Eskimo Roll, anyone?
Do you have any one thing that you HAVE to do before you die? For some, its making a pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca or Jerusalem. For others, its delivering pizzas to the Swedish Bikini Team's locker room. For me, its white-water kayaking. I'm not exactly sure why, but for quite some time I've felt compelled to do this. I think its from going on river trips in a big dumpy raft, while watching kayakers nimbly surfing the eddies and popping endo's in the sink holes. Too cool. I'd still be craning my neck and looking back longingly at those river-rats, frolicking amongst the waves and boulders, while my bloated-blimp-of-a-raft floated farther and farther away from whitewater. So I decided this summer, I was gonna draw a line in the sand -- this summer I would learn to kayak.
The cool thing about Lennox Armstrong is that he's not the kind of guy who'll hear that kind of statement and just ignore it. Nooooo -- to Ox, busy work-schedules and incomplete orchestrations are a sorry excuse for postponing one of life's necessary adventures. So with great good cheer, he pulled up to Nicki's doorstep at noon, his bright red kayak strapped to the roof of his Volkswagen Golf. Nic and I jumped in the car and we headed for Lake Michigan. There was a decent chop today, so we needed to find calmer waters -- a harbor perhaps. Parking almost proved to be our undoing, but we found a spot. It wasn't the ideal location, but the water was flat enough that it would be easier to learn on. We were at Dog Beach, just off of Lakeshore Drive -- you must picture the scene. While Lennox is demonstrating proper paddle techniques, and Nicki's toes are being nibbled on my pollution-altered-mini-mutant-fish, and I'm blinding everyone onshore with my perfect pale pasty pallor (this is what orchestrating indoors every weekend will give you!) -- Rover keeps running over with a waterlogged tennis ball in his mouth, and Spot is humping my leg. But Lennox is a patient teacher, and despite the distractions, he manages to get both Nic and I to the point where we're fairly comfortable in the kayak -- at least when we're right-side-up.
Upside-down is a whole other story.
One of the early techniques one must master is the Eskimo roll -- y'know, where the kayaker flips the kayak so their noggin is about 3 feet below sea-level, then they miraculously comes popping back out of the water, like they'd meant to do it all along. This is an important skill to learn for two reasons:
1. It looks totally badass, and
2. If you do accidently flip the kayak while traveling through rocks and boulders and churning whitewater, you're gonna wanna get your head out of the water AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE.
The first half of the roll is easy -- its the second half that is a little more difficult to master. Lennox demonstrates this technique several times. And, being the joker that he is, he'd painted "HO HO HO" in big white letters on the bottom of his red kayak. So with every demonstration, for a split-second, he's sharing a little Christmas cheer with the dog-owners along the shore. Nicki and I would later find that when we were attempting our Eskimo Rolls, it could be more-appropriately interpreted as "OH OH OH" -- and since our rolls typically took alot longer, and were often aborted about half-way through, it could be easily enjoyed by the slower readers.
It was great experience, and my enthusiasm for this challenge is far from dampened. And Lennox gave a positive review of our progress for first-timers. I'm totally psyched for my next chance to hang upside down in diesel fuel and dog doo-doo... just one of the many perks of city life!
The cool thing about Lennox Armstrong is that he's not the kind of guy who'll hear that kind of statement and just ignore it. Nooooo -- to Ox, busy work-schedules and incomplete orchestrations are a sorry excuse for postponing one of life's necessary adventures. So with great good cheer, he pulled up to Nicki's doorstep at noon, his bright red kayak strapped to the roof of his Volkswagen Golf. Nic and I jumped in the car and we headed for Lake Michigan. There was a decent chop today, so we needed to find calmer waters -- a harbor perhaps. Parking almost proved to be our undoing, but we found a spot. It wasn't the ideal location, but the water was flat enough that it would be easier to learn on. We were at Dog Beach, just off of Lakeshore Drive -- you must picture the scene. While Lennox is demonstrating proper paddle techniques, and Nicki's toes are being nibbled on my pollution-altered-mini-mutant-fish, and I'm blinding everyone onshore with my perfect pale pasty pallor (this is what orchestrating indoors every weekend will give you!) -- Rover keeps running over with a waterlogged tennis ball in his mouth, and Spot is humping my leg. But Lennox is a patient teacher, and despite the distractions, he manages to get both Nic and I to the point where we're fairly comfortable in the kayak -- at least when we're right-side-up.
Upside-down is a whole other story.
One of the early techniques one must master is the Eskimo roll -- y'know, where the kayaker flips the kayak so their noggin is about 3 feet below sea-level, then they miraculously comes popping back out of the water, like they'd meant to do it all along. This is an important skill to learn for two reasons:
1. It looks totally badass, and
2. If you do accidently flip the kayak while traveling through rocks and boulders and churning whitewater, you're gonna wanna get your head out of the water AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE.
The first half of the roll is easy -- its the second half that is a little more difficult to master. Lennox demonstrates this technique several times. And, being the joker that he is, he'd painted "HO HO HO" in big white letters on the bottom of his red kayak. So with every demonstration, for a split-second, he's sharing a little Christmas cheer with the dog-owners along the shore. Nicki and I would later find that when we were attempting our Eskimo Rolls, it could be more-appropriately interpreted as "OH OH OH" -- and since our rolls typically took alot longer, and were often aborted about half-way through, it could be easily enjoyed by the slower readers.
It was great experience, and my enthusiasm for this challenge is far from dampened. And Lennox gave a positive review of our progress for first-timers. I'm totally psyched for my next chance to hang upside down in diesel fuel and dog doo-doo... just one of the many perks of city life!
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