What next?

This Level 1 coaching class I'm taking is much on my mind these days. I'm not entirely sure where this train is heading but I'm happy to be getting on board. But, I guess like any trip into the unknown, it creates some real concerns. One of my larger concerns is all of the things that I'm not anticipating. 'lemme 'splain.

I was talking to a friend of mine who happens to be a coach and he told me a story I don't think I could have made up. They're in a class doing what turned out to be a 2 mile crossing. Evidently the conditions were fairly benign, which makes sense since the class is geared towards the improving beginner side of things. Anyway half way into the crossing, a mile from land on both sides, one of the students stops paddling. Just stops and announces, "That's it, I can't go on." Some discussion ensues (surprise) and the student breaks out the "Well, I hurt myself" card. The hurt card of course trumps anything when you're coaching (that whole duty of care thing) so the student had to be towed a mile. Of course the hurt miraculously disappeared and the student was fine for lifting boats, and the next day of the class, etc.

When I heard this I laughed (a lot). But then I got to thinking. If anyone asked me to write down a complete list of things that might go wrong when paddling I'm pretty sure "a student gives up just because" would not be on the list. I mean sure, I'd write down "student becomes exhausted", "student chooses not to participate", hell even "student (really) gets hurt and can't go on". But "give up just because"? UhUh. And what I realized is that if I'm going to actually do this coaching thing I'm going to be faced with this sort of stuff.

If I can used terms I'm used to, essentially I have to be more or less prepared to deal with the set of outputs of autonomous non-linear systems. To be sure the set is bounded. I'm probably never going to have to deal with some student spontaneously combusting seated in their boat (although the solution there is easy. Roll! Roll!).  But really, the surface area of the problem space here is pretty damned large. And really there are two components to this. The first is what should I reasonably be prepared for? The second is what am I reasonably responsible for?

An example. I've got a group on the water with no convenient outs (I said convenient, not easy) and one of the students starts complaining about being too hungry to go on and they have no food. What do? On the one hand, I really don't feel like it's my responsibility to provide food for this person. On the other hand, carrying a snack or snacks in my day hatch is a pretty reasonable preparation I can make (perhaps interestingly, that preparation is to support the other students in the class, not the hungry one). I'm guessing that as I think more about and do more of this coaching stuff more and more of this kind of thing will come up.

When I start considering all of this some of the proscriptions that the BCU coaching scheme has makes sense. Like, strictly, as a level 1 coach the BCU says I can't work on my own except for "taster" sessions on protected waters. Having the time to gain the experience to understand the problem space, at least to an order of magnitude, seems rather useful.

Ya gotta get wet to stay dry

I'm heading up to Body Boat Blade in a few days for, among other things, my 3 star assessment. This is actually my second go at this. I'm still fairly bitter about the last time I did this so I won't talk about it too much but, to be clear, I'm not bitter because I failed (I sort of expected to). Rather because how the assessment was run. Anyway...

I think my bracing is my weakest skill. Like I suspect most people I don't get out on the water enough or as much as I'd like. Work, family, etc all conspire to provide me ample opportunity to stay off the water. And then when I get out one of the last things I want to spend my few hours on the water doing is practicing, say, bracing. I want to go see stuff, enjoy being outside,  all of that. Which I think is a somewhat long way of saying I don't have enough discipline.

So today I went out to the nearbyish lake to do some bracing. It's about 20 minutes away and, this being California with a budget crisis, it costs $8 bucks to touch boat to water. I could drive 40 minutes or so to get to free water but that's too much time out of a work day so $8 a throw it is.

For some reason I always get nervous when I'm going to get wet. But then, when I am wet, I'm fine. Weird. Today I was going through a pretty simple exercise. Lean, low brace, fail, high brace, up. Or that was the plan. I've done this thing a fair bunch of times so no big deal. But today it was lean, low brace, fail, high brace, fail, surprise, roll up. Tried it again. Same thing. It's supposed to be lean, fail, up. I was getting lean, fail, fail, up. That's an extra fail.

