Entry tags:
Kayak 101
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):
- 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...
- Oh, you need to brace your feet? That makes sense.
- 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.
- There is no Ballmer Peak without a skill base. Halfway cider around a log fire is however very very nice.
- 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.
