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| The chronicles of Sanjeev Dwivedi |
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.
| sanjeev@pratapgarh.com |