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| The chronicles of Sanjeev Dwivedi |
Sea Kayaker - Deep Trouble
That is the name of the book that I have been reading for the past two days. The book is primarily intended to caution the sea kayaking enthusiast, especially the newbie, of the dangers lurking in the world of sea kayaking.
Sea kayaking differs quite a bit from whitewater kayaking. The kayaks one uses on the sea are quite different both in shape and in size from the whitewater kayaks. Whereas the whitewater kayaks are small (about 6-8ft in length), sea kayaks are usually between (12-17ft.) Whitewater kayaks are all about maneuverability, you can spin them 360 degrees with 1 or two strokes almost within a few seconds whereas with sea kayaks it takes quite a bit of effort. Sea kayaks on the other hand are made for comfort and speed. Whitewater kayaks on the other hand are quite painful to paddle in flat water as they are not built for speed.
Anyways, coming back to the original topic, the book goes through a lot of real life stories about how people got in trouble while kayaking in the sea. Some of the mistakes committed by the people were simply due to a lack of understanding, preparation and practice. People have gone kayaking in the sea without putting on a lifevest or keeping the lifevest under their seats. In one unfortunate case, the body of the kayaker was found drifting. When they recovered his kayak, they found the lifevest still tucked under his kayak seat!! There were cases where people were caught unawares by the weather. Even experts got caught up in unfamiliar situations and barely survived because they had flares, wet suits and other survival gear along with them.
It amazes me to no end how people take such risks with no regard to their own lives or the repurcussions on the lives of their well wishers. I remember the story of two Indian men, who were found hanging to the side of their rental kayak in one of the bays around Seattle. Neither were strong swimmers, they went out without any additional company in a double seater kayak. They had no warm clothing on and had no self rescue training. Their kayak capsized and they could not get in. When the boat found them, both the guys were hypothermic. One of them did not survive the ordeal.
I know of friends who go kayaking in the lakes around Seattle without even knowing how to swim. The waters of these lakes is cold year around and it takes 15-20 minutes for hypothermia to start setting in, any time of the year. Assuming a capsize, it would take at least 10-15 minutes before help would arrive and what if it doesn't?
This weekend was a blast.
There were two WKC trips scheduled this weekend. One was lead by Anne, my WKC class kayak instructor and the other was lead by Toria. There were some rains earlier in the week and all the rivers were running pretty good till thursday but one day without rain and all the rivers except the Snoqualmie drained out. So, it was back to the Powerhouse run on Snoqualmie. On saturday we must have kayaked about 4 hours and then today about 3 hours. By the time we were done today, we were pretty much all beat. When there are a bunch of beat kayakers, they head down to the nearest eatery. So, off we went to the Snoqualmie Brewery. Well, I don't drink but the brewery serves food too and others wanted a beer or two, so that is where we ended up. The food was good. I had a veggie pizza with jalapenos (mexican chilli.)
One thing that I noticed about the sport of Whitewater Kayaking is that there is this mystique surrounding the __eskimo roll__. Eskimo roll is just the process of being able to turn your kayak upright once it has flipped over. It is not an overly complicated process but it is very counterintuitive to every instinct you have. Think about it for a minute. You are dangling from a kayak upside down in the river and floating as fast as the current is pushing you. There might be rocks whizzing by close to your head and as you use your paddle to upright yourself, your instinct is to get the head out of the water before any other body part. The result is that you immediately flip back in the water. No, you must first push your hips out of the water, then the torso and only after both the hip and the torso are out of the water and straightened up is when you bring your head out. The perfect example of why this process would work is to consider yourself standing on a thin ledge or branch and imagine yourself tilting to one side as you are losing balance. The natural way you would correct is by moving your hips away from the side you are falling while keeping your head in the direction where you are leaning. See the illustration for a better understanding of what I am talking of.
