kayak – Dare Greatly

September 5, 2024September 4, 2024

Well THAT Almost Ended Badly!

Late August/early September is when college students usually head off to school to continue their education. I had some fun jobs during college. One of the ways I kicked off my senior year was by starting a job as a Teacher’s Assistant during a half-semester kayaking class.

In my senior year I was Vice President of our kayaking/whitewater rafting club, and had already spent a good amount of time playing with kayaks in the college’s pool. I liked the job because it had hours that worked for my schedule and was fun to do. A lot of it was simple stuff: setting up and putting away equipment, helping students get sized for their boats, helping them get in and out of the water, and just kind of being another set of eyes while a class full of novice paddlers grew in their ability to operate out on the water.

On our first day the teacher went over the different types of equipment we’d be using. Early on we just focused on the boat itself, the paddle, and the skirt. The skirt is so named because it resembles that article of clothing. You step into it, pull it up around your waist, and cinch it snugly around your waist. When you sit in the boat (still wearing the skirt), you stretch the rest of the skirt (the hemline, if you will) around a lip lining the boat’s opening. When paddling through rough water or you end up capsizing, the skirt prevents water from entering the boat and swamping it.

It takes a little practice, but it doesn’t take long to get proficient at attaching the skirt to the boat. If you find yourself in a situation where you have to get out of the boat quickly, there’s a big loop at the front of the skirt you can tug on, easily breaking the seal and allowing you to exit. For safety reasons, one of the first things we did in the pool was practice flipping upside down while in the boat, then yanking on that loop so students got familiar with how to safely get themselves out of a capsized kayak.

If you’ve never used a whitewater kayak, they have sort of a different feel to them as far as how they move in the water. The keel is shaped differently from canoes or flat-water kayaks, so they handle differently. Designed to be more maneuverable in volatile currents, it’s easy to flip whitewater kayaks over if you try to turn them without flexing your hips to present more of the boat’s bottom toward the water you’re heading into (that might still be unclear; just know that it’s easy to flip the boat in a turn until you figure out how to do it). To gain experience, the teacher had everybody get into their boats, get in the pool, and have a friendly game of kayak water polo (no paddles, just hands).

It was a fun way for everyone to get used to how the boats felt in the water. Every now and then someone would hit a turn in a way they didn’t expect and end up tipping over. That team would be down a player while they dragged their kayak out of the pool (with some help from the teacher), got it drained, and got back into the game. It was a good way for the students to start putting together some of the basics.

The game continued for awhile, and everybody began gaining proficiency, so some of the students got more competitive. I raced against one of them to the ball, and I think the only reason I came away with it was because I knew how to anticipate the turn. He got there quickly, but he flipped his boat either reaching for the ball or trying to turn without doing the hip thing.

Whenever someone flipped during the game, we paused until we saw them safely exit the boat and their head broke the surface. I floated very near his boat, waiting, but he didn’t come up. I saw the boat shaking and his hands grabbing the underside of his boat, as though trying to push himself up and back, out of the kayak. For whatever reason, it wasn’t working; the guy wasn’t getting out of his flipped boat and he couldn’t get his head above water to breathe. Fortunately, we were in the shallow end of the pool. I pulled my skirt and rolled out of my boat into the water, then got to his kayak as fast as I could. Since time was a factor I skipped trying to help him exit the kayak and grabbed the stern of his boat, then twisted the whole thing hard so he was right-side up and could breathe again.

As the excitement faded and heart rates started coming back down to normal, we figured out the loop of his skirt was tucked underneath its hem. In his haste to get into the water, he had only focused on securing the skirt around the boat’s opening, and hadn’t paid any attention to ensuring the loop was easy to grab. When the time came to use it, it wasn’t there. It was like a fighter pilot needing to eject, but the ejection handle wasn’t there.

Is there any safety measure in your life you’ve been neglecting? The Bible gives plenty of advice about wise living. While few of its passages address situations as urgent as this, they nonetheless confront challenges every bit as dangerous. Are you hanging out with people influencing you negatively? Are you in a relationship the Lord wouldn’t approve of? The wisdom books of the Bible (Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon) provide plenty of insight on things to avoid and things to pursue. It explains the power of having friends you can trust (Ecc.4:9-12), the value of holding your temper (Prov. 19:11), the personal character we should strive to have (Psalm chapter 15), and numerous other bits of wisdom that can vastly improve the quality of your life.

Read these books, and then read them again. Reflect on different passages that stick out to you, and memorize them. When they help guide how you think and live, they help steer you away from the types of danger others fall victim to.

January 27, 2022January 27, 2022

The Safest Time to Kayak Over Waterfalls is When the Water’s Big

I feel like I’ve had a lot of “20-years later” stories either lately or coming up. (Kayelling, 9/11, attending the 2002 Winter Olympics). Well, Senior year of college was a busy time for me, I guess. Today’s post talks about an event that happened 20 years ago this week.

