Serious. Fun.

I was spelunking the web a couple days ago and ran across a blog talking about dogma. I didn't really understand what the author was trying to say. Sure I get the dogma is bad thing, I just didn't grok how his examples had much to do with dogma. In any case I was talking to a friend of mine about it and we got into an interesting discussion. Or at least I thought it was interesting.

We were chatting about the blog, what it might mean, the idea of situational appropriate responses and like that and we were sort of going in different directions. The crux of the conversation ended up resting on this statement I made.

If someone unintentionally goes over and has to swim, that's a serious situation.

My friend took exception to this and talked about how paddle sports are supposed to be fun and falling over is a part of the sport and, you know, if someone fell in soccer you'd grab their hand and help them up and no big deal 'cause that's part of it and like that. To which I explained that well, yes, paddling is supposed to be fun, falling over and out is pretty normal, as is helping folks back into their boat and like that. But it's still a serious circumstance. To which he explained that people fall out all the time, that we need to attract people to the sport and that saying something so common is a serious circumstance doesn't help in that regard and like that. So I got off the phone because obviously he was wrong (heh) and we weren't going to get anywhere.

Despite my conviction my friend was wrong I decided I better make sure he was wrong so I could rub it in later or avoid the conversation and acceptance of fault in the future. He'd go "hey, remember when you said it was serious when..." and I'd go, "Squirrel!". So I went to the internet and looked up serious. And I got this:

concerned with work or important matters rather than play or trivialities

Which I sent to my friend because he was wrong and I wanted to make sure that was clear. Because, face it, if someone needs a rescue that's what you do. You stop playing in the race, or talking about the relative merits of unit versus integration testing (I run with a sometimes odd crowd) and commence to rescuing. No "hang on Joe, I'll get you in a couple minutes" or "to the pub gents!". Nope, it's pretty much "hang on to your boat", "flip your boat", etc. You might laugh or take the piss a bit because, damnit, they're in the water and they have to take whatever you dish out just then. But still, serious. Right?

I think perhaps my friend got serious mixed up with dire. Here's the internet definition of dire:

desperate: fraught with extreme danger; nearly hopeless

I don't think I've ever been in a dire circumstance on the water. I ran out of wine once when I was camping on an island by myself and that was pretty desperate, but nothing that I can recall on the water.

It seems to me that things can be serious and fun. I'm pretty sure dire and fun don't go together. Not having any wine to go with a most excellent red beans and rice (with andouille!) was the opposite of fun. 

Orcas Island and How to Make a Million Bucks

One of the things I'd hoped to do while I was in the San Juans this time was to go around the south end of Lopez Island. I've been told it's especially beautiful and, since I'd not been there, I was missing out on more San Juans awesomeness. And I wanted to bag another island. As it turns out Leon and Shawna  and a group of friends were going to play in a place I'm apparently not allowed to tell you about. But it's around the south of Lopez. My plan was to paddle from Eastsound to James Island, spend the night, and then paddle around the south side of Lopez and meet up with L&S and crew and get a ride back with them. Just in case I missed them or I otherwise couldn't get a ride back I was bringing plenty of food and wine to last me back to Eastsound.

Unfortunately for me that just didn't happen. As I wasn't on vacation, just working in a different place, something happened and I couldn't go. At all. I couldn't go with L&S and crew even for a day and certainly not overnight because Lopez has seriously spotty cell service. My job requires me to be wired basically 24 hours a day Sunday - Friday so that just wasn't going to work. Ah well. I stayed and watched the store and did some work. Watching the store was pretty cool because I was "in charge". So I gave out 10% discounts to a couple of BASKers from my neck of the woods who were up paddling the San Juans on their vacation.

Anyway having missed out on the Lopez trip I planned an overnight for the weekend. Eastound to Blind Island State Park, spend the night and back. Blind Island is a truly weird state park in terms of size and location. Size wise it has 1,280 feet of shore line and it's located, I dunno, 200 yards from the Shaw Island ferry terminal. You can walk from one end to the other in, easily, 60 seconds and it's location is noisy and busy because of the ferry landing as well as the boats that go up and down the channel that's right over there. I love Blind Island because of the irony it offers me. The first time I spent the night I had the entire island to myself all night. I've never had an island, big or small, to myself before so that was just cool. And, being from a fairly urban area, there's something vaguely comforting in a troubling way about the noises of humanity all around you.

