Stupid is as stupid does

A few weeks ago someone in my club posted a trip report. It turns out he and some others had embarked on a trip from Caswell Memorial State Park to Mossdale Landing Community Park. By river. In sea boats. They'd split the trip into two roughly equal parts and the total distance was something like 26 miles and it had taken some 7 or so paddling hours to finish.

The guy who posted the report is, as far as I can tell, quite the outdoors type. He owns a sporting goods store, Sunrise Mountain Sports, he climbs mountains (mountain mountains. Not like Mt. Tamalpais) and does expeditiony padding trips to places like Patagonia. From where I'm sitting (in a chair, usually with a beer) that's outdoorsy. YMMV.

Anyway, I'm reading this trip report and for some reason I'm intrigued. And for some reason I start thinking this would make a nice day trip. The whole 26 miles. On a river. In a sea boat. I've never paddled 26 miles in a single day before, not even close really (about 16 is the most I've done), but here I am thinking about doing, in a single day, something I've never done and something that an outdoorsy guy with, presumably, reasonable outdoor experience and judgement decided to do in 2 days. And it occurs to me that this is kind of a stupid idea.  Not impossible mind you just, well, stupid.

As it turns out there are some few things I do well. I suspect it's much like everyone. You sort of muddle through life doing a decent job at most things but really hang your hat on those relatively few things you  sort of feel ok being something of a reference standard at. Sometimes it's your profession, sometimes not. Sometime it's hard won skill, sometimes not. But pretty much everyone seems to operate like that. Better at this, worse at that. For myself there are, as I say, somethings I do pretty well. Among them is stupid. I can do stupid pretty much as well as anyone I can think of, something which many will attest to.

Now if you're going to go stupid I'm of the opinion that you go full stupid (thanks Tropic Thunder). So I promptly posted my interest in doing this paddle on the club mailing list asking if anyone was interested. I decided, for reasons I think now obvious, to call it the Stupid is as Stupid does paddle. Several people responded and things were starting to jell.

Fast forward a couple of weeks and the day of the paddle is approaching and the weather forecasts are starting to get really interesting. Rain. Record cold. Snow down to sea level for the first time in decades. For someone who dislikes the cold and snow (I'm ok with rain usually) this was not good news. But in terms of the paddle it was spectacular. Suddenly this whole thing is getting pushed out of the realm of stupid and into the realm of imbecilic. Perfect. So the day arrives and I wake up early. The sky is blue and the sun is shining. It's chilly but not cold. Damn. Well, it can still be stupid, if not imbecilic, right?

A shuttle and carpool had been organized. One of the participants was Keith who owns one of our local Kayak Shops. Keith offered to lend everyone a fast boat to paddle, and 4 of the 5 other paddlers took him up on it. I did not, partially because the boat I was paddling wasn't that slow. Others however would have been paddling Romany's and Chathams, not boats noted for their speed and hence distance covering ability. On the one hand this was really excellent. People would have boats that would make completing the trip more likely. On the other hand it diminished the stupid rather a lot.

Paddlesport shop owners have, usually, all the best toys so in addition to boats Keith also brought a giant trailer and a van that could carry all of us. So we were able to set up a shuttle with just two vehicles. Again this was an enormous help that diminished the stupid. Conflict is a fact of life I suppose.

We dropped a car off at Mossdale (the take out) and shuttled our way over to Caswell. There's a beach there and that's where we put in. Here's a picture:

Notice please the sky. Nice and rain-threatening grey. The weather had changed in the 30 minute drive from my house to here. Things were looking up in the stupid department.

We ended up getting on the water an hour late. Keith, who went to park his van and trailer while the rest of us wrangled boats, spent some time dealing with park staff. There was some confusion about where to park and other stuff. I didn't really get all the details but I think the staff might have fit right in with the theme of this paddle.

While we were waiting for the park staff to figure out the parking situation and let Keith go the rest of us kicked around on the beach. Here's a raccoon print, demonstrating that we were in fact somewhere naturey:

To be honest I only think it's a raccoon print. Could be a really tiny Bigfoot.