So anyways, when I started kayaking, I was an awful kayaker. I had no sense of balance. I used to flip really easy and used to be swimming all the time. The first time I went kayaking on the river. I flipped and bailed from the boat 5 times right at the put in and 4 more times on the rest of the trip. A *lot* of practice on the lake gave me the confidence in my padding abilities and going to WKC pool sessions helped a lot. The paddlers at the pool sessions helped me get my roll initially. However, when the pool sessions ended, my roll was still very shaky. Countless hours practicing at the marina in my apartment complex, and after many many swims finally I got the roll on one side. Slowly, the roll became pretty strong and I went to the river with a new founded confidence. Feeling confident, I entered the boat, crossed the eddy line, flipped over, tried to roll, failed the roll, bailed out and was rescued by the other kayakers. After that, I flipped over two more times on that trip but I rolled back up both times. On that trip I realized that the way I had been taught the roll in the pool was pretty pointless in the river. I mean it was a textbook example of how to do a perfect setup before tipping over and then rolling back up. Well, the swim taught me that you never setup before flipping over in the river. So, I decided to learn to roll back up without setting up at all. So I went to the lane and in the lake I flipped over without setting up and found to my astonishment that I could not roll up. So, after that it was the same learning cycle. I would do a perfect setup, flip over, make mental note of what I was doing to roll back up and then not settig up, flipping over and attempting to duplicate whatever I was doing with the perfect setup. This time the progress was much faster and in about two weeks, I could flip over whichever way and come back up. After that getting the roll on the other side was not that hard. I just realized that learning is a slow process. Initially when I tried the other side, I could just not roll up because I would have no clue of what to do on the other side. I kept trying and after a week, I had some idea. Two weeks later, I could comfortably roll up on the other side and now it is pretty good.
So anyway, after I could roll up consistently, the learning curve just shot up pretty fast. With no fear of swimming anymore, I could do whatever I wanted in whichever way I wanted. It was then that I realized that a lot of the fellow boaters did not have a solid roll. They could roll in the flatwater with setup but I did not see many people practicing tipping over without setting up and even those who could roll in the current could in most cases not roll on their offside. Fellow boaters are mostly amazed at the progress that I have made since March when I took the beginner kayaking class. From a flailing tippy kayaker to now mostly reasonable, rarely-ever-needing-to-swim-kayaker with a reasonably good roll is where I have come to.
Anyway, when I started kayaking, I used to be embarassed about myself all the time. Now I am not sure whether that was necessarily a bad thing. In disguise, I think it was a good thing. My initial lack of balance forced me to learn to roll to avoid further embarassment, which, in hindsight, seems like a really good deal.
Whitewater is cold.
Even in the dead of summer, it is pretty cold. By definition, whitewater means frothing water. As snow melts and the water rushes down the mountain, it picks up speed and where the channel becomes narrow, the water picks up more speed, and then where the channel again diverges, the water froths. Anyway, the key point is that whitewater is usually very close to mountains where it originates from the mountain snow caps. This makes it very very cold. In summer, the sun used to be out so if I would roll or swim, as I would get out, the atomosphere would dry me off or at the very least warm me up quickly. Now, on the other hand, I remain chilled all the time if I have to roll. I guess that means I gotta practice bracing a lot more.
This brings us to another topic. Even though officially summer got over last weekend and this summer was not really hot at all (read: it felt like winter a long time ago.), I had been pretending that it was not so. I just kept on pretending that it has been summer so far and getting in the lake and rolling like crazy. Thus, I have had a mild perpetual cold for last 2-3 months. I wake up everyday and my nose is slightly clogged. I take the comforter off and immediately, I sneeze a few times. I guess going kayaking in the evening and getting my head wet does not help much either.
I was having so much fun the entire summer that I almost forgot how winters in redmond are. The first few days of autumn have brought me back to earth. It is gray and murky. And so it begins. Last winter, my exercise regimen crashed and burned. In the summer prior to the last winter, I was biking every day and when summer ended, so did all exercise. I still remember it with a shudder. I would come how every evening, cook, eat, watch TV and go to sleep. Hope this winter will be a lot better. Only time will tell.
With all the kayaking in the sun, this is how I am getting to look like.
