AUTHOR’S NOTE: The intent of this column is entertainment, usually at the expense of truth and accuracy, but I sometimes sneak in some good information along with all of the drivel. It is up to the reader to distinguish between entertainment and reality amidst all the circumlocution and misdirection in these sketches.
Q: What do I need to know about kayaking during the total solar eclipse on April 8th?
A: Follow night kayaking rules - have a while light visible 360 degrees.
A lantern on your head should do the trick.
Speaking of the eclipse, I am truly fortunate on this one because I live in its path. I don’t have to drive anywhere. I can go out on my deck at 12:31 PM and watch it progress to maximum coverage at 1:49 PM for 3 minutes and 22 seconds – assuming it’s a clear day, and then watch a replay of the interesting crescent-shaped light between leaf shadows as it regresses to its end at 3:09 PM.
Q: Canoes used to be made of a material called Royalex® that weighed much less and was just as stong or stronger than the cross-linked polyethelene they are made of today. Why aren’t canoes offered in Royalex® anymore?
A: Al Gore (inventer of the internet), Anthony Foucci, Ralph Nader, Donald Trump and the globalists were able to build a case that the manufacturing process for Royalex® was contributing to Global Warming and outbreaks of malaria, and the Royalex® canoes were judged to be unsafe at any speed because people began to believe that the Royalex® material would save them no matter how negligent they were, which Trump immediately tweeted as fake news, and the last sheets of Royalex® were sold to canoe companies in 2014.
NOTE:
A replacement material called T-Formex is still flying under the radar at its original developer, Esquif, and at Wenonah.
Q: How would a geomagnetic reversal impact our paddling activities?
A:Let’s start by bringing the rest of the audience up to speed, shall we? On our planet, magnetic reversals happen an average of once every 450,000 years, but the latest few had a gap of only 300,000 years between them. It’s been 750,000 years since the last reversal. Yikes! Is it a coincidence that the earth’s magnetic field has been steadily weakening over the past 200 years? This degrades our protection against all kinds of bad stuff (radiation) coming from our sun and space. Is this degradation from the coriolus effect, or is it something else? And the south Atlantic anomaly has been growing over the same period. Is this a symptom of a “wobble”, or is it the start of a full-blown, four-alarm magnetic reversal? And our magnetic north pole has been moving faster and faster – about 34 miles a year since 2000. And, as if that’s not enough, our sun is scheduled to initiate its magnetic reversal, which it does on average every 11 years as it attains its solar maximum in the Earl Schibe cycle. It seems to be happening a year early this cycle, and is more intense than originally predicted. Shit!
Okay, so how does all that impact our paddling activities? Well, we might have to apply a stronger sunscreen and wear bigger hats. Or I might set up a placeholder for a trip on a river on Gleise 667 Cc in the Scorpius constellation. It’s too early to tell which way this is going.
Q: Similar to my question last month, I have heard we should avoid strainers. What does a strainer look like?
A:
For more details about strainers in the rivers, please see Harmon Everett’s Safety Minute in the February 2024 newsletter.
Q: What did novelist and journalist Mark Helprin say about rivers?
Q: Which of the major classifications of philosophy could be considered most closely aligned with kayaking and kayakers?
A: I’m going to have to go with Jean-Paul Sartre’s esistentialism - we create our own essence by going out into the word, living, and making choices. “Life is nothing until it is lived … the value of it is nothing else but the sense that you choose.”
And I choose to go kayaking with my friends.
.
WORD OF THE MONTH:
Used in a sentence:
Kayaking is an essential part of the application of lagom in my life.
Q: What is a Z-drag?
A: This is where you are so tired after paddling that you park your kayak and fall asleep, dreaming that you are pulling your kayak up the bank when Bruce wakes you up and you actually have to do it.
GOOD ONE:
Q: What is this?
A: This is the front bulkhead assembly of my Pyranha Fusion. I can understand the bracket and black portions for the footrest, but I cannot figure out the function of the moulded orange piece. The Pyranha distributor in Tennessee was similarly fluxed. Any ideas from my faithful readers?
MUG O’ THE MONTH:
OVERHEARD (A Public Service Announcement):
PARTING THOUGHT:
The Compiler, Kent Walters