Thursday, May 10, 2018

One Paddle...one very short paddle, boo.


One paddle, two paddle, three paddle,
Four to take me home...

Boy, am I falling behind on my trip reporting! So here's the first in the catch-up. April 8th. Beautiful day, had potential, but not nearly what I was wishing for that day - we short-changed ourselves when we probably could've gotten away with a little more time than we gave ourselves.

This wasn't the best boating winter ever; January and March were kind of a wash for paddling what with the snow and the snow and the snow and the cold and aaaaagh the snow, plus the flu that was going around flattened me for a week or two in there. I did sneak in that one 8 mile paddle to the Cross Bay Boulevard Bridge and back on one less Arctic weekend in February in
 between snowmabombaggedon fun, but then that was pretty much it until April. And this is of course the time of year when work gets extra extra crazy, and paddling is the absolute best way for me to blow off some of the stress from that, so by April I'd worked up a pretty intense craving some time on the water.


But then all of the sudden in April it's time for the club to start gearing up for the season, and so right when I was really NEEDING some time on the water, there ended up being a string of meetings three weekends in a row.

First one was a kayak committee meeting on April 8th. Potluck beforehand, then a meeting with scheduling.

Now, Sebago has the most astounding potlucks, and meetings - well, I don't always enjoy them but you just have to have them if you're going to have a well-run club, which we really do. But this one was running at cross-purposes against getting out for much of a paddle (OK, could've gotten a great paddle in if we'd gotten up at 6 am, but I am very seriously not a morning person even when well-rested, and I'd been working some long days in April).  So I dithered and grumbled about what to do with the day until finally a couple other trip leaders proposed a pre-meeting paddle. I talked to TQ and we decided we'd go for that. 

It ended up being a bit on the breezy side, and we were the only other ones who showed up. We ended up running late, so we told Chris and Stephen to go ahead and launch without us, we would catch up with them.

We found them hanging out by Green Can #3. It turned out that part of their motivation for calling for a pre-meeting paddle was an interesting project for a navigation workshop they were teaching - they'd brought along a GPS and were checking actual locations of a couple of the nearby aids to navigation to see how closely they matched the locations on the charts. I must remember to ask them next time we paddle together how that turned out - that was some serious commitment to teaching a good class!

TQ and I left them to their location-finding and proceeded to go on a teensy weensy loop - first we blew down towards Mill Basin, then realized we were setting ourselves up for a long slog into the wind going back to the Paerdegat, so we cut over towards Canarsie Pier to get the slog into the middle of the paddle, then back to the basin.

That was short. WAY too short. We got back to the clubhouse and for one reason and another, but at least in part because I'd just been dreaming and dreaming about a good long work-stress-vanquishing cruise and ended up with this stupid little tease of a 3 mile paddle, I had a little bit of a meltdown right before the meeting. Fortunately not witnessed by too many. Hindsight 20/20, afterwards TQ and I agreed that we should've just stayed out longer.

Note to self: You joined a paddling club to go paddling. Next time you NEED to go paddling, just go already. It's not the end of the world to be late for a  meeting at the club.

PS don't worry, next one was better! And at least I got some pretty pictures. Click on any of them for a slideshow view. 

3 comments:

Diane Stringam Tolley said...

I've never done this. Never realized before this minute exactly what I've been missing!

bonnie said...

I love being out on the water. It's what keeps me together having a frequently crazy job in an always crazy city. Not sure what I would do if somehow one day I couldn't get out there anymore (although the way I was feeling through this winter is a good indication to me that it wouldn't go well). Love the bay and the birds and the (relative) peace and quiet.

Alana said...

One day I will have to read your "origin story" - how you ended up in New York City. I don't know anyone in New York City who does the kinds of things you do, and that's one reason why I enjoy your blog so much. You show the NYC I never knew.