Here's one of the paddlers working on his bird watching skills:

Possibly the largest set of binoculars I've seen outside the military.

Finally we got on the water. After about 10 minutes we were here:

The current was a leisurely  1 mile per hour or so and the sun was out. The sun was out. In fact it was terribly pleasant. But we still had 26 miles to go and there was no trumping that stupid.

We stopped for a quick break about 90 minutes into the paddle. Just for 20 minutes since we had a heck of a long way left. In the event it was our only stop. It would have probably been smarter to stop one more time but, you know.

Paddle, paddle, paddle.

Paddle, paddle, paddle.

The stupid was starting to become really apparent now. We had hours of this to do. Hours and hours. On flat basically uneventful water. What were we doing here? It was stupid.

Eventually our little river terminated in a much bigger river. Here's a picture:

Notice anything? Not the blue sky with the lovely and dramatic clouds. No. It's actually a little hard to make out in this picture but the current in the big river was about 3 MPH. We were moving about 6 MPH while we paddled, which was pretty much the entire time.

We finished the trip in about 5 hours paddling time. The sun was out, it was chilly but not cold. It was, all in all, and I think everyone agreed, a very nice day on the water.

I think it's hard to make getting on the water a stupid thing to do.

Golden Gate Sea Kayak Symposium 2011. The Bad.

Nothing is perfect.

Except maybe for this one wave I caught a while ago that was so nice it convinced me to really try surf kayaking (thanks Buck). That might have been perfect.

So except for maybe that wave, nothing is perfect.

Except maybe for this dinner I cooked after a 20 mile day in the San Juans when the sun was shining, there was a gentle breeze, and it wasn't too hot. That might have been perfect.

So, except for maybe that wave and maybe that dinner, nothing is perfect.

Including the GGSKS. I want to be really, really clear here. Some of the best education and fun dollars I've spent have gone to the GGSKS. It's pretty excellent. But it's not perfect and that's what I'm here to talk about. Because there's no point in talking about how good something is, like I did in my last post, without talking about how it might be better. I say might of course because I'm just me. No doubt others would have a different set of things to improve or, indeed, others would call it perfect. It is equally pointless, I think, to talk about what's bad about something without also offering some suggestions on how to make it better. This isn't American politics here, there is an actual intention to make some progress, so just throwing stones is insufficient for my purposes.

The Hostel

The "official" lodging of the symposium is The Marin Headlands Hostel. It's where the coaches stay and many, maybe most, of the students stay. One is not required to stay there of course, but if you don't you're missing some of the best bits of the symposium. At turns the hostel is excellent and terrible.

It's excellent in that everyone(ish) is there. You can run into Nigel Dennis, or  Freya Hoffmeister (last year), or Shawna Franklin, or Sean Morley, all of those accomplished types. It's kayak immersion. The good kind of immersion, not the upside-down-in-cold-water kind.

It's terrible in that the snoring is a real problem. At least for me and, I know, a few others. In the hostel there are no private rooms. The smallest room has 4 beds and you just have to share. If someone in the room snores, and you're a light sleeper, you're pretty much screwed. Sleeping is not one of my strong suits so this is rather an issue for me.

I don't know what the solution to the hostel "problem" is. I know Sean and Matt are intent on making the symposium an excellent value and still in financial reach of the most number of people, so moving everyone to the Cavallo Point Lodge would be awesome but at a few hundred dollars a night, impractical. Nevertheless, I loath and love the hostel and would be happy to be elsewhere.

Class Sizes

Last year I took a class that had 24 students in it. 24! That's just too many I think. I have to say I think it was well handled by the coaches who split the class into 3 8's, and then rotated those groups through each coach. And I get the idea that the organizers don't want to tell folks who have signed up for a class they can't take it. But I think this is actually not a good thing.

