Rolling...
OK, that felt kinda good!
Here's the gang from Sunday. Beautiful beautiful day, and as you can see, I'm not kidding about that business of fall and winter paddling & having the river all to ourselves!
So there's how the Sunday readjustment paddle went. Worked like a charm - I knew it would. I'm SO glad F. called that paddle, it really was just what I needed to shake off the blue-water blues. WAY better than sitting home & moping over summer being over! We had a lovely day, it was a nice group to paddle with, I definitely felt a bit stiff & as though I was fighting all the clothes and fighting to drag my boat through the water heading north but this quick horsing-around session seemed to shake everything loose rather beautifully & everything seemed to snap together again heading south. Water's good - cold and green or warm and blue, it's all good. Boats are good. Drysuits suck but they let you keep playing in the boats and the water so they're OK too.
Speaking of playing in the Hudson - and on a more serious note - looks like GE is trying to sidle out of their obligation to clean up their leftover PCB's. Very interesting & rather depressing article on the matter in today's NY Times.
I know it's expensive and all but dang, the river's become such an amazing place - it would really be nice to see GE recognize that & quit trying to figure out ways to cut corners on the cleanup...
oh, and on a happier note, everybody say hi (or "yo" or "howzit" or whatever your standard local greeting is) to Napoleon Kayaker! Actually it seems like there are quite a few new (or at least recently stumbled upon by the other kayak bloggers already listed on my Kayak Blogs blogroll) kayak blogs. I have been very bad at updating my blogrolls over the summer but now that schooner season's over & all my vacations for the year are behind me, I really do hope to do a little housekeeping!
Fact is, I can't quite believe I kept this thing going for the entire season in the first place!
P.S. - OK. Derrick is already rolling in ice cubes. My little post-Caribbean self-pity-party is now officially over. Thank you all for your patience (or at least not posting comments to the tune of "Oh, boo hoo hoo!").
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p.p.s. - One quick final word here - I seriously considered putting up some kind of "trained quasi-professional kayaker, kids don't try this at home" notice on this. Fact is, I've worked my butt off to be able to continue to frolic with relative impunity in November - there are about a zillion hours of intensive practice in warm water that went into being able to do the stuff I'm doing in those pictures. I'm adding this now because Mr. SeaLevel has done a really nice post today on the very subject of the sort of considerations that go into cold-water paddling and ways to learn more about the hazards entailed. Derrick had his cold-water post not long ago too, and I did say something right before I left on vacation - everybody gets worked up about it because it is absolutely serious stuff. Done right, with respect & proper preparations for the conditions you'll be out in & an understanding of your own abilities & limitations, off-season paddling can be great fun - done carelessly, it can turn pretty bad pretty fast.
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