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HomeNL-2020-10 Paddling Perspectives


Paddling Perspectives: Your Cosmic Paddling Questions Answered
October 2020
by Kent Walters

AUTHOR’S NOTE: This column is intended to be funny 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: What is your opinion of the jet canoe?

 

NL-2020-10 KW PP


Video

 

A: I have a few opinions about this:
  1. Wow, it took a lot of work to take the peace out of paddling.
  2. I wish I had access to that kind of equipment and resources (but for other things).
  3. If I was 40 years younger (that would make me 28 – yeah) . . .
  4. NIMB: Not In My Bayou.


 

Q: What is the best canoe for beginners?


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“Best Canoe?”

 

A: According to Google, the “Lifetime Wave Youth” (see photo above).  I swear, I’m not making this up!  If you trust search engines, please recalibrate your thinking according to this feedback. At least it’s light (only 20 pounds), and it would fit conveniently in Alice’s Sienna.

 


 

Q: What is your verdict on the transparent canoe/kayak?


NL-2020-10 KW PP
Transparent Canoe

 

A: I think the featured transparent hull would not be worth the money ($2,500 +$300 S&H + tax) on the Brazos.  Carrying that thought a little further, and referencing the amount of “character” on the hull of my Jackson Karma, I think the best I could expect out of the transparent hull after a couple of trips would be translucent.  Then again, you could add a “Hello Kitty” decal and make everything all right.

 


 

Q: What is an estuary?

A:  An estuary is a place where you voluntarily avoid things or don’t do certain other things.  It is a strange word, derived from “eschew” (to avoid using or abstain from) and “ary” (a suffix meaning “place of”).  So, connecting the dots to our paddling adventures, an estuary could be a bayou where you are practicing avoiding alligators, or a lake where you are practicing not wearing a mask in preparation for returning to normal life.  Perhaps an example that could keep this straight in your head would be the image of going into a biker bar if you are trying to avoid seeing “Hello Kitty” graphics.


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Aqueduct: A Good Place To Eschew Shade

 


 

Q: Groups of things have some funny names, like an embarrassment of pandas, a cauldron of bats, a conspiracy of lemurs, a blessing of narwhals, a brigade of canoes, etc.  So what is a bunch of bananas called?

 

NL-2020-10 KW PP

 

A: It’s called a “bunch” of bananas.  However, and this is where it gets interesting, a single tier of the bunch is called a “hand” of bananas, and a single member of the hand, or what we as normal English-speaking homo sapiens would call a “banana”, is called a “finger”.  So in the photo above, what you are seeing is half of a hand of bananas.  This is where the implied association with my own personal hand starts to lose its luster.  Ripping a finger or two from a hand and peeling the skin back from the meat of the finger further degrade the analogy.

 

Perhaps a better question would be, “Who is in charge of complicating our language so unnecessarily?”  It may be high time to lynch a few poets – but I digress (as usual).

 


 

Q: Why did you drop out of your own Big Bend / Rio Grande trip this year?

 

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A1: Mexico published their Rio Conchos release schedule, and there will not be enough water to float in the Rio Bravo/Rio Grande this fall.

 

A2: The Fall 2020 Santa Elena Canyon trip is a casualty of the universally irresponsible reporting and consequent hype about the COVID-19 virus (no, I’m not at all bitter about it).  My wife, Nina, has totally bought into the highest levels of coronavirus hysteria, currently at DEFCON 4 (same as the Cuban missile crisis and the Gulf War) and she is not on my wavelength to just take prophylactic OTC Quercetin/Zink and Vitamin C (COVID-19 begins as a very easy-to-manage respiratory infection).  Caring and sensitive husband that I am, I have to support her. 

 

Based on the same irrefutable logic and methodologies employed by the news machines and their political overseers, Nina has established the following non-negotiable guidelines for my kayaking:

  1. No more than two other people in a group (that’s 3 total)
  2. Within an hour of home
  3. No multiday trips through the end of this year, probably to be extended into next year

Hence, no Big Bend this year, and probably no Buffalo River next April.

 


 

OVERHEARD . . .

NL-2020-10 KW PP

 


 

MUG O’ THE MONTH:

NL-2020-10 KW PP



The author, Kent Walters