For myself I wish the symposium would limit classes sizes to N students, filled on a first come first served basis and that's it. I know some people would be disappointed by not getting a chance to, say, work with such and so coach from far-far-away. On the other hand folks who signed up would be certain to work with said coach from far-far-away. I lucked out when I ended up with Tom Bergh on day 3, but I had signed up because of Nigel. In the end I wasn't disappointed at all, but at the moment when I decided it was too crowded I was a little distressed.

Who's teaching this?

At the end of day 3 I was putting my gear away and a student I was in a class with on day 1 was in parking space next to me doing the same. Unbidden she asked how my day was, which prompted me to ask about hers, 'cause it's the symposium and rain be damned it's awesome to be so kayaky and let's talk more about kayaking so, yah, how the hell was your day, mine rocked. Know what I mean?

And she complained, bitterly, about how she had signed up to work with such and so coach and that coach was taken away and the class was run by another coach and the same thing had happened the day before and I didn't spend this much money to be working with that coach and to do this stuff and...she was fucking mad.

I think that there are three basic ways to handle this. Option one, don't change coaches if you tell students which coach is teaching what class (excepting injury or illness or stuff like that. Within reason, you know). Option two,  if you change a coach, offer students a chance to pick another class. I can tell you that some students really don't like some instructors (more later) so this just ends up being a courtesy. Option three is to not tell students who is teaching what until the day of the class.

Option three is probably easiest for the organizers but perhaps worst for the students. I get this is a hard problem, and I completely understand the organizers have (probably) good reasons for moving coaches around after people have signed up for a class, but it's a big deal when they do that. That's a heads up for organizers.

Hobnobbing

Getting a chance to talk to the accomplished folks (see above) should be institutionalized. I got to talk to Nigel Dennis because I had friends who knew him professionally and introduced me. Without such an introduction it's difficult, I think, to start a conversation with folks who are, in fact, total strangers. Understand I don't think a single instructor at the symposium was anything but willing to talk. Nevertheless it is the case that, at least for some people (like, say, me), interrupting a famous person like, say, Sean Morley in the middle of a conversation is something of a challenge.

Leon and Shawna (Body Boat Blade) ran a symposium years ago and tell me that coaches there were not allowed to sit together at dinner. They had to sit, by themselves I believe, at a table and the rest of the table was filled with students. This is, I think, a great way to get a decent amount of off the water time in a social setting with a professional paddler. Very immersive. The good immersive of course.

So I think those are the big things. More was "bad" to be sure. Hanging stuff to dry was something of a pain for example. But, on the whole, I think the other bads were pretty trivial and easily overcome.

One other bad thing I guess I should mention though. I was sitting in my boat, a Romany. Nigel is next to me looking me up and down for a second. I looked at him and he says, very nicely, "You should try a Romany Surf Rick. That looks to be riding a little low". I quit smoking several months ago and have gained a few 10s of pounds. That's bad. The solution is more time paddling I think.

Next post, the ugly. And it's gonna be ugly.

Golden Gate Sea Kayak Symposium 2011. The Good.

The third anual Golden Gate Sea Kayak Symposium (GGSKS) is over and it was, without a doubt, one of the top 3 GGSKs I've attended. The front men for this event, and it is an event, are Sean Morley and Matt  Palmariello. There's a whole bunch of other folks involved of course, volunteer and otherwise, that make the whole thing click but the ones with the microphone are Sean and Matt.

My GGSKS started a week before the official start though. Friends of mine, Leon and Shawna from Body Boat Blade were invited to come and teach at the symposium. Actually they were invited to do a BCU 4 star assessment and a 4 star training. I think if you ask them they'd tell you that doing assessments is not their favorite thing. Telling folks they didn't make the grade is entirely hard and absolutely no fun at all. But the BCU has real standards and L&S seem to work pretty hard to make sure that their assessments are consistent with those standards. Not too hot, not too cold, just right. So to speak.

Anyway, it's pretty hard to do that if you don't know the area so they came down to the Bay Area on the Saturday before the symposium to spend 3 days scouting around for appropriate places for the assessment. I happen to live in the Bay Area so they invited me along.