One time when I was on a river kayaking with WKC folks, someone said, "When you start whitewater kayaking, you are scared as hell and you keep trying and keep falling and swimming and one day it just clicks." Essentially, what happens is that a light bulb just goes on into your head and your muscles just understand what it means to lean at the right moment, your heart understands that it does not need to beat that hard to supply the body with the blood needed for the job at hand. So, eventually that happened when I went on the last club strecth trip. At the very onset of the trip, I tripped at an eddy line, fell, could not roll up, had to bail, had to have my ass saved by someone. Then, all of a sudden, all the tension left and like one of those times, when you get an out of body experience, something like that happened. After that, through the slow water, through the rapids, through everything else, I just calmly sat down and observed myself paddling. Two more flips, but rolled back on both of them. So, I came back and started practicing on the lake. Whenever there is the slightest wind, the lake gets itsy bitsy waves. Also, when the sun is shining, a lot of people with motorboats come down on the lake and when they pass close to me, there are large waves in their wake. So, I started getting hit by those waves and started using my hips to lean one way or the other. Also, on the Club Stretch run, people noticed my grip on the paddle as being too far, so they suggested me to move my hands closer. I did that and voila, all of a sudden all the roles became easier. Also, since then I have been practising rolls with flips the way they happen in the river i.e. paddle aggressively for a few strokes and then flip over, flip over with paddle in one hand, rock the boat front and back and then fall. Seems like I am very close to getting it reliably. Also, I tried rolling on the other side today, the muscles just don't understand what to do on that side, so after each failed try on that side, I kept rolling on the right side only.
Here are some pictures from Kayaking on Lake Sammamish 
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I have been doing a lot of it, but mostly on the lake. The river trips are far fewer owing to the fact that only recently I have started getting the understanding of the balance required to keep you abover the water (versus under it.) Also, my Roll seems to have gotten much better. I have not had to bail out of the kayak in a couple weeks while doing rolls. Must have been close to a hundred rolls without bailing out. I think I should start trying rolling on the other side. They say, rolling on the other side is akin to learning rolling all from scratch.
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Here is how a Kayak roll looks like:
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Here is the trip up on Cougar Moutain that S and I took on our bikes. It was undoubtedly the hardest bike trip I have ever taken. The climb up was torturous. About 1200ft in about 3 miles. S being leaner, fitter went up the mountain much easier than I did. I did make it however to the top. It took a bit more time than S and it took a bunch of getting downs and pushing the bike, but I finally did. The trip down was coasting with a lot of braking though.
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Started biking back to work since yesterday. The shortest path to the office is probably half a mile, but it is very steep. So, I decided that I will try to cheat the laws of physics by going further away from office and then coming back, hoping that the slope will be gentler. I went away from the home, probably a mile and took the 520 trail which runs by interstate 520 and biked to the office. Apparently, you cannot cheat the laws of physics. With every pedal on the incline, every fiber in my quads and glutes cried out for mercy. Oh well, the wonders of trying to get back in shape.
The levels of lake Sammamish, the lake I live by, have fallen quite a bit. River Sammamish originates from the lake and for a large part, it almost seems that the water is stagnant. Mosquitoes keep hitting my face as I paddle down. For rolling, some days seem to better than others. Today, out of 6 tries, I got two. Good thing is, the last attempt was a perfect roll. The Kayak Roll DVD says, "Try to end a session on a perfect roll to set correct muscle memory."
Went whitewater kayaking today after god knows how many weeks.
So, I have been kayaking on the lake a bit. About two or three times a week as and when I can manage it. My paddling is getting better. When I was doing Taekwondo, they said, generate power for punches from the hip, and now when I am white water kayaking, the same holds true. Generate power from the hip. Well, luckily, this time I seem to be getting it better. You really do need to paddle from the power of the hips and torso, otherwise, you are going to be putting a lot more effort, tire yourself easier and then start making more and more mistakes.
Also, I did three rolls. There was no confusion, there was none of the hesitation, mistakes or any of those things, but the one time I could have avoided taking a wet exit by rolling back up, it did not even enter my mind. I guess getting underwater, having the water moving really fast and keeping your calm and then setting up perfectly and then rolling up, well it takes a few seconds and the first instinct is to get the hell out of the kayak.
But, today, it was good. I think I have pretty much gotten the hang of eddy turns. No problems with eddy turns anywhere. Next step is developing a lot more stamina and loosening up the body and learning to loosen up the hip so I can be more balanced in wave trains.
Letting go.
