Damn the Torpedoes! Full Speed Ahead!

Santiago, Chile

For many years I'd wandered without any real concrete direction. I could compare this to waiting in a rail road station. We've all had long lay-overs and find how terrible waste of a day they are. Well in essence I was wasting my life. I was putting off important steps in life such as finding a home, getting married and pursuing a career.

I've had some rather devestating setbacks in life and perhaps it was a type of shell shock. -Experiencing a severe earthquake (8.2) with numerous daily aftershocks gave me a perspective on that. Maybe it was even like being bucked off a horse repeatedly, getting one's breath knocked out time and time again. Anyway, there was a point at which I just stopped getting back in the saddle. Perhaps a certain amount of convelescing was necessary, but then the convelescing began to stretch out a bit.

Something miraculous occured. Some lady finally found me to her liking enough to marry me. Shock! Well this has really put a new perspective in life. Now I find myself gazing at the horizon, trying to figure out how to have a home and a career too. Suddenly It's ocurred to me that I've been living more or less without purpose. So many of my dreams had been smashed and somehow I'd just stopped dreaming.

Proverbs 29:18 Where there is no vision, the people perish...
Anyway, I found that making goals is absolutely essential to a happy life. It's the difference between your favourite meal prepared without any seasoning or the same dish prepared with a correct porportion of spices.
OK, I'm not going to say something stupid like finding a purpose outside of living for God is as important. I am going to say that God has created us to live and enjoy living. The best metafore I can come up with is comparing it to a well adjusted family. Ideally your children will take into consideration your desires for their life, but hopefully your desires for their life won't inhibit them from discovering harmless personal pursuits.

Anyway, quite suddenly I've rediscovered the joy of making achievable goals and discovering their limits. I suppose, -and this is because I also do a bit of sailing, -it was like I was out on the water without aim. This is an easy way to get lost (which isn't always a bad thing) and find yourself in for more than you're prepared for. Anyway, just because the wind and currents aren't going the direction you want doesn't mean you can't get there. If your destination is due west, but the wind is coming from due west, you can spend a lot of time tacking, zig-zagging with the bow of your boat pointed north-west and south-west. You can even find yourself fighting a current and needing to wait until the tides change or needing to plot a course outside of the current. A squal can come up and force you to strike all sails or you can be becalmed with all your canvas up, but not budging an inch, -except for the backwards direction an unfavourable current could be taking you. To get to a reasonable destination just takes a good combination of skill, patience and some providence.



So what happens if you find a goal is unreasonable? Find another goal. If you're out sailing, and find that no matter how hard you try, you're just not going to make your original destination in the time you've allowed, then it's time find another destination; you can't stay out on the water without direction indefinetly. If someone stomps on your dreams and causes enormous damage, don't give up, but put things back on the rails and get underway again.

Saabs, Hardshells and Folding Kayaks

I've been wanting to do a little solo river paddling for some time; ever since I did some on the Mohican all those years ago. It's so difficult to find people to go with you, especially if you aren't a hard core river rat. If I'm hard core anything material, it would have to be a Saab and Klepper guy.

I spent the last year not touching either while I was in Chile. I suffered withdrawal from the kayaking and so when I came back to the States, I found myself within a stones throw of the Colorado, on one of its not so hard core sections.

Some how one the guys I associate with here in the Grand Valley happens to also be a not so hard core 'yaker, who also happens to like to climb 14ers (Peaks in Colorado of over 14 thousand feet) and mountain biking. We have a few other areas in common, enough that I can tell we'll get along fine... except he likes hardshells. Oh well, no friendship can be perfect. Oh, he also told me I needed to sell my car and get a Colorado car. I've lived in Colorado longer than anywhere else, so I find this a bit perplexing. I've never missed a day of work in my life in Colorado on account of my Saab not being able to get there. In contrast, I've seen a lot of "Colorado cars" -AKA SUVs in the ditch shortly after a storm, -from my driver's seat. This ratio is usually about 10 to 1. But that is all another story.

Hardshell people tend to lose patience with folders for the amount of time it takes to assemble a folder. It takes me about 20 minutes, if I'm not rigging to sail. This is usually about 19:59 minutes too long for those of the non-folder persuasion. So I decided to assemble the kayak before we met.