My plan was simple as could be. Leave from Eastsound (the town) on Saturday, paddle down the west side of Eastsound (the water) staying close to shore, cross Harney Channel and end up on Blind, spend the night and come back more or less directly (because of work) the next day. Simple, as I say. The trip down was as nice as one would expect being in the San Juans. I was yelled at by an otter. Here he is:

I was on the opposite side of Eastsound (the patch of water) from where Leon and I had gone to lunch. Here's Rosario Resort as seen from the other side.

A truly disappointing facet of the San Juan islands is that some time ago Washington State sold it's tidal rights to private individuals. In California, where I live, for example land that is mumbledy-mumble feet above high tide is public land. Technically you can land on any beach and, technically, nobody can tell you you can't. Some groups of people, with a strong concentration in too rich land owners, don't seem to know this so one might actually have to argue, get arrested or otherwise be required to suffer illegal indignities in order to press ones rights. In Washington though they've dispensed with this sort of institutional disingenuousness leaving us with this:

Basically the entire length of Orcas that I travelled was private. That makes landing for any reason sometimes difficult and results in commando pee breaks, if you take my meaning.

Deer though, deer are just way too cool to give a damn about property rights. Here's a couple deer on private beaches:

I'd have never pegged deer as anti-establishment vanguards of the coming class equality movement, but there you go. Those are deer on private beaches. Go deer, go!

When I got to Blind Island I discovered it was full except for one campsite. Well, technically it's never full because it's a Cascadia Marine Trail site and the etiquette is that there is always room at one of those. Which makes a lot of sense if you think about it. Planning a trip where you may or may not be able to land where you want is doable of course, but it's a pain. Not having to worry about it too much is great. You might be a little crowded, but you can get off the water for the night for certain.

The site I was in wasn't a particularly good one, it not having a truly level spot. I set up my tent on the place I thought best and made some food, drank some wine and engaged in many, many AHHHS. You know, like AHH, this is great. AHH, everyone should try this. AHH, just AHH. Here, look:

My night on the island less then stellar. I'll spare you the details but it involved fireworks, loud seals, and a bunch of kids on a guided trip that decided breaking camp at 4:30AM was just funny as hell and laughed  (loudly) until they got on the water. I was up, making coffee, at 5:15AM. I got in a few AHHs then too. You know, like AHH I'm gonna kill those f'ing kids.

The paddle back was uneventful. Here's a (bad) picture of the water:

That's Mt. Baker way back there covered in snow. During my paddle back, it being really calm and not requiring very much attention I got to thinking about my night and how much I enjoyed it. Especially the food. It was just outstanding. There is nothing, says I, nothing better than food cooked after a day's paddling. To this day I'll tell anyone foolish enough to listen that one of my best meals ever was macaroni and cheese with hot dogs after a 19 mile day.

And that's when it hit me. I know how to make a million dollars! I've never been terribly interested in making money (having it, yes, making it, no) so here's how you can do it if you're so inclined. Fair warning, it's in the food services industry.

1. Get a restaurant that is on the water. Install a dock and a bunch of kayaks
2. Greet patrons at the door with a warm and welcoming smile
3. Walk them to the dock and put them in a boat
4. Have them paddle, I dunno, a dozen miles along a scenic route
5. When they land serve them more or less and damn thing you'd like
6. Charge a lot. Nobody'll complain since it will be one of the best meals they've ever had

I'm tellin' ya, I would work.

Orcas Island and Proximate Perfection

Getting to the water from where I live is something of a drag. I have to drive at least 35 minutes to get to anything remotely interesting and to get to stuff that's truly interesting it's pretty much always over an hour. So popping out for a quick 90 minute paddle isn't something I do very often though I probably should since the alternative is to hang around on land. Usually drinking a beer or something.

