I don't know about you but for several days after I arrive someplace new I have a really hard time sleeping well. This doesn't, for some reason, apply to my tent suggesting that it's really less about the place I'm sleeping at as much as the thing I'm sleeping in. My first few days on Orcas were no exception so by the morning of the 5th I was really pretty tired. I chalked it up to a long drive not fully recovered from, the lovely-sounding-but-why-so-early birds I mentioned, an unfamiliar bed leading to about 4 hours of sleep a night, and general upsetment of my routine.
Being rather tired then I did the only thing reasonable and took a day off from paddling and worked. Given the new WiFi connection I had access to it was actually nice. We (Shawna, her sister, Leon and I) had lunch at Roses where they have the best ever turkey sandwiches. Dinner was at their place. All in all it was an entirely pleasant day.
The next 2 days I was to observe Leon and Shawna running a class they call Body Boat Blade. It's not a class for first time paddlers by any means, but neither is it a class that takes place in gnarly conditions. You can read about it on their website here if you're interested. I was observing because I'm a BCU level 1 coach (i.e. a noob) and the BCU is very much a mentoring system. Strictly speaking one is to work within some well defined restrictions and advancement from one level to the next is the result of working under the tutelage of another, higher leveled, coach. I think it's probably a good system but it's really difficult to adhere to here in the States. BCU coaches are fairly few and far between here as you're probably aware.
Now, at this point, I really need to say something I don't want to because comments of this sort have been made trite. Here goes. Leon and Shawna are seriously good coaches. Genuine professional coaches. If you take classes from them you might sort of get that because you learn stuff without realizing it. Or they help you come to understand that, in fact, there is actually quite a bit to this paddling thing. But you don't really, really get an understanding of just how much they win until you talk about paddle sports as a coach with them.
So I say all of this not because I'm getting paid to (although perhaps I should bring that up), or because they're my friends and all of that, or even because I'm unable to apply any critical thinking and therefore call all coaches excellent. I say this because it's important to know for the next little bit of this particular story.
As I mentioned I was to observe (and safety boat and even instruct on a small bit) this two day class of theirs. Well, I didn't. I did the first day and then bailed on the second. Which sucked a little on the one hand and was pretty awesome on the other. I'm pretty sure they (L&S) weren't really concerned with losing my input into their class (heh) so that wasn't too much of a problem. The suck part was, of course, that I didn't complete something I'd started. But the awesome part was that I'd let go of the pipe dream of actually being a coach. Or at least the pipe dream of being a good coach.
It's rather obvious to me that being a suck coach is well within my reach. Indeed I suspect that with not much more effort than I've put into it already I could be a really outstanding suck coach. But the fact is there are so many suck coaches that the challenge of achieving maximum suckitude is just not that interesting to me.
It's equally obvious that being a good coach is well beyond my reach. I suspect that I could, with some not professional amount of effort, achieve somewhat high certification in this or that system, or find a job with this or that company or even start my own instruction company. But, for me, all of these things would be compromises that I'd be uncomfortable with.
So I think I might be done with my coach education. I don't have the time or support I'd like in order to do a good job at it and doing a bad job at it is not terribly appealing to me. I think I'm just going to try to be a good (lot's of ly's) paddler and have a great time on the water. Sounds awesome.
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