A wonderful Good Friday at Rock Island with my kids, Lauren, Nate, Nick, and Stephen

March 25, 2005

70 degrees, sunny, 2,800cfs, and great company makes
for a perfect paddling
session at Rock Island. I ran into Lauren and her parents at Bino’s this
morning as I was getting Stephen to go boating. Lauren is 9, paddles a
Fun
1, and is one of my test cases for kids kayaking. She learned to paddle
with her dad and learned in a Fun 1. Today she paddled with the "big
boys"
at Rock Island. There are plenty of full grown kayakers who wouldn’t
venture into the hole at Rock Island after 10 years of experience paddling.
Well, one of the cool things today was watching Lauren decided after about
15 minutes of watching that she would try it. She went into the hole 5
times and only flipped once!

There is more to the story. I got to kayak myself and
had a great time doing some cartwheel rides, some big loop rides, some
big aerial backstab rides and mostly just spashing around in the water
in my SHORTY!!! Yippee! Stephen Wright and Nick Troutman are my current
paddling buddies beyond my kids, Emily and Dane. Clay is in WV with Huge
Experiences and won’t be back for another week.

Emily is getting way more aggressive in the hole using
the whole thing. Dane is really digging the wave on the shoulder and working
on Helixes, blunts, and backstabs.

The seal launch was sweet, the company great, and the
weather wonderful. Three hours of great training. I am still paddling
extra hard to be ready for slalom trials in June. Playboating alone is
great physical training!

🙂 EJ