Christmas Day Bird Rescue

With the winds a bit high, and two fairly inexperienced paddlers, we changed the venue from Rattlesnake Key to Shell Island.  Here are Cherie, Donna, and Lisa who accompanied me this day.

We had a quiet and nice paddle to Shell Island and plenty of time for a long stroll on the beach.

However, on the way back up the beach we found a bird fouled in some fishing line.  Its beak was wrapped shut, and wrapped to his neck and his legs, which were wrapped quite well along with his wings.  So we captured the bird, got the scissors from our first aid kit and set about freeing the critter.  Here are the photos as taken by Cherie.  (Mighty nice photo work during anxious times and with someone elses camera.)

We try to keep a soft bag around his head to keep him calm while Donna cuts away lots of wrapped fishing line.

 

Donna is gradually cutting the line away from both legs.

 

You can see the line wrapped in and around its beak.

Then Lisa handled the pincers while Donna worked the scissors and I tried not to strangle the struggling bird.

We are getting close, but still have to cut line from around both wings.

Then we give thanks for seeing the bird in its great distress and having tools with us to help.

And leave our new avian friend to recuperate and fly away.

Cherie selected this as a wonderful way to have a non-traditional Christmas.  All five of us ended up with a wonderful non-traditional experience.

US National Whitewater Center Adventure

This place is interesting.

Last weekend, my son, David, and I went to Charlotte, NC, to play at the USNWC.  We checked out all the ways to play and then scouted the kayak layout, the whole 0.8 mile circumference.  (Not very big.) We noticed the eddies along the concrete shoreline were pretty powerful, with fairly quick upstream current.  And, we noticed the hole at the bottom of  the largest drop on the more difficult route (pictured above), which was near the bottom of that route.  And, we thought, interesting.  Let's go play.

The USNWC is a great playground.  You can mountain bike, climb walls, ride down a 1200 foot zip line, ride the white water in a rubber raft, and kayak if you have your own equipment.  They have various pricing alternatives, to fit what you want to do.  If you bring your own bike, and do nothing else, the cost is only the $5.00 parking fee per vehicle.  If you have your own kayak and want to do everything, the cost is $69 per person, plus the parking fee. 

I awakened that day a bit under the weather.  No, quite a bit under the weather.  But after the long drive, I was going anyway.  By the time they opened the white water, we chose to paddle first, and later decide what else we wanted to do.  We only kayaked.

Upon checking in, they warned us about the center having "powerful" eddies.  Since we had noticed them when we scouted we thought we understood.  We did not fully understand. 

There are 2 primary routes, easier on the left, and harder on the right.  Along the left you also have a choice of a short detour that is a bit tougher.

We decided to progress from the easiest to the hardest in the first 3 runs.  The first run was mostly uneventful.  However, being under the weather, I felt very tippy and uneasy.  Okay, I chose to deal with it, and go on.

On the 2nd trip we decided to take the short detour that was a bit harder.  I led and went through most the rapids, turning around to watch David before going through the exit drop.  That was dumb.  Bingo, I was upside down.  I thought, no problem, which shoulder is forward?  It was my left so I proceeded to set up to roll on that side.  No doing, I could not get my hands anywhere close to the surface.  So I switched underwater to the other side and stretched to set up.  Again no doing.  I was being pulled down as well as back and forth in the current and eddies.  I had not experienced that before.  I was bumping around and bashing my helmut on a few rocks.  So, I must have been moving, not stuck in a hole.  So, I switched back to the other side for a "successful" left-handed roll.  I was not to be denied.  The set-up was marginal, but I went for it.  Up I came.  And when I was nearly flat again, a new gremlin in the water grabbed the left rear of my kayak and pulled my back under.  That was enough for this old fart.  I was in a small, man-made concrete circle, why push it?  So, I wet exited to empty the kayak,  get a brief rest, and go again.