In learning to do this high brace stuff my normal coach (normal as in regular or routine. Any other presumed meaning is potentially specious) gave me a great progression to work through. What's nice about it is that I had the tools at hand to sort of start from scratch and figure out what was causing the extra fail. Thankfully, after about 10 minutes, I was back to normal (normal as in regular or routine. Any other presumed meaning is potentially specious). Well, not entirely. I decided today to stick entirely to might right side. I know this is wrong, I should work on both sides, but I pretty well flipped out that I'd lost my high brace and wanted the entire rest of the day to be successful. Tomorrow I'm going back and I'll work on either my left side exclusively or both. Depends. I still have quite a way to go with my braces. I use the paddle too much, I don't have the control to do it as slowly as I've seen it done and like that. But I go all the way over until my back hit's the water and reliably come up. I think (hope) that's good enough for what's coming up. And it's certainly something I can work with.

But all of this is sort of beside the point. I've come to believe that getting wet in controlled conditions is the single best way of staying dry in real world conditions. Believing you can brace up, roll up, cowboy back in, re-enter and roll, etc gives you the confidence that keeps you relaxed and loose in the real world. And being relaxed and loose is pretty important if you want to stay upright in jobbly water. What I need to do is get out more and practice. Pretty much like most people I'd guess.

Fascinating

Some folks in the Netherlands got into some trouble and took the time to do a post mortem on the trip. Here's a link the the .PDF. It's 20 pages but just a great and worthwhile read.

The politics of paddles

I mentioned in my last post that a bunch of folks in my club went around Pt. Pinos. One thing occurred that illustrates, I think, one of the difficulties of paddling in a group of peers.

On the way back one of the paddlers decided to go inside. To be sure he asked if it would be alright so huge props for that. It wasn't a big day out by any means but still the coast is the coast and waves big enough to cause a serious hurt were breaking. I wasn't the trip leader but I did say something like, "I'm not sure I can get in to help you if something goes wrong", which was mostly true. I mean, depending on where something happened, I could probably have made my way in and gotten a tow line on or something.  

Now, there were others in the group. I won't say I was the most skilled in the group, because I wasn't, but I think I was pretty representative of aggregate skill level of the group as a whole. Perhaps John, or Amnon had confidence they could get in to help in case of problems, I dunno, I didn't ask. One thing is pretty certain though, the amount of resources available to render assistance was not proportional to the number in the group.

Right, so in he goes. We all of us stayed outside paddling along. Periodically we'd lose sight of him. At one point we lost him for perhaps two minutes or so in what proved to be the most dramatic portion of his inside run right at the point, a clear violation of pretty much all aspects of CLAP. And that's pretty much the story. As usual (but not always) nothing happened. He had a grand time, nobody got hurt, radios and tow belts were not deployed, and everyone returned home happy.

Someone who spends a lot (a lot) of time on the water once told me, "when you're on the water as much as we are, anything that can happen does happen" and then proceeded to tell me about the time someones shoelace got hooked on a foot peg while they were upside down, and how somebody else got their PFD got hooked onto a back deck cleat (while they were upside down), boomers stripping decks and PFD pockets, heart attacks, and rather a litany of incidents and issues. And I've really taken that to heart. I'm very, very safety conscious on the water. First because I don't want to get hurt or killed, second because I don't want to see anyone get hurt or killed and, third, because I think it's ones responsibility to not have to call in help because they might get hurt or killed. (That might sound a little maudlin but I'm not a doom and gloom guy. Honest.)

Which leads me to the point of my little story here. Had this been, say, a paid excursion or some other event where I was "in charge" I would have said no to the guy going inside. I deemed it unsafe or, more specifically, too risky. In a club paddle though that sort of hierarchy doesn't really exist. It's not terribly easy to say no to something like this, even when you're the trip leader. Perhaps you don't want to seem paranoid, or not fun loving, or a wimp, or whatever. The whole duty of care thing suddenly comes under attack by a bunch of other human constraints. And that happens a whole lot on club paddles in a variety of forms. Groups get widely dispersed, people lose sight of others, folks have inadequate equipment or skills for what they're doing, and like that. I guess that's entirely normal and, like I said, usually it works out fine.

But every time I see something like that all I hear is, "anything that can happen does happen".

Around Pt. Pinos

Someone folks in my club organized a trip around Pt. Pinos (southern point of Monterey Bay). 11 of us ended up going for what turned out to be an entirely civilized trip. Actually it was perhaps the lowest key paddle I've ever been on.

I am never, ever, up front in any group I paddle with. I don't know why but I always seem to lag a bit and am generally the slowest. Yesterday though I was up front pretty much the entire time on the water. So, as I say, low key. Everyone was just cruising gently along seemingly without too much interest in anything but being on the water.