Scouting with Leon and Shawna Day the First

Here's Leon in the parking lot at Horseshoe Cove, the location of the GGSKS, for the first day of scouting. Two things worth noting. First, the sky is blue. We won't see that again for a while. Second, that's Leon's kayak and those are wheels under it.

This is a crappy picture, but that's Leon's kayak there. With wheels. If you look to the right you can make out someones head between the second and third car. That's Leon. He might own wheels, but he's not entirely happy about anyone knowing about it. Hi Leon!

Another local friend of L&S, Scott, showed up for the paddle. That's him on the left, Shawna on the right packing up for the outing.

I've paddled with Leon a bunch and I don't think I can recall an occasion where he wasn't the first ready to get on the water. That means he spends a fair bit of time sitting on the beach waiting for the rest of us to catch up. Today was no exception.

Another poorly exposed picture but it's important for later. That's Shawna at the head of Yellow Bluff, our local tide race. I'm not sure when this is in the cycle but it was fairly close to max ebb that day, which is when Yellow Bluff "goes off". See the waves there? Keep that in mind.

We're in Richardson Bay here, close to a place called Belvedere. Belvedere, it turns out, contains some of the most expensive houses and real estate anywhere. L&S were picking out which one they were going to buy once they signed up their 37 millionth student. I think it was a white one, but I could be wrong about that.

Scouting with Leon and Shawna Day the Second

The next day was a little different...

That's Shawna there in Yellow Bluff. Close to max ebb. The salient points of this picture? It's a little bigger than it was the day before. Also the sky is gray. It stayed that way for 6 damed days. We didn't go anywhere that day, just stayed close to Horseshoe Cove.

I fell over in Yellow Bluff that day. Rolling up in Yellow Bluff is something of a right of passage so when I did roll up I sat there thinking, "holy shit, I just rolled in Yellow Bluff". This is, it turns out, the wrong thing to think. I should have been thinking, "how do I stay up" because, seconds after my "holy shit" thought I was thinking, "holy shit, I'm falling over in Yellow Bluff again". Which led to a second roll but that failed, I lost my breath and Shawna had to rescue me. More or less humiliated I was done for the day. L&S went out the gate to see how it was to get back in during an ebb.

I had to go back to work and didn't get out with L&S on their last day of scouting. Next up was the symposium itself, 3 days later. I took 3 classes over the 3 days of the symposium. 

GGSKS Day the First

My first class was Advanced Boat Control Master Class or something like that. The main instructors were Ben Lawry and Nigel Dennis

Here's some pictures

This is Ben doing the touchdown on the water signal.

This is Nigel paddling over after locating a student who was running late. Note please, Nigel's attire here. He has no sleeves. No fucking sleeves! It was no kidding cold. Not like Minnesota why-do-I-live-here-again cold of course. But certainly this-isn't-California cold.  What you can't see is that Nigel also was wearing more or less open toed water shoes, kind of like Teva's but maybe not Teva's, with no socks. Unbelievably durable this guy.

So I think any paddling experience involving others is fairly well defined by those others. If it's a class it's the instructors and classmates. If it's a trip it's the participants. And this symposium was no exception. Which is a long winded way of saying, if you're going to talk about this sort of thing you really need to talk about the people. And I'm gonna. But only sort of. More later about that.

I've had the chance to work with Ben before and I thought he was quite a good instructor. So I have to say that Ben is one of those instructors that is better the more times you work with him. (Leon and Shawna I think are the same by the way). Ben knew me, knew he knew me, knew how he knew me and knew what I knew from our last interaction, and had me doing different things that the rest of the class because of that. I thought it was really impressive.

Nigel Dennis I am pretty sure has changed my paddling life. But, backing up a bit, I got to spend some off the water time with Nigel when I went to dinner and breakfast with him and Eila, a Sea Kayaking UK/NDK coach, and Leon and Shawna, before the symposium started. Nigel is just a helluva nice guy. I mean a sit-down-lemme-buy-you-a-beer nice guy. For all this guy has accomplished if he had even a seriously swelled head you'd have to be all like, "sure, but hell, it's Nigel Dennis, he's allowed to have a big head". Right? But he wasn't like that at all. 