"Not so fast", the water said to me.  "We aren't done with you."  I could not get into an eddy, and I was careening down stream, feeling hell-bent for something I did not choose.  Alas, a raft guide brought his craft and his personal skills to my aid.  (This guide acted a lot differently here at USNWC than the ones we encounter on many of the natural rivers.)  He grabbed the kayak while simultaneously keeping his raft in an eddy.  Hanging onto the raft, I was able to pull myself along his perimeter lines until I too, was in the eddy.   With some great effort he got more than half the water out of the kayak, and returned it to me.  Now I could get to shore and deal with an unfriendly concrete shoreline, empty the boat, take a rest and go one.  I found David, waiting below the next drop, and we agreed he'd finish the run without me, ride the conveyor belt, and I might be ready to go upon his return. 

After finishing the run, I remembered a critique from Ben Lawry.  I, too often, was coasting and not paddling in rapids, as I often felt no need to.  So, Ben's advice had come screaming back to me.  We made several more runs as I paddled through the current, and nothing else even bothered me.  If it fits you, too.  Paddle on, Dude.  Paddle on.

David's subsequent runs were not so uneventful, but that's another story.

PrecisionMania Debuted

During Sweetwater Kayaks' Grand Re-Opening Sale and Celebration last Saturday we presented PrecisionMania as a warm-up act for Nigel Foster and his demo/class. It was quite a hit. Although several things went very wrong, we pulled it off successfully.  Doing them as planned will just make it better.

We expect to be performing the show at least twice per month during the rest of the fall and the winter.  Watch the calendars on both BigDsKayaking.com and SweetwaterKayaks.com for these events.

Bye!

PrecisionMania - Debut nears and roll disappears

Last summer I went to a white water camp put on by a friend, someone I look up to a lot. I really wanted to represent myself well. Then, a month or more before the camp my bomb-proof rolls went haywire. And, they did not return very quickly.

Now, this fall, we are nearing the debut of PrecisionMania, and with great nervousness, my wife's left-handed roll has suddenly faltered. Amazing stuff, these nerves. Her rolls have been rock solid for years.

We fixed both problems similarly. In my case, I had developed bad habits of setting up weakly and rolling with my arms, not my torso. In Donna's case, her left-handed roll had a rotten set-up and the sweep had disappeared. In both cases, the setups and sweeps needed to get fixed. The setup was easy. Have someone see what is wrong, tell you, and you fix it. But, the sweep is harder to solve. Interestingly, both sweeps were fixed the same way. We worked on the part that initiates the sweep. And, the rest came back immediately.

The sweep can be initiated with your head and shoulders, not your arms. In this method, the forward ear leads by moving out over the forward shoulder trying to get behind it. Since it cannot get behind the shoulder, the shoulder then follows the ear/head movement, and the arms and torso come last.

Since we each already knew how to roll, it was easy to finish once we had gotten the proper body movement started.

So, if your roll is not as consistent as you'd like, maybe it is in your setup and/or sweep. Of course, if your rolling technique does not include a sweep, you may not want to add one now.

I must roll along now. Bye. :-)

Rainbow River - For One - Sunday, 10-4-09

What a great day on the Rainbow River. Very few tubers. The boat ramp was nearly empty. The weather was wonderful. And, most of all the water was extra clear. I could even see the bottom in the Pole Hole - aka. Turtle Town. We also saw a few large gar fish just outside of Garfield. And we followed some fishing/eating otter as they cruised in the river below the takeout.

One one person went on the trip, the newly svelte Barbara. (She had lost 20 pounds since we saw her in late June.)

Remember, if only one paying customer is going on the trip - it will go.

The afternoon before it looked like we had 2 going. As is my policy, I called each to see if they wanted to go without a larger group and they both said yes, so the trip was on. Later, one person ran into difficulty, so it became just Barbara and I.

Stated another way, you can depend on any Big D event that is on our published calendar and in our newsletter. The newsletter is on Big Ds web site (calendar coming soon) , and both are currently on the Sweetwater Kayaks website.

PrecisionMania Practice

Donna and I have about 15 hours of practice putting together the show for PrecisionMania. We will be taking it on the road around west central Florida and symposia along the east coast.

