Rumour has it (or at least On Kayaks has it) that that Derrick, your host at Kayak Wisconsin and Mary are celebrating an unspecified wedding anniversary -
Congratulations! And thank you both for proving by example that being a paddler does not necessarily mean being a complete disaster as far as being a person with whom to have a relationship.
Mostly kidding there. But it is nice to see people be in a relationship where both people can be who they are, not spend a lot of time jumping through hoops trying to fit some mental image of the Ideal Mate. Mr. & Mrs. Kayak Wisconsin sound like they are very much in the former model & in this day of The Rules and all those other how-to-manipulate-the-opposite-sex-in-6-easy-lessons-for-the-low-low-cost-of-$15.95, that's great to see.
Oh, yeah, and since all the cool kids (or at least the cool kayak-blogger-kids are linking to this new clip of footage from Justine's circumnavigation of Tasmania at CackleTV.com (and since oh my GOD this looks like FUN - aside from the up-at-4-am bit,UGH!), I will too - it just looks fantastic. I bet they slept well the next day!
So back to last night's fiasco - well, it wasn't a fiasco after all! The patching procedure may've been messy but darned if it doesn't look like it worked (actually I could only check half 'cause I tried to take off the backing tape this morning & the AquaSeal wasn't fully cured so I had to redo that bit - but the undisturbed half I checked this evening looked messy but watertight - yay! As for the rest of the symposium prep - it's going really well.
My first aid kit is all cleaned up (I'd been keeping it in a drybag & at some point there was enough condensation that the outside of the kit got a little mildewy, so I scrubbed it & the drybag down with bleach solution) & restocked. I took inventory of the stuff in my boat today (my day hatch was seriously getting to be like a hall closet in a house that's been lived in for a long time - full of stuff, some useful, some junk, and I sort of knew what was in there but I would NOT have been able to list everything - now I don't have to 'cause I actually have a list). I also ran AquaSeal around the seam where the tunnel joins the deck on my sprayskirt - the tape covering the seam came loose & although I'm not sure whether the tape was integral to keeping water out, or just cosmetic, running a line of AquaSeal along the seam turned out to be PRECISELY as simple and quick as I expected it to be (as opposed to last night's sticky silliness!).
Actually all this patching & cleaning & what-all is stuff that needs to be done every now & then anyways - good to do 'em in Spring, when you're getting revved up for more frequent paddling & with more people tending to come out. The symposium coming up just charged me up to get it all done at once instead of a bit here, a bit there.
I've also gotten in touch with my co-teacher for Women on Water, bought myself some spiffy new stuff (whee), even did laundry & cleaned the apartment today - no paddling for me today but suddenly I'm feeling a lot less stressed out about being ready. I was tempted, as some of my friends at Pier 63 were doing a trip north today possibly involving a stop for sushi, which I would've enjoyed, and I bet they had a great time 'cause it was a beautiful day, but I decided to make it a dry-land day as planned just 'cause I had so much I needed to do.
Nice day for running errands, too. It's really starting to feel like summer here in NYC! I mean, just in the course of running errands today, I found myself buying dumplings & a jelly doughnut at a Ukrainian street fair, watching Falun Gong people getting ready to do a performance in Washington Square Park (they had dragon dancers & everything), listening to somebody playing "Hava Nagila" on steel drums in the Union Square subway station, and finally (right around the corner from home) watching a couple of guys dressed up in pretty full hip-hop style teaching a couple of little kids, a boy & a girl, a rather complicated breakdancing move - they'd rolled out some linoleum in a little front yard in their building, the kids were concentrating so hard & the older guys were enjoying teaching them so much, it was just one of those things that makes me go "I LOVE this neighborhood". Everybody was out enjoying the day. Summer summer summer...ok, so it's still spring, but it was definitely spring with summery overtones today!
So having gotten much much stuff done today I can breathe a little easier about sailing tomorrow - I'd asked not to this weekend but somehow when Captain Peter called me this morning to see if I could come for JUST the 3:30 tomorrow I guess I forgot! Heh heh. I'm such a pushover. But at this point I think I've gotten enough of the work I had to do this weekend done that I'm glad I said yes 'cause it'll be nice to get out for at least one sail - Plus the Adirondack, which is the one the NY schooner gang tends to think of as "our boat" is in town now - and then I can go for a paddle afterwards, too! That'll make a nice day on the water - which I will regard as a reward for NOT paddling today & instead doing all the stuff I needed to do.
Feels so nice to not be all stressed out.
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