Oh, the life of an NYC kayaker. We have a foothold doing what we love on a river that we love - but that foothold can turn slick as ice in the space of a day. We have no cars, we have no garages...it's such a different and altogether more tenuous existence than anything your average cartopping paddler who keeps their boat in a sling in their garage (or even in a nice normal storage place that doesn't have legislation spelling out an automatic if-then end of things as they stand looming over it) can imagine.
Sometimes being an NYC kayaker just rocks.
Sometimes it's not so hot.
The following paragraphs are an excerpt from an email I sent tonight to the former business partner I still like, respect and trust (as opposed to the other one who...well, that's for another post, I thought he hated me - or was at least terrified of me - but I just heard some weird info about what he says about me from some of the people I'm teaching on Sundays...kayaking in NYC is one surprisingly small pond...god this is all making my head hurt...)
Hi! Hope you're OK!...
Had dinner tonight w...a couple of the folks who do the swims regularly - one attendee is on the advisory ctee of the Hudson River Park Trust & asked me what was planned for Pier 63 since BasketBall City lost its appeal & eviction proceedings would begin in 3 to 6 months...said that was the word at an advisory ctee mtg about a month ago.
You know anything about that? I thought everything was groovy for next 2 years owing to failure of Trust to announce budget by whatever date resulting in automatic 2-year lease extension????!!!???
Can you please fill me in?
God. And here's the private-boat-hold mailing list getting all het-up about whether "we" (I don't include myself in that "we" as I have a clearer view than most about how things operate around there)...need to ask management to please install a seal-launch dock...but now all the sudden I hear that this news that contradicts this whole comfortable next-2-years-are-a-given idea...
so there's life as an NYC paddler. Everything's fine, everything's fine, everything's fine, everything's WHAM!!!!!!
lordy. and the discussion of next season's swim support (that's kayaker swim support for swimming races in the Hudson River - and the GOOD news in all of this is the Hudson is so much cleaner than it used to be that the swim race series in the Hudson is burgeoning) got pretty interesting too -
way too late to go into that right now.
I think this blog may become a bit of an analysis of the vagaries of NYC paddling for the next week or two...there's a lot that's good, there's a lot that's not...sometimes the two are just inextricably tangled & that's true of both this new development that might mean that my boat storage might be in jeopardy when I thought it was safe until 2007, and of the kayak swim support issues. This seems like as good a place as any to sort out my thoughts.
tomorrow I go teach though. And I think maybe no blog - I have been very good about this (surprisingly so) but the topics that I'm thinking about require a little more care & attention than I will be able to give them when I get home after a full day at work followed by an hour and a half of beginner skills & an hour & a half of rolling practice.
will probably start trying to sort this all out for myself on Thursday, when I have no plans (hurrah and about time too).
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