The Spare Paddle

As you recover your balance from overturning in the rapids and start gathering up your water bottles, and stuff that has started floating away, you look down the rapids to see your paddle go merrily down the rapids, and disappear around the corner, and think, “Gee, I wish I had a spare paddle!”

Or the roar of the waterfalls is getting louder, and the river speeds up, and you dig deep to push your boat toward shore, but your $250 Warner carbon fiber light-as-air paddle catches in a crack in the bottom of the river and breaks off just above the blade, you think: ”Gee, I wish I had a spare paddle!”

Or two really pretty girls in bikinis come drifting down the river, after having lost all their gear and their paddles when they overturned just upstream, and they pretty much are at the mercy of the river, and you think: “Gee, I wish I had a spare paddle!”

Or you push away from a muddy bank just upstream from the rapids where you stopped for lunch, and the blade on your paddle, that has survived hundreds of trips over the years, snaps in two, right at the end of the shaft. You think: ”Gee, I wish I had a spare paddle!”

Or you foolishly decided to explore a small cave, because you know where it comes out, just a couple of hundred yards down stream, and as you get to the point where it is pitch black and you hear a waterfall ahead of you and decide to back-paddle and get the hell out of where you had no business being, and as you are desperately back-paddling, your heirloom wooden handcrafted paddle hits a rock and shatters into shards and slivers, you drop it and grab the spare paddle you miraculously remembered to drop in your boat before you started, and make it out alive.

Paddles break, or get lost, or drift away when boats overturn. You spend a lot of thought and money to get a good one that is light and strong. Don’t make the mistake of not having a spare. There have been several occasions where the cheap, heavy spare paddle has saved my life. It is typically cheap, heavy and ugly, and when you need it, it is the most beautiful thing you have ever seen in your life. How about you? Like a set of spare keys, it may turn a difficult, dangerous and traumatic experience, into a momentary annoyance.

Remember to take a spare paddle.

Be Safe Out There!

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The author, Harmon Everett