The change my paddling life bit? First, Nigel was quiet during this class. During the bow rudder bit's he said, "Rick, I do this" and demonstrated his version of a bow rudder. Holy shit. The bow rudder has always been a pain in the ass for me in even the mildest conditions. I felt off balance the way I'd been doing it and so had no confidence to use it when I really should have been, like next to rocks and cliffs and stuff. But Nigels thing was just spectacular for me. Totally able to control the blade, rock solid stability, and I used it the rest of the weekend in places that before, like I said, I was really uncomfortable doing my form of bow rudder.

This is a great time to share a Nigel story that I think sort of encapsulates what I'm coming to think of as Nigelism. This bow rudder thing is quite different than the form I've seen others demonstrate and, if not advocate, suggest. I mentioned to Ben that I was excited about this bow rudder of Nigel's and showed it to him. Ben said something along the lines of I'm not sure that will work in current. Now you know the rules that apply to mere mortals (me) do not at all apply to the gods (Nigel). So before I get chained to a rock for stealing fire I figure I better check in with Olympus here and make sure, you know, this is something that'll really work for me. So I says to Nigel "Ben thinks this might not work well in current". And Nigel pauses for a really well timed beat and says, "You know, I don't really use that stroke in current".

GGSKS Tangent the First

Now, as an aside, I have to say a little more here about Eila Wilkinson. Eila is an SKUK coach and, I think, Nigel's significant other. Here's a crappy picture of Eila

Eila was doing a BCU 3 star training and this was the end of the day on Saturday, the second day of the symposium. A couple of seconds after this photo was taken she proclaimed, loudly, "Oh no, capsize, help me" as part of the class. It was cold and breezy and it had rained, non-stop, all day and every student I talked to was miserable about the weather. Me especially because, well,  fuck the cold. But when Eila here said "Oh no, capsize, help me" the tone in her voice would have been just as appropriate as if she was saying, "every 6 year old girl gets a pony" or "hey look, free cotton candy and beer". I only spent a short time with her but I think Eila might be one of the happiest people I've ever met. Between her and Nigel I think heading to Anglesey for some classes with these guys would be a great deal of fun. Just thought I'd mention that.

GGSKS Day the Second

Day 2 I took a class called Riding the Tides Intermediate. This was also with Ben as the main instructor. As with the day before Ben just kept progressing me along, knowing what I knew, etc. It was a good class to be sure, I learned some stuff. But the interesting bit of the day for me weren't the class itself.

This is Rowan, a member of The Hurricane Riders. When I first saw him dressed this way I was kind of taken aback. It seemed a little over done to me. Like someone with a big ego, "I dress like this 'cause I'm like totally extreme. Dude."

Here's another picture of Rowan in his boat in the Yellow Bluff eddy

BTW, the letters on the side of the boat are THR (get it?) as are the letters on his helmet. So and again I was kind of thinking "show boat". I could not have been more wrong. He was a safety boater during this class and was just the nicest guy. He's Canadian, it turns out, and Canadians have nice sort of welded on at birth or something. Could be genetic. Or the water. Whatever. He was out in the race going up and down with encouragements like "great ride", "awesome", "get a picture", and like that. I got the impression he can paddle ok too. Apparently he's an instructor in Canada. Another reason to visit.

So that's a barely in control sail boat riding right through the tide race at Yellow Bluff. It was obviously small that day, which was lucky for the sail boat. It was annoying as hell, but he was in good company as there were a bunch of barely in control kayaks out there too.

The GGSKS is pretty popular. One of the close by play spots is a point on Angel Island that get's a nice eddy line to futz with on an ebb. That's a lot of boats for one eddy line.

That's Nigel Dennis in a drysuit. I took this because it felt kind of like a Big Foot moment. Nobody would believe it without a picture. To be honest I think someone made him wear it.