If you've never been to the San Juan Islands it's hard to describe what a just spectacular paddling destination it is, especially if you like islands. Since you are on an island no matter where you are in the San Juan Islands you're actually always very close to a put in of one sort or another. When Leon and I paddled to Rosario for lunch it took us all of 90 seconds to get to the put in. 90 seconds to get to a put in on a nice patch of water is pretty sweet. It's also the case that really close to pretty much any put in is another island. There's a lot of islands in the San Juans. You can find a list of some of them here.

One morning, a day or two after I'd bailed on observing the class, I mentioned to Shawna I was going to paddle over to Sucia in the afternoon after I'd finished working, say around 3 or so and they were welcome to join. So 3 o'clock rolls around and I'm still typing and Shawna, being both Shawna and a coach, tells me I should go. About 3:15 Shawna tells me I should go. About 3:30 Shawna tells me I really should go.

So I went. Here's a picture of Sucia Island as viewed from my boat when I was about 10 feet off shore of Orcas.

Sucia is about 2.5 nautical miles from Orcas. I paddled over in 36 minutes, touched the island with the bow of my boat, and turned around to come back. Here's Orcas from about 10 feet off shore of Sucia.  See the texture of the water there? Lot's of really interesting currents in the San Juans.

This is looking east when about halfway between Orcas and Sucia. That snow covered mountain back there is Mount Baker.

And looking west. Most of that is Canada. The spot where this was taken is actually some ways north of Victoria on Vancouver Island. It always surprises me when I remember that parts of Canada are south of parts the US. It's a crappy picture to be sure, but it is a look-whats-out-there image I think. That's roughly the way Leon and Shawna went when they started their trip around Vancouver a little over two weeks after this was taken.

I paddled back in about 42 minutes. It was a beautiful paddle, I was out and back before dinner, including travel time to and from the put in, boat unloading and loading times, all of it. Soup to nuts. Proximate perfection.

Orcas Island and Bailing Out

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.

Orcas Island and Just a Little Math

I'd arrived on Orcas and settled in on the 2nd of July. The next day, the 3rd, is also the day before the 4th. So, I'd arrived 2 days before the 4th of July holiday which I think(!) is one of the bigger holidays up there. There's a parade and stuff. But that's the 4th and before the 4th is the 3rd and I'm an in-order kind of guy so I'm going to talk about the 3rd first.

Usually after the long drive up I'm pretty knackered the next day or so and this time was no exception. But one thing I wanted to do was to paddle from Eastsound down to the Rosario Resort for lunch. The 3rd, which happens to be a day before the 4th this year, brought wonderful weather and a willingness by my friend to make the paddle.

Eastsound, by the way, is where my friends have their store and where I was working as well since I really wasn't on vacation so much as on a trip, if you take my meaning. They've recently installed WiFi and I actually had a decent connection for the first time in several years so that was nice. They're sort of luddites so the installation of WiFi I think might have damaged their psyche a bit. But getting them to adopt reasonable levels of technology is a goal I have. Sort of like the drinking thing but with somewhat less potential for vomiting.

It's a pretty short distance, about 3 miles from Eastsound to Rosario and massively inefficient from a time allocation perspective. Figure an hour down, lunch, and an hour back, plus boat unload and load time. So call it 3 hours all together. But, as I say, the weather was nice and it's a helluva pretty place to paddle. Actually, I should qualify my take on the weather. I thought it was really, really nice. My friend Leon thought it was really, really hot. There's a few pictures below and there's a good clue in them as to how hot Leon thought it was.

Here's a picture of Leon after we'd been on the water for all of about 4 minutes or so:

While we on our way to Rosario we happened to run into this:

Poor choice of words. We didn't run into it, but we did see it. That there is a landing craft type boat. And on it, though you can't tell from this picture, is all the stuff that's needed for the $15,000 fireworks display the Orcas guys (I'm not sure who exactly) put on. I'm not certain but I believe the reason they do it off of a boat is because they want the display to be over Eastsound (the patch of water) that's right along Main Street in Eastsound (the town). This should also give you a good idea of how nice the weather was. Eastsound (the patch of water) is most certainly not like this all the time, nor is the sky nearly so cloudless much of the time.

Anyway, the paddle down was uneventful. This here is a picture of Rosario Resort from the water:

I think it's gone through it's ups and downs recently but back in the day it was apparently quite the swanky place. It's still really nice to be sure, but it's sort of showing it's age a bit. Unfortunately for us lunch was not all that great. I didn't get a chance to get back to see if it was a one off problem or not, so I'll go again when I'm up next.

