevil, I tell thee.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Yebbut isn't it nice to be able to feel every single ab and oblique insertion individually?

[ravenbait.livejournal.com]

Right now I'd have to say no.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

You didn't have to use it to failure, now, did you?

[ravenbait.livejournal.com]

Well, um, yeah.

Because it was Eeevil. And had to be punished.

I had to show it who's boss.

Only it punished me instead.

It am the boss of me.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Of courthe you realithe, thith meanth War.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Ribbed for my pleasure?

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Alas the latest rubbery, knobbly toy that took 2xAAs was the new GPS. At least it'll be able to record how far up my arse it vanished. :)

Oh! I saw a bunnysuited mascot with a t-shirt caption reading "Feel Furbulous!" in town yesterday. You weirdos are spreading...