GGSKS Day the Third

The motto of the symposium, I opined, should have been "it's going to be better tomorrow". The weather for the first two days seriously sucked. Keep in mind I'm from here, so suck weather for me is something akin to mid-spring for people from more northerly latitudes. Regardless, it had been miserable for 6 whole days and I had no confidence the last day would be better.

So that was wrong.

That's Matt  Palmariello up front there in the plaid shirt and next to him is Sean Morley. Notice please what they are standing in. It is called, I'm told, the sun and it was nice to see. This, by the way, is the morning GGSKS safety talk and overview of the day. Who's in what class, who's teaching what class, all that jazz.

One thing about the GGSKS, they don't skimp on the number of instructors. 

See all those people up on the deck there? They're most, but not all, of the instructors for the symposium. I don't know what the instructor/student ratio is, I didn't count, but it seemed entirely fine to me.

My class this day was Incident Management. Some of the instructors were Nigel Dennis, Tom Bergh and Matt Nelson. Matt used to work with Leon and Shawna at Body Boat Blade so I knew him and, by this time, I  knew Nigel. Tom Bergh I knew of, but this was my first on the water encounter. Tom is from Maine Island Kayak Company which is, happily, in Maine since the Maine Island Kayak Company of Des Moines would just be stupid and upsetting. Here's a picture of Nigel and Tom on the water that day

Notice Nigel looking uncomfortable with his gasket? I think someone made him wear that drysuit.

This was a crowded class. There were fifteen people including the instructors. There were plenty of instructors, but fifteen people all doing the same thing is always a pain in the ass, especially when some are trying stuff for the first time. Lot's of bumping and false starts and general annoyance. After there was a bit of trouble eddy hopping around the north tower of the Golden Gate Bridge it was decided to split the class into two parts. To be honest I really wanted to spend the day with Nigel. Maybe he had another bow rudder type tip (he did, but I didn't get a chance to play with it) and besides, Nigel is just cool. But when the class split it was Tom Bergh with two folks taking the "less experienced" path and everyone else sticking with Nigel. I think I was up to the challenge of the "more experienced" path with Nigel, but twelve people in the group still sucks a lot for me, so I decided to go with Tom. This was a very fortuitous decision. (In the end the class ended up getting split into four groups).

Tom is a seriously big guy. Not, you know, mid-America-McDonalds-everyday big. Tom is imposing big with the quiet demeanor of someone who really has no need to draw attention 'cause he's impossible to miss. Big, as I say.

Tom also is just an excellent coach. I've said this before, but I do have an inkling of what good coaching is and this was certainly it. Tom focused on fundamentals and we paddled the shore/cliff line just outside the bridge. We'd approach a point and Tom would just slide out, turn towards the cliff and smoothly maintain CLAP. 

Here's Tom doing a post mortem on a rescue somewhat close to the rocks. I should mention that we were joined by a fourth person in a 14 foot boat who wasn't in the position to accompany Nigel and crew (in much longer boats) for the distances they were going to cover.

Anyway, I don't want to gush but it was a great day. He individualized to everyone, paced the class well, and called it a day at the right time. Tom is now on my sign-up-no-matter-what-he's-teaching list.

This is a picture of Tom and one of the students under a water fall. It's worth noting that a waterfall is noteworthy in this part of the world, a testimony to the amount of rain we'd had over the past week.

GGSKS Day the End

So that's it. The GGSKS was a win I think. Most everyone I spoke to had a good time and learned, which I suppose is entirely the point. I met especially cool folks, re-met especially cool other folks, and spent time with some old(ish) friends. The weather, a bit of a bummer, really ended up being no more than a talking point. I think this was a better GGSKS than last year, which was better than the year before. The food was better and I think it ran more smoothly.

But remember when I said it was all about the people? And more on that later? Well, not everything was good about the GGSKS. And like I've said before, I am just up to here with "reviews" of paddling events that are all "had a great time, learned a lot", (like this one) and never talk about what wasn't so good. That's for my next post.