And, by way of completeness and symmetry, here's Leon paddling on the way back from Rosario after we'd been on the water for about 4 minutes or so:

As I said and you can see, Leon thought it was hot.

The next day, being after the 3rd, was the 4th of July. This was my third 4th of July on Orcas/in Eastsound. It's been pretty much the same each time. There's a parade in the morning. The town is busy with lot's of folks, it's hard to find a place for lunch that isn't mobbed, then there's a cookout and then fireworks and then it's the 5th. Which might sound boring or otherwise not very engaging but it's really charming. Says I.

Here's just a couple more pictures, this time of the parade:

That's the crowd for the parade. I thought it was a little less crowded than in years past, but I really don't know what the numbers were.

I have some confidence none of these fellows served in the civil war, but who knows. I get a kick from how small a group they are marching down the street though.

Every time I ask Shawna or Leon who these people are and every time they tell me and every time I forget. Anyway they're a bunch of loonies that dance down the street to more or less not well orchestrated music that they play on, what are to my ear, not very well tuned instruments not appropriate for a parade. But when you see them there's no doubt they're having a great time and I guess that's good enough justification for lots of things.

Orcas Island and Getting My Groove Back

This being a paddling blog one might infer from the lack of entries that I didn't have much paddling stuff to write about these past months. And that would be correct. I sort of lost my taste for paddling. Why isn't terribly important except perhaps to say I think I stopped paying attention to what I liked about paddling and started paying attention to things I somehow convinced myself I was supposed to like.

Anyway and luckily I happen to have friends who live in the San Juan Islands (Orcas Island specifically) and were nice enough to put me up for a couple of weeks. And if you're looking for a nice place to get (back) into paddling there's no doubt in my mind the San Juans are a world class destination. My friends also are pretty fun and quite decent paddlers so that makes it that much nicer. They don't really drink enough for my tastes, but I've been working on that and I think slow progress is being made. It's good to have goals and getting them to drink more is not as bad a goal as some I suppose.

The trip up there is a pain in the ass though. It's about a 14.5 hour drive from my house to the ferry landing in Anacortes. Mostly for nostalgia I do the trip in one day. Since I drive through both Portland and Seattle it's important to schedule things so I don't arrive during rush hours. There are two ways of doing this. One is to drive on a weekend. Saturdays and Sundays are relatively traffic free. If I go on a weekday I have to leave by around 4:00AM. It takes about 12 hours to get to Seattle, so that puts me there at 4:00PM which, truth be told, is not really a great time to take the 5 through the city. But it's better than being there later and I really don't want to get up any earlier than I do. So 4 it is.

I live in the San Francisco bay area (the east bay). For years I used to commute across one of the bridges between 3 and 5 days a week so I have some appreciation for traffic. But for some reason the traffic in and around Seattle (hi Tacoma. hello Everett) comes across as really, really awful. I'd chalk it up to 12 hours of driving except on the way back I've hit it after only about 2 hours and it still sucked. Part of the problem is, no doubt, that many WA drivers seem not to understand that the left lane is the go fast lane. Rather it appears they think it's the I'm-going-fast-enough-go-around-me lane. Which gums the works a bit and tends to make the left lane, in fact, the slowest lane on the freeway. Still though, at the end of the traffic, if you're going north, is Anacortes, a ferry ride, and the San Juan Islands and all of their just stunning beauty (says I).

The ferry ride to Orcas Island is one of the highlights of the trip. You arrive in Anacortes and get in line for the ferry. My friends, who live there, advocate one be there (at least) an hour before the ferry is scheduled to depart since they do sometimes fill up. And if you don't get on the one you were after the wait can be many hours. So you wait at least an hour. Then you drive on this big assed boat (they put several 18 wheelers on them sometimes) and spend another hour to one and a half hours making your way to your destination. You stop at such and so island, people get off, people get on, nobody is in any discernible hurry and, eventually, you get to where you wanted to be. The whole thing is sort of a scrubbing off of the mainland pace. Like the decon scene in the Andromeda Strain. Except for the whole worrying about  deadly space organisms part.

