East River Kayak

The Miracle of the Water

2005-06-06T23:30:00.000-07:00

Sunday's trip was epic: perfect sunny skies, big wakes from all the boats and the language-less perfection that the water sometimes affords us. How to describe it? You could have been there a thousand times and not known the particular combination of conditions, circumstances and friends that made the East River at least twice as lovely as anything in clear tropical waters.

Beyond a rather embarrasing farmers tan I've a permanently re-adjusted sense of the city and myself to carry around like a giant lollipop at disneyland. At the Niketown run tonight everyone wanted to know what I had done this weekend that was so much better than running more loops around central park (and I must admit, I do love to see all my favorite landmarks and shrubs pass by)... the east river? Yes, it is lovely this time of year. Even more so from a handmade wooden kayak.

Birthday Party on the East River.

2005-05-20T12:50:00.000-07:00

Although it was officially billed ("officially" being the emails that we circulate to each other during 'official' work hours) as the dinner party paddle, once on the water it turned out that it was Tom's birthday! In grand style we followed the current up to the Socrates Sculpture Garden in Queens and had a gourmet treat of whatever everyone managed to pick up at the last minute at the local organic market.

Tom brought his son Ben along while another boatbuilder Fong, promised to join once his latest creation becomes seaworthy in about a month. Still time for a full season...

Fong brought up the great idea of having an asian style tea house on a small outcropping near the hell's gate. Only paddlers would be able to get there and it would have to be a traditional chinese or asian ceremony. I'm envisioning a water tight portable gong-fu travel set (I'll be sewing that for at least a month...) and maybe a costume. Since I'm not asian, I figure just looking like a homeless tropical fish (kayaking gear) is probably ceremonial enough. Otherwise I'll need to rent a kimono. Thankfully Robert is a documentary filmmaker and it might be captured for all time.

The big giggle this time was the canned tangerines. Initially brough because of my bachelor-fabulous kitchen standards, it was elevated to new heights when passed around like snuff among baseball players. We had to fight off the scurvey somehow...

Then perhaps feeling the modern surrealist context of the sculpture gardens Robert plucks a tangerine, seemingly from the water, looking as if he had plucked a still wriggling gold fish, held it aloft ofer his open hell-mouth and let it swim to it's own watery demise. It could only be followed up by the news story that had come out in the new york times that day of three teenagers who managed to surpass all existing slapstick comedies upon running aground off Coney Island. Yes, that coney island...

And all's well that ends well. We got back in time to watch the sun set behind the perfectly clear sky and twinkling buildings of the manhattan skyline.

My photography of the boats

2005-03-08T21:53:00.000-08:00

I took some bad-ass pictures of the red devil. Thats my day.

A New Year of Kayaking!

2005-03-08T14:13:00.000-08:00

I can hardly wait until our first paddling trip this spring. Right now the new boat building shop is in preparation.