There is time, and there is your choice. The time is limited and the choice is too. When you have figured out that you are not sure one way or the another and you are out of time, what do you do? Do you take the plunge, or do you back off? And once you have decided that you will back off, how do you let go? I once saw in Dawson's Creek, "There are no rights or wrongs, only consequences of your acactions." What is one to do when the clarity is not there. Ideally, you would hope that you have the clarity. Clarity is difficult to achieve, but when it comes, it comes. You cannot force it, it is a slow process that sets in, eventually. Clarity is not just understanding the consequences and accepting it. Clarity is when you are completely at peace with yourself. You know that any course of action that you are going to be taking is going to have consequences and you are completely comfortable with the course that you are going to take. It is an almost ethereal, out of body experience. It is almost like taking a dip in a mountain river on a hot sunny day. The cold water rushes by your body and you can feel all your extremities cooling down and all you can think of is that one sensation with a feeling of being relaxed. Alas, when you have got to make a decision, and you don't have the clarity, well, all you got is the consequences of your actions and the dull ache of letting go.
Ok, so I rolled! A bunch of times!
Now you will say, what the heck, why would I roll and why would I put exclamation marks after the statement. Well, I am taking kayaking lessons with the Washington Kayak Club. The state of washington and especially the area around seattle is full of water bodies. I live right on the lake Sammamish and the itch to get into the water in the nifty kayaks was too great to resist. My neighbor is a kayak instructor. She took me to a pool session one time and I liked it. So, when she suggested this class, I went ahead and registered for it.
Kayaks are frisky boats. They spin, they feel unstable (at least initially) and you go into whitewater using them. So all in all, it is a little bit scary and a little bit like learning to walk all over again. My neighbor has been a real support. She has a ton of kayaks and all the gear. I borrowed up pretty much everything from her. The boat, the paddle, the life jacket, the helmet, the spray skirt and the dry suit. Well. The boat that I borrowed is a little bit friskier than what newbies usually have and so I had a few tosses in the lake (wet exits is what we call them.) Then one of the instructors lent me an Dagger RPM which is a good newbie boat. It helped a lot. Anyways, back to the roll. So a roll is when your kayak tips over and your head and torso go underwater, and you use the paddle and your body movement to turn yourself back up again. So, at the end of the previous pool session, I successfully performed one roll. Washington kayak club (WKC) holds pool sessions all the time and pretty much everyone there is quite helpful; so anyways, after a lot of inertia holding me, I said what the heck and started towards the pool. In there, and I found a classmate of mine who was also there for some practice. We decided to help each other and I did the roll in the first time. I thought it was just a fluke but I tried again and it happened again. I did it in all probably some 10 times and had to take the wet exit twice. I feel happy.
Words have no meaning
But words are things, and a small drop of ink,
Falling like dew, upon a thought, produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.
-Lord Byron, English poet, Don Juan, 1819
People say words have power. Do a search and you will find numerous instances of the same. The odd thing about the phrase words have power is that it seems it is very context dependent. Words have power for them who associate meaning to words.
And then there is the story of Yudhisthara that I read in highschool. Yudhishithira was a man of his word. Even as a kid he would not do something that he did not completely understand or something whose implications were unclear to him. So, the story goes that once Guru Dronacharya asked all the students to learn the lesson "Always speak the truth." Next day he asked all his students about what did he teach the previous day. Everyone recited it verbatim, "Always speak the truth!" Dronacharaya then came to Yudhisthara and asked him about the lesson, and Yudhisthara could just not recite it. He said, "I have not leart the lesson." Day after day, the same story continued. Finally, one day, after many days of not learning the lesson, Yudhisthara came to Dronacharya and said, "I have learnt the lesson!" That was the day when he really got the meaning of the words and was finally able to ingrain the lesson in his life. And so the story goes. So, the moral of the story is that Yudhisthira got it, but no one else did, although they all were able to memorize the lesson immediately.
And that is why, I think, words have no meaning if you do not attach any meaning to them. In any social intercourse, some people actually mean what they are saying and others do not. This leads to an interesting situation because the same words put two different people on two different pages. You might snicker and say, "Eh, take life lightly. Don't take it so seriously." But then where do you draw the border. How do you differentiate as to where one means what they are saying and where they are not. Context can probably help you define meaning of words, but then again, not everyone is on the same page; not everyone understands the context the same way. As they say, commonsense is not that common.
I just think, better be judicious and conservative with what you are saying lest you convey more than you mean.
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