The Huron River is my Bitch

Alright… since Emily wanted me to post, but not about kayaking… she’s going to be disappointed.

I went for my second run down the Huron river today in my elf shoe of a boat. The first was last Saturday with the UofM kayak club. On that trip I dumped once on the first eddy, and was a little tense from there on out. The 40 degree water and equally cold air might have had something to do with that. I was able to eddy out, peel out and ferry which are more or less the essential skills and skills that I pretty much didn’t have last year.

This trip I was more relaxed. I didn’t dump immediately and found that I was much more confident when crossing eddy lines. I did roll a few times in a controlled fashion in the middle of the river just to cool off – 70 degrees in a When we got to the train bridge I gave surfing a go… come to find out it’s fun – and I was able to do it with what I will claim was reasonable competency. After this discovery I more or less ceased paying attention to skills practice and just played there and on the two more surfable waves downriver.

At the end there was talk of a trip for next weekend. My input was that I didn’t want them to plan anything that I wouldn’t be able to handle. Todd declared that this was not a concern and that I would be able to handle any trips the group did. That pretty much made me feel like hot shit.

Oh, and some dude was at the end taking video of stuff. He has my email, so if he’s cool I’ll get some video action of the group.

Also of note, there was a cute kayaker chick who caught up to us at the last rapids section. She had a black boat. Verifying my comment to Doug last year, black boats look sweet. She unfortunately was, with near certainty, married.