A quick drive after getting off the ferry and I arrived at my friends place. I was staying in what they call their "barn". Here's a picture:

It looks barnish, at least to my non-rural eyes, but I don't know if technically it is a barn. That's what they call it though. See the windows there on the upper floor? That's the apartment portion of the barn (see, how many barns have apartment portions?) It's a bit rustic, having no bathroom or electricity. It has a sink with running water, but the shower is outside. Right there to the right of the downstairs rightmost window, that's the shower. For a bathroom there's an outhouse that can seem a distressingly long way away sometimes. Oh and a stove. It has a stove. So you can make coffee in the morning. That's important. Mornings come early as hell up there. There's light in the sky and the birds are making (loud) noises at around 4:30AM. It's surprisingly pleasant in a sort of yah-yah-they-sound-pretty-but-why-now kind of way.

So that's where I stayed for about 2 weekes. Minus the night I stayed at one of the finest restaurants in the world.

For my birthday...

A few weeks ago I was at the GGSKS doing an incident management class. The coach, one Tom Bergh (excellent coach says I), had us doing rescues nearish some rocks. At least nearisher than I'd done rescues before.

Anyways it's my turn to go victim and I jump in, flip my boat upright, and wait for the rescuer to start calling the shots, as they do. Here comes the rescuer who tells me to flip my boat upside down. Go to the back of the boat! Of course I'm thinking she's going to ask me to push down on the back of my boat, so I'm fixin' to loose my fucking mind, as I do when this push down on on the stern thing happens in my presence. And I'm looking at Tom like, "are you going to let this happen?" Tom, who is nothing if not calm and collected it seems, asks if the rescuer want's to empty the boat first. I'm thinking he's thinking the same thing I'm thinking about this "rescue". The rescuer tells Tom she is emptying the boat and then instructs me to help her flip the boat upright so she can get it onto her deck. Everything is sort of a blur from then on because I stopped paying a lot of attention and tried to absorb this particular form of "rescue" that I've never (ever) seen or heard of before.

My mumble-mumbledy-ith birthday is fast approaching and I'm at the age where birthdays are not a reason to get particularly excited. Depressed, maybe. Excited, no. And this means that I'd be just as happy to not have a birthday (except for maybe a dinner out) at all and so ask family for no presents or stuff or anything. There's really nothing I need and, excepting time, nothing I really want.

That said, being American, I am inculcated with the seagull mentality and so feel comfortable, if not good, about asking total strangers for stuff. For my birthday. Which is fast approaching. What is it that I'm asking for? Simply this; could we all agree on a single first pass go to rescue process that everyone is taught and knows? Lemme 'splain.

The value of homogeneity in process is that things can occur more efficiently because there is less need to communicate about normalcies. A perhaps useful example might be traffic flow. Traffic flows in congested areas, like where I live, are well understood by those who participate. Be in this lane now so I don't have to cut across three lanes later on. If you go to an unfamiliar place then you become inefficient and the locals curse at you if you don't follow the normal flows. Indeed, during a commute, the only time I (and I know others) spend a lot of time thinking about the road (use the force Luke!) is when it's different than the ninety eleven times I'd driven the route before. Construction, accident, whatever.

Wrapping that back to seagulling, what I want is that if I'm in a rescue I'm not surprised by what the rescuer asks for and vice versa. I think the mediocrity principle can work very well here. Most rescues are going to be typical, right? The victim probably won't be injured, probably can hoist themselves into their boat, the boat being rescued probably will need to be emptied, probably won't have a hole in it, etc. I'd like for everyone to perform the same process for a rescue for that common circumstance. I'm not asking, for my birthday, for only one rescue to ever be used. Clearly someone injured or unable to swim onto their deck or whatever is going to need a different process. But that's not what I'm talking about.

So to the specifics of my birthday request. If one of you three reading this are a paddler, could you please ask your local instructor/coach/guru to consult with other instructor/coach/gurus and agree on a single process that everyone will be taught as the first pass go to rescue? If you're an instructor/coach/guru could you take it as given that you've been asked and consult?

Thanks, in advance, for my birthday present. It's what I've always wanted.