I've often heard tandem kayaks referred to as divorce boats. Well, tandems can't hold a candle to doing close together synchronized paddling. I think marriage counselors could promote this activity and get quite a spike in their business. After so many years together (No it really is a lot of years. It doesn't just seem like a lot.) much of our communication skills seem to have fallen into knowing what they other person meant rather than listening to what they said. But, when challenged to do something new, the flaws sure came out - fast. The first 4 or 5 hours were especially hard. I was furious with Donna and she had to be pretty fed up with me. After several practice sessions we finally talked about what was going wrong. While neither of us was perfect, I sure have fallen into a broad gap between what I thought I said, and what I really had said.

Now, we have moved on. The act is progressing. Our communication is still improving, but still has a long way to go. At the pace of my improvement, I wonder if I will be alive long enough to get it right. The saving grace is learning what we are expecting and just doing it.

We hope you get to see the show and enjoy it. We expect it to keep evolving, growing, and getting better. But, for now it is already filled with oohs, ahhs, ahas, and hahas.

Trip Photo - Egmont Key - 9-27-09

Here are the last 4 to make it back. The early birds missed the photo.

It was great! Those that wanted to play, found waves a bit over 2 feet high.  That means we occasionally lost sight of each other and shore.  What a hoot.

Trip Review - Weeki Wachee 9-10-09

Here are some photos provided by Cindy Turner.  You can judge if we had any fun or not.

ACA Level 5 White Water Coach Training/Certification on the Ocoee River

What a great weekend.  My son, David, and I traveled to Tennessee to participate in this event.  And it sure was worthwhile.

I had not paddled the full, lower Ocoee River and really wanted to.  Just upstream is where they held the Olympic Kayaking in the late 90s. What a hoot!  David and I had been invited to be guinea pigs for Level 4 coaches who were there for either a coach update or to get certified as a Level 5 coach.  This was our first foray into water with this reputation.  You see, I had many previous admonitions to be sure to avoid the nasty hole near the put-in, and the many dangerous spots further down.  I started with a great deal of anxiety.  I was fighting everything and in a survival mode from my own fear and imagination.  One's mind can be a very scary place to be.  But, after a few rapids I began to relax and really start enjoying things.

I learned a bunch.  I especially liked learning to catch waves to assist crossing the fastest water in the river.  They call this a ferry, but I always imagined a fairy was helping me.  Go figure.  We had a neat drill going down a class II rapid with our eyes shut and paddling or turning based on instructions from a partner behind us.  That was a bit intimidating.

But the worst was solo, eyes-shut ferries.  Not only would we cross without seeing, we were to go nearly straight across without letting the stong current force us downstream.  My thought was, "You've got to be kidding!"  But, they weren't.  I would start in an eddy, look at and try to memorize the eddy line I had to cross, the current and waves in the river, and the eddy on the far side.  Then I would shut my eyes and try to feel my way across the river.  I only cheated a little on the way across and was immensely satisfied with myself.  We were all amazed at how well we did.  Even now, it is a stretch for me to imagine eyes-shut and crossing from still water into fast water, through waves in the fastest part of the river, back into smoother fast water, and then crossing another eddy line and safe in quiet water again. How sweet it was.

And, mostly I enjoyed the huge wave trains I encountered near the end of the trip.  From the cockpit of my kayak the waves looked 4 or 5 times higher than they really were.  This bit of deception makes the journey much more exciting than the view from shore would provide.  The force of the river forced me downstream at a rapid pace and all the way up the face of what appeared to be a wave at least 3 times higher than I was.  With the force of the river pushing me rapidly up hill, I could still muster the energy to try to boof off the crest and launch myself up and over the wave.  I imagined I was Jonathon Livingston Seagull.  If I had succeeded I would have fallen forever to crash in the trough way below.  But, even with the help of the river, my boof was way too wimpy to pull off such a marvelous feat.  And so were each of the other boofs I tried on the crests of those subsequent massive mountains of water.  But, there is always the next trip to the wonderful Ocoee River.

