Last weekend was the annual Western Michigan Coastal Kayakers Association symposium. It runs from Thursday evening through noon Sunday and is pretty much two full days of various classes, events, talks and socializing with other semi-local kayakers. Since Doug and I started kayaking in ’05 it has kind of marked the start of the season.
This year ‘our’ group consisted of Doug, Josh, Megan and me. The Dresslers were going to come (no one who reads this will know who they are anyway) but they were saving their vacation time for their Baranof Island Circumnavigation. Yeah, I’m jealous of that.
Anyway, back to the symposium. I’ve gone now for the last four years 05-08. The first year, Doug and I had to learn everything we needed to know about kayaking so as to go on stupid missions without excessive endangerment. The second year we were integrating Callum and Josh into the fun. The third year we were taking what classes we needed to bone up for our IDW/ICE. This year, I didn’t have a solid ‘goal’ for the weekend. Doug was teaching, or at least assisting, and Josh and Megan still had useful classes to take.
Not to sound overconfident, but beyond my person practice and tweaking, I have taken most every class offered there. I am certified to teach, but am not really comfortable doing so with such a large group. In hindsight, I should have signed up to instruct but only as an assistant, not a lead. I will say that taking a class from the guest instructors was good. They were Leon and Shauna from Body Boat Blade in Washington. It’s always interesting to see new methods of teaching beyond those that I was taught with. I did claim instructorship for the one ‘private’ class taught by them for exactly that purpose.
I had to head out on Sunday night, so I didn’t get to participate in the putting it all together paddle that morning, which is always a fun time to practice skills with a group. Overall, the weekend went well. I will admit that it was overshadowed by other events in my life which should not be taken as an indication of the general enjoyment of the weekend.