Predicted winds of something like 20 - 25 kts (depending on which forecast you read) totally didn't happen. It was certainly less than 10, maybe 7 or so. Swell was also a really low key 3's, with some occasional 5's. We only went probably 9 miles or so total with a lunch break in the middle.

Hey, here's some pictures:

Normal confusion at the put in.  There were 4 Romanys, a record for us I think. Sorry for the splotch in the middle.

Grouping up right off the beach. Kelp, kelp, kelp. Terribly annoying stuff. Notice though the blue skys and the fog in the distance.

And here we are in the fog in the distance. Those rocks right there are Pt. Pinos by the way.

This is a crappy picture but this is us heading for a beach for lunch. The beach is right on the 17 mile drive and we were, I dunno, half a mile off shore. See that building in the distance there? The one that looks like a hotel or a resort or something? It's a house. A single family residence. The place is full of that sort of ostentation. Oh yah, fogs gone. See?

Our lunch beach. More of those houses in the background. Nice beach though. Someone said it was called Dead Man's Beach or Death Beach or something like that. I think they might have been joking though.

Inside the kelp line about a mile or so off shore. That big assed building there on the right? The one that looks like a resort? It is a resort. The whole line of buildings is. It's called the Inn at Spanish Bay or something like that. Excellent scotch menu.

That's it.

Why am I doing this again?

I'm heading out in a few weeks to take a BCU Coach Level 1 class. I'm not sure why. I'm not really big into certification, at least not in my professional life, but I will admit I like the BCU system. I got into it (slowly, oh so slowly) a few years ago because I'm inherently lazy. After looking at the star awards I decided that following their progression would save me from having to think too much about what I would have to do to improve my skills. Just follow the BCU yellow brick road and, eventually, Oz. And more or less that's been true. I mean I still had/have to think a bit, but I got throguh the various control strokes, got my bracing and a roll that I'm sort-of-but-only-kinda confident in, and like that.

The coaching thing though is another story. The fact is the BCU is a pretty anemic organization here in the US and that makes it profoundly difficult to actually stick with the system unless you pretty much devote a lot of effort to traveling fairly large distances to work with other BCU coaches. See, essentially, the coaching scheme is a mentoring thing. For example as a level 1 coach (assuming I make it) I'm really supposed to be working under the direction of a higher level coach. Where I live there are basically no BCU coaches so, if I am to follow the progression strictly and work within the remits of my level, I would have to travel somewhere to find someone to work with. Not to say there aren't good instructors around here, just that the BCU scheme has it's own vernacular and ways of doing things. Working under a non-BCU person wouldn't help me terribly much. Sort of like learning Java (programming language) but then working with a C++ guy.

I did look at the ACA of course. There's a boat load of ACA folks around here. But I have to say I find the ACA system rather slap-dash. For example I was spelunking the net the other day and ran across a blog where a bunch of people got there ACA level 3 coastal instructor certs. On a lake. Not a Great lake. Just a small tiny lake. Ocean conditions were simulated by using the wakes from wave skis.

Now stop for a second and read that paragraph again.

No, you didn't. Read it again.

Right, so let's review:

• Level 3 COASTAL instructor certification. There are only 5 levels.
• On a lake. I've been on the ocean a few times. I've been on lakes lots of times. I have always (always) found them to be very different environments.
• 
  
  
  Using wave ski wakes to simulate ocean conditions. I've ridden over quite a few wakes, from all sorts of craft. I'm gonna have to go with really different than the ocean again.

I mean, really, what does that even mean, "coastal" if I can get certified as a mid-level coastal instructor on a lake with wakes? Speaking for myself I couldn't feel proud of that. Clearly this may be an certifier issue. You know one guy phoning it in or adhering to the letter of the cert but not the spirit. But, fuck me, really? A lake? Doesn't anyone in the ACA check up on this stuff? Apparently not. And if not, I have to ask, why not? Don't they care? Are they so ignorant of human nature that they're confident nobody will abuse the system and thus devalue it to the point of useless. Hell, worse than useless. Misleading? Misrepresenting? I dunno, but it feels bad man.