Trip Review - Alafia River - 9-07-09

Here are some photos from our trip.

Forward Stroke Tip

My son, David, and I were recently paddling on the Hiwassee River, a lazy class II white water river in North Carolina. During our downstream adventure I noticed he had developed a bad and lazy habit. As a result, his forward stroke had lost tremendous power. He was lucky, being a young and very strong fellow, and on a lazy river, it had worked out for him. Here's what he had done. He had let his forward stroke become lazy. He did not extend his upper arm properly before, nor during the catch phase of the stroke. He had started each power phase of the stroke with his upper arm bent. Eegads! Can you imagine such a faupaux? His upper arm was supposed to be straight or nearly straight before he applied force in his forward stroke. But, it wasn't anywhere near straight. It was bent to less than 45 degrees. This resulted in the paddle face pointing down instead of back at the start of the power phase. He had lost a tremendous amount of his power and force. Thank goodness we caught it before he tried to do something that needed real power, much less the wasted energy he expended during each stroke. Upon seeing this I called a family council meeting. Neither of us got voted off the island, but I did share my observation with him. And, he immediately started working on it. So, if you have fallen into this habit, like David, and are not extending your upper arm before or during the catch phase of your forward stroke, stick it out there dude, and reap the benefits yourself. Update: David and I recently paddled the Nantahala, another easy Class II river, but not lazy at all. He had worked on extending his upper arm during the catch phase of his forward stroke and improved enormously. Now he had the power to move his kayak against the fairly fast current of this river. His ferry glides had become effortless. He powered his way boofing over rocks. And he powered his way through a hole that had been grabbing him lately.

Rolling Tip

If you are having trouble with your Eskimo roll, pay attention to your set up. Get it right and the rest may follow well. Screw up the set up and the likelihood of a successful roll goes down tremendously.

I had a rolling class last week that reminded me of several rolling students I've had over the years. These students find it very difficult to get set up for a successful roll. By set up I mean getting into position for the rolling maneuver to proceed. Below you will find: a description of the most commonly taught set up position, and some tips to nail it perfectly every time.

The Set Up Position

There is some variation from coach to coach. But, for most types of rolling, while upside down, one must get both hands to one side of ones kayak with hands extended toward the sky. This is the same position that when done right side up, has one reaching down toward the bottom of the water you are in.

Tips:
• While learning, start right side up and get into the set up position. It is a good idea to have someone else hold your kayak as you learn this. When properly done, your weight will carry you over into the water. So, to start, have someone hold the boat.
• Notice how your forearms are touching the side of your kayak. Memorize that feeling.
• When set up properly, memorize how this feels. In your mind, break your position down into how various parts of your body feel. Here is what I notice when I am set up well. I notice a significant twisting to the side. I notice leaning far forward as well. And, when actually rolling, I can also feel the air as my hands are well clear of the water after I’ve rolled all the way over. I notice a strain as I reach for the sky. (It is a strain because I don’t stretch as often as I could.)
• Remember, while learning you should start out, right side up, exactly in the set up position. As you tip over into the water, maintain your exact position. Lock ALL of your muscles into this position. Again, notice exactly how your forearms feel touching the side of your kayak. Make sure your forearms stay in that same touching position. This ensures that your set up will be perfect after you have capsized while learning. By staying in this position you won’t have to figure anything out when upside down under water.
• Now you will be upside down. To make sure everything is good, stretch even further to the side and toward the sky. You are now ready to perform most rolls.

