KAYAKING--

Once before in my life an opportunity to kayak began to emerge.  My Ohio bicycling friend Gary Courtright and I discussed the idea of some fishing-by-kayak back then and he sent me home with one of his little boats and instructions to watch his provided VHS tape on the subject, then attempt to apply whatever new knowledge I managed to obtain, with his boat on my pond.

At that point I had never even been in one of those precarious, in my view, means of nautical locomotion.

I watched the tape, managed to both load and extract myself from his contrivance, several times in fact, without liquid disaster, and took a little spin around the pond just for good measure.  Then, there my kayaking experience ended.

I think Gary may have found his last girlfriend about then--soon, as it turned out, to become his wife.

Let about 10 years slide by and you'll find me as an enthusiastic geocacher, wintering in Vero Beach, FL with my lady Sue and new friends Greg and Leslie Cornet from the Columbus, OH area.  They are skilled bicyclists, hikers, bird watchers, geocachers and *gulp* kayakers.

...and, there are lots of geocaches on the various islands in the intercoastal waterway which flows conveniently by our collective winter digs.  Upstate NY friend Betty (Boop) Maus, an experienced kayaker herself and co-local snowbirder, joined in the chorus of promoting a kayaking-geocaching adventure and about 10 minutes later Greg had me scheduled with a local outfitter to provide my vessel for the next day's outing.

The next day arrived about 10 minutes after that and I found myself listening carefully to the outfitter as we stood on the launch area in the nearby Round Island State Park and I was treated to enough advice that it was likely I would survive the day's expedition.

That's Betty, Leslie and Greg (above) shortly after we arrived and retrieved one of the island caches.  By then I felt like we had traveled at least 10 miles and were still short of our turn-around point.

When we first started to cross open water Greg pointed out a sign near our intended landing point.  It looked so far away I wondered if I could even see it clearly with powerful binoculars.  "We're going to paddle there?" I squeaked.

I knew people who would have been checking for their passports if they were facing a trip that far.

Actually, I was glad Sue had chosen to miss this adventure.  She gets queasy watching water fill ice cube trays.  I was getting queasy myself as my arms threatened to go on strike about half way to our first destination.

Greg had opined the surface conditions likely were somewhere between calm and "light chop".  

Ha! I thought as a quartering wave splashed aboard.  It felt like we were traveling fast enough to be towing a water skiier.  On the other hand I was mystified and wondering why the island seemed to remain impossibly distant, why my arms began to feel like they no longer belonged to me, and how in the heck I could wipe the splashing water off my glasses.

Actually our entire circuit that day was a wee bit less than four miles and while I felt the arrival of rigor mortis in my upper body that evening I awoke the next morning suffering surprisingly little from the previous days aquatic exertions.

WooooHoooo!  I'm hoping my body waits awhile longer before it discovers how old it is.