See, the real problem I'm having with this is that it puts the burden of valuing the cert on the consumer of the cert, be it student or co-instructor. Suppose I'm looking for an instructor. I have in front of me two level 3 ACA instructors to choose from. To make an informed choice as to who is more skillful or qualified or whatever I have to know a bunch of things. That there's a lot of wiggle room in that cert. Did you get yours on a lake or in the ocean? Even on the ocean, what kind of day was it? Flat calm can happen on the ocean too. And if I'm co-instructing with a level 3 person I'm in a worse position. I would essentially have to question someones skills but without the benefit of being a paying customer. Awkward no?

And, finally in this now rant, there's no way I want to be part of a system where, maybe, I work my ass off, with the best of intentions, adhering to the spirit of the curriculum and then get compared to some schmuck who found an easy certifier and kind of sucks. Or have to justify my creds because of someone like that.

Which leads me all the way back to why am I doing this BCU thing? Frankly I don't see a way forward in the system for me. Not easily anyway. But at least, if I do keep going, my creds are gonna mean something. Objectively mean something. Still, I'm stuck with a couple of entirely non-optimal choices and that sucks. I'll just have to see what happens I guess.

Phone calls from unknown numbers

In broad terms I hate my telephone. Well, it gets email, and does some other things so really I only hate the phone part of my phone. Excepting a couple of Luddite friends (you know who you are), if you can't send email I probably don't want to talk to you. I have kids and happen to work closer to home than my wife, so they have my phone number which means I can't turn it off. And that leads me to my version of a little kayakie/paddley story that is almost trite it's been told so many times.

I bought a new drysuit several weeks ago. It's a Kokatat GFER and I was replacing my Kokatat Meridian. The basic difference is the Meridian has a waste band that goes over the tunnel of a spray deck, ostensibly to keep out water, whereas the GFER doesn't. My Meridian was in fine condition but I was pretty much done with the waste band thing. It made the suit a little harder to put on, and it took quite a while for the area under the waste band to dry. I had occasion to try the GFER for a few days, loved it and bought one.

Anyway, my Meridian was in more or less fine shape given it's age of a few years (I do try to take care of my gear) and I had planned to sell it. Before that I wanted Kokatat to check it out, replace the gaskets for me and generally give it a clean bill of health before I did. So I called them, they gave me a price and an RA number and I sent it off. I didn't think much about it after that, they had told me it would be two or so weeks because of their backlog.

Last week my damned phone rang. Of course it was in my pocket so I had to stop working (I type for a living), dig it out of my pocket only to see that some number with, for me, an odd area code was trying to get ahold of me. I hit the go-away-or-send-email button to make the phone shut up and went back to typing.

Now, it is a fact that I suck at many, many things. Golf. Rational discourse when drunk. Getting up in the morning. Lots of stuff. But, if I got to pick, I'd have to say I suck most at dealing with voice mail. I won't rant about how truly evil I think voicemail is, but I hate it in the same way a 2 year old hates peas. Its irrational and annoying, but what're you going to do? So I can go days, sometimes many days, without checking voicemail. That day though I only waited a few hours before I did. Maybe I was just in the mood for greens, I dunno.

Turns out it was someone from Kokatat calling about my drysuit that was in for repair, and mumbling (because that's all you get on voicemail, mumbles and a string of 7 digits) about some warranty issue. So I call back the next day, a human answers(!) and connects me with the guy who called. Took like 18 seconds or so and I'm talking to the actual guy who left me the voicemail who I was suddenly feeling a little better about. Email would have been better, but this didn't entirely suck either. Right...deep breath...and this guy informs me that the Gore-Tex inside my dry suit was delaminating or something. And, before I could get a breath to whine, "but it's not my fault", he says, "but it's not your fault". Speechless is another thing I suck at but right then I was actually doing a pretty dandy job of it. Then voicemail guy goes on to say, "what we'd like to do is replace it". Now I'm really in the whole speechless groove, sort of reveling in my new found lack of suckitude in this regard when he hits me with, "at no cost to you". Further words were exchanged but, frankly, I don't really recall what they were.

I've heard this same story about Kokatat a bunch of times. On the web, on a beach, all over. But it always sort of struck me like hearing a Bigfoot story or something and treated it like that. Smile and nod, take a step or two back, whatever, just don't antagonize the crazy and cause a violent response. You know. But, take it from me, it's true. Kokatat has real customer service and backs their (expensive as hell, let's face it) product to the hilt.

By way of closure here I still hate my phone. And I still really hate voice mail. But I will be checking it in a slightly more timely fasion from now on. Probably. I still prefer email.