Problems:
• Some students refuse to keep their arms in contact with the kayak. To tip over, they lean to the side reaching out with their paddle to the sky. Some even exaggerate it with a lurch. This just makes things harder. Now they need to get back into the set up position.
• Some students relax as they tip over. They end up upside down, facing forward, with one hand on each side of the boat, as if they were just resting in their kayak. Now they have to get back into the set up position.
• Some students get disoriented when upside down. That is only a problem when they neither stayed in the set up position, nor memorized the feeling of a good set up. Memorize that feeling while right side up. Doing this will pay dividends down the road.
• If you lose the proper position, which is more likely when you are knocked over while paddling, kick in that memorized feeling. Remember it, then get into that position. It really is that easy. If you were weightless like an astronaut, and had no idea which direction was up, could you get into position to tie your shoe? Of course you could. You know that position. You could do it without your eyesight and without your hearing. You just know how to bend that way and how it feels. Learn that feeling when in a good set up position. That is all it takes to get back into a good set up position.

Trip Review - Withlacoochee River 6/16/09

Comments: It was an adventure! Before the trip I was warned that the road I had selected to meet on may not be in very good condition. So, I called everyone and the morning of the event we met at a nearby spot. We discussed the potential challenge and who was and who was not up for the challenge. Then off we drove to the river - or not. Sure enough the road did not look so good. So we opted for an alternate put-in I had previously selected. By the way, I have this fantastic present from my kids, it is a road GPS. It is fantastic, but on the way to the alternate put-in it suffered from that dreaded problem: operator error. I'm really good without the GPS. And, I'm pretty good with it. Yet, when I try to use both the GPS and some common sense, it can be very interesting. So, for those in the caravan, their adventure began by following me. We eventually got to Withlacoochee River Park, our alternate put-in. This section of the river I had paddled before, that is before the drought and the recent rains. It turned out to be placid and serene, quiet and beautiful, a little work to find the best path, and then every once in a while, a blocked path. What had been a mostly open river, occasionally clogged with hydrilla, was now a bunch of twists and turns occasionally choked with sticks, logs, and trees. Well, maybe more that occasionally. Yet, we persevered. We turned around from our first direction and headed the opposite way. Then we went around, over or through several minor obstacles.  I prefer to go through them. Somewhere along the way, we had our usual great lunch. After getting back to our put-in, we said good bye to new and old friends and a few of us went back out to practice some paddling skills.

I had advertised this as an exploration and to bring an adventurous spirit. It was and everyone did.

Original Write Up: This will be an out & back (no shuttle) exploration. It is an exploration because I  have never been there. For this trip I will be a leader, not a guide. If you have a bit of an adventurous spirit inside yourself, and you'd like to paddle where very few groups go, then sign up for this unusual opportunity.  Besides, even if I don't not know where I'm going I will still have a great lunch for you.

Alafia River - Downhill, In-the-shade - June 14, 2009

Comments: The "Quickens" did not disappoint. Seven of us had a great time on the wonderful Alafia River. Yes, it was beautiful. Yes, we had fantastic weather. And, yes, we hit the water level just right. You see, some of the time, the water is so low you must get out and walk the shallow "quickens". And then some of the time the water is quite high, and fast, and you just experience a fast section where the quickens are. But, on this wonderful trip, the water was just right. I felt a little like Goldilocks. The water was not too high, not too low, just right. Which gave us a safe, but fun path down stream. As we approached each quicken, I scouted to find the best path. Paddlers were free to take the way I went or try something else. One quicken finished in a small wave train. That was pretty cool. One quicken has a visible drop, which can be fun. (Actually, a drop is not visible. Most of the time you can see the river in front of you. With a drop, it looks somewhat like the end of the earth.) As you approach it, all you see is the edge of the drop off. You don't have much of an idea how high it is. Of course this is the Alafia, so it can't be too high. Then as you get closer you have a better idea. And, when you finally can see it all, suddenly you have to select which way to go. Whoopee! Or, you relax and just watch me. the trip was a real hoot.

Original Write Up: If there is such a thing in central Florida, this river is fairly swift. It even has small sets of rapids. Okay, okay, okay. Maybe they aren't really rapids. Maybe we should call them "quickens" instead of rapids. At any rate, If the water level is just right, we'll find as many as 10 sets of class 1 whitewater rapids. Don't get too excited, class 1 is the lowest class of white water. Even without any "quickens" this is still a wonderful river to go down. We'll even have some water cannons if you don't bring your own.