Paddling Perspectives
Your Cosmic Paddling Questions Answered
June 2021
by Kent Walters
AUTHOR’S NOTE: This column is intended to be entertaining at the expense of truth and accuracy, but I sneak in some good information as well. It is up to the reader to distinguish between entertainment and reality.
Q: I notice that the same people go on Bruce’s trips a lot. Why is that?
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Portz |
A: I think the people who show up more than once to a Bodson Marathon are masochists.
Let’s review what happens on a typical Bruce Bodson adventure:
- Get up at 03:15 on a Sunday morning
- Prepare/eat breakfast, pack a lunch, and get ready to go
- Leave by 04:00 (remember, this is a Sunday)
- Arrive by 05:30 under a bridge in the dark somewhere remote and scary-looking
- Run the shuttle to another scary looking bridge in the dark and race back to the put-in
- Rig up the ropes and hoists for getting the kayaks and people and gear down the embankment
- Reset, splint and bandage a compound fracture in an arm or leg
- Get on the water by 07:30 and paddle, paddle, paddle for 39.6 miles (until about 16:30)
- Eat lunch until 16:40
- Paddle, paddle, paddle until 20:30 (about 15.4 more miles)
- Draw straws for who will shimmy up the embankment and set up the hoist
- Get all the boats, gear and bodies up to the top and strap the boats onto the cars
- Figure out what to do about the extra car if someone didn’t make it
- Reverse shuttle
- Redistribute boats, people and gear
- Drive home and arrive there by 23:49
There are very few people who survive to try it again, and fewer still who survive and are willing to do it again, so that keeps the population of repeat paddlers constant.
Q: You seem very happy. What is it that creates this extreme level of happiness in you?
A: I attribute my ecstatic level of happiness to yoga, Pilates, kick-boxing and jujitsu.
Follow-up observation: I did not know you did all of those things.
A: You are a keen observer. I don’t do any of them. That’s what makes me so happy. That, and not participating in the Bodson Marathons.
Q: My niece went to an alligator farm in Florida. Why do they call it a farm?
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Pamphet |
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Alligator Farming |
A: Excellent question. I am thinking that Gary Larson could have made a whole book out of that one theme. The image of a farmer in bib overalls watering his rows of alligators as they are snapping at him creates a cognizant dissonance that would fit right in to Gary’s line. Developing the theme, when you start one of these farms, one of the first questions you have to consider is if you are going to raise GMO or non-GMO alligators. Another consideration is, are free range alligators really happy alligators? And, do you really care how happy they are if they are snapping at you while you are watering them (farmer kicks alligator)? Right back at you, Bob!
Q: What words of wisdom from Jerry “The Observer” Seinfeld apply to Bodson Marathon kayaking?
A1: Sometimes the road less travelled is less travelled for a reason.”
A2 (applies to the non-survivor situation): “Now they show you how detergents take out bloodstains, a pretty violent image there. I think if you've got a T-shirt with a bloodstain all over it, maybe laundry isn't your biggest problem. Maybe you should get rid of the body before you do the wash.”
MUG O’ THE MONTH:
OVERHEARD . . .