One of the reasons I rationalized the ownership of a convertible was because I was a folder guy. Who needs to car top, if you can fit your 'yak in your trunk? Anyway, I have a special bike rack that fits into a hitch receiver for carrying bikes This same rack I've found works well for transporting oversized items that don't want to fit inside the car, -skis for example. It suddenly occured to me that the t-shape of the rack would support one end of the Klepper and with the top down, I could support the other end on the back seat. It worked fine.

I arrived right on time at our meeting place, -at my friend's house. He took one look at my 15.5 foot kayak and said "Dude, that'll never fit in the back of my truck!" A Ford half-ton? I don't know what he was talking about; tailgate down right? I offered to partially disassemble, but he didn't seem to hear me. Anyway, there really wasn't a way to accomodate his 'yak on "top" of my car.

Part of the benefit of paddling partners, aside from safety, is that you can leave one vehicle at the put in and another at the take-out. Obviously we're going to have to work on logistics a bit.

I also thought my new friend would know the Grand Valley a bit better than me. He really didn't know where to put in straight away and we wasted probably 45 minutes exploring river access. We ended up with what I had originally thought; put in at one State Park and take out at another. The only problem was that we had spent time wandering around in my car with the folder riding in back, so when we finally found a place to put in, it was getting late and my friend thought he wouldn't have time to run the nearly 7 miles in his shorter river kayak. The river was running at what I estimated was between 3 and 4 miles per hour, so I imagined it was going to take him nearly 2 hours to float it. It was 3pm, but I imagine it would have been another 45 minutes before we could launch his boat too. I debated and finally decided to go solo. He thought is was going to take me about 2.5 hours. In a sea kayak? Try an hour if I steam and an hour and a half if I take it casually. Anyway my buddy agreed to meet me 7 miles down river in 1.5 hours. So I put in at Palisades "River Bend Park" and planned to take out a "Corn Lake State Park".

This gave me time to go casually. I have to say that despite my desire for companionship, I was really enjoying myself. There wasn't anyone else on the river and despite a couple larger rapids and some sweepers, it was an easy go. As I went along, I thought of the early kayak adventurer Herbert Rittlinger. I don't think he ever paddled in the States, but he always paddled rivers in folding kayaks similar to the one I was in and often completely alone. It really wasn't a half bad trip.

I knew I'd be going right past my mom's farm, but I didn't know what it looked like from the river. I was about 30 minutes into my trip when I remember there were powerlines that crossed my mom's place which helped me spot it right away as I floated past. I could just see the top of mom's home. The bank there is a bit overgrown, -part the reason it hadn't occured to me to launch from there. I might explore it some other time.

The most notable thing about the whole trip was more the head wind, which slowed my trip a bit. My kayak kept wanting to wind cock. It was hard to tell if this was the handling characteristic from such a strong following current, but I'd never experienced such a heavy lee helm at sea, except when facing wind, which made me feel it was probably 90% of that factor. The other most notable thing was the barn swallows swooping in droves over the river. It just made the trip that much more enjoyable.

The trip was soon over and I met my friend at "Corn Lake". I think he was hoping to avoid paying the park entrance fee. Just as I was landing, some other guys came up as if to launch, being followed by the Park Rangers. Apparently they had tried to avoid the entry fee themselves. The rangers asked us for our park pass and then graciously offered to sell us one. Apparently the other guys had no intention of paying a park entry fee and bolted. The park rangers gave chase, leaving us to try to pay the park entry fee on our own. I dutifully waited for a short while, but also couldn't find a pen. In the end, we left without paying, but not because of intent, but for lack of a pen or a ranger to provide a pen.

Repealing the Chilean Tax on books.

For whatever reason Chile has value added tax on books. Of all the things I encounter in Chilean Society, this one rubs me the wrong way. Having a lifelong battle against my nemisis the TV, I naturally would like to see more people read. Since books have such a high tax here, naturally fewer people read anything more than newspapers and comic books. When people do need books, for example for school, they photocopy them. A textbook that would normally cost about US$40, can be photocopied and bound for around US$4. The government naturally doesn't get a penny of revenue from copied books. Of all the tax laws that shoot a society in the foot!

This one really hit me full in the face once. I had received a package from the US in which a friend was returning a book. The friend thinking she was doing me a favour decided to shrink wrap the book. The parcel needed to pass through customs. The customs agent thinking the book was obviously a new book estimated a tax. The tax came out to be as much as the original price of the book! I was outraged but there was no convincing the agent the book was in fact used!