There’s a creek near where I went to college that had a pair of roughly 6-foot waterfalls that were spaced about 50-100 yards apart. During most of the year, this is a very scenic spot with a water depth of only a few inches, but during the spring rains and snow melt, the creek swells, the current becomes much swifter, and for kayakers, the water gets too big to resist.

A 6-foot waterfall doesn’t sound like much. I’m a little over 6 feet tall, so it’s no big deal when I look eye-to-eye with another person the same height as me. It’s a different story when you’re sitting on the floor, looking up at someone that tall. That’s sort of what it’s like when sitting in a kayak and looking at a 6-foot-tall waterfall. I’d been over a four- or five-foot waterfall before and it went very well, but it wasn’t in water this big and it wasn’t in a “must-succeed” situation where a second set of falls lay waiting beyond.

There were three of us going that day. We all slid our boats into the water and allowed ourselves to get a good amount of space between us. Our most experienced paddler went first and demonstrated the line we should follow. As the least experienced kayaker, I went second, and the third guy brought up the rear. I followed the guide’s line, and I hit the first set of falls perfectly. I paddled right over the edge and had a great landing, and it was exhilarating!

I’m not exactly sure what happened next, but I think I hit some kind of undercurrent I wasn’t expecting, and I flipped over. I can tell you from experience that it’s a very unsettling feeling to be headed toward a waterfall while floating upside down in a capsized kayak.

Even though the creek was swollen to several times its usual size, the water was still only about 18 inches to two feet deep. As I was upside down, my helmet bounced along the bottom of the creek bed. I moved the paddle into position to right myself, but I had to modify the technique because the water was so shallow. I think I was trying to decide whether I should try the technique I’d practiced countless times in the pool, or let go of my paddle and use my hands to try pushing off the bottom to get flipped back up, hoping to catch the paddle again afterward. I didn’t want to risk going over the second set of falls without a paddle, and this wasn’t really the best time to try flipping back over using a method I’d never tried before, so I went the traditional route, but the water was too shallow to make it work the way I’d practiced. I don’t remember how many times if I tried it, but between not knowing how far away the upcoming falls were and confronting a compelling need to breathe, I decided to bail out.

Without question, it was really nice to be able to take a deep breath again, but I still had to contend with some challenges. After dragging my head along the bottom and fighting against the creek bed to try to position my paddle, I figured I wouldn’t have any problem just standing up wherever I was. I faced upstream and got on my knees. My wetsuit stopped above my knees, and I later realized that being pushed along while kneeling on a stone creek bed tears up your shins pretty badly. I got up on one knee, but my sandals couldn’t get any traction. I think I tried on the other knee too, but neither try worked. With my back to the looming falls, I did the only other thing I could think of: I swam as if my life depended on it in a foot and a half of water.

Thankfully, I did NOT take a trip over that second set of falls. I made it to the bank safely and jogged downstream to catch up with the first guy, who recovered my boat and paddle for me.

Ever have something just go in a TOTALLY different direction from what you expected? Don’t let it get you down. Living a life for Christ is going to have moments where you simply feel overwhelmed or inadequate. Then on top of that, experiencing failures only makes it feel worse. I’m certainly thankful there weren’t too many people there to witness this embarrassing situation. My two fellow paddlers were extremely gracious, and they reminded me that outings with the biggest mishaps make for the best stories.

If things had gone according to plan, it would have been an amazing 90 seconds to experience, but it wouldn’t be a very exciting story to pass along. Don’t be afraid to attempt big things in the name of building Christ’s kingdom, but when things don’t work out the way you expect (because God doesn’t follow YOUR plan), learn from the experience and use it to either make the next time different or to benefit someone that reminds you of your unfortunate or inexperienced younger self. You’re not the first one to make mistakes, but maybe you can pass along the wisdom you’ve learned through hard-won experience so others don’t have to make the same mistakes you’ve made.

Lord Jesus, when I look back at all the crazy situations I’ve willingly placed myself in, and how unscathed I came out of them when I should have met with much more serious consequences, it’s clear to me that there’s something after those experiences You wanted me around for, and it reminds me not to waste this life. Help me learn from the past, be bold in following after You, and share the things I’ve learned with others. Also, I don’t know how many guardian angels you’ve assigned to me, but please…thank them and bless them in a special way for me!

December 16, 2021December 15, 2021

“Kayaking” + “Rappelling” = “Kayelling?”

(I apologize in advance to my email subscribers; there are a lot of pictures in this post. If it takes up too much room in your inbox, you can also check it out at https://daregreatlynow.com/2021/12/16/kayaking-rappelling-kayelling/)

Today is the 20^th anniversary of a very unique event that happened in my life. For those of you that are longtime readers of DareGreatlyNow, you know that I’ve had some strange experiences. When I call one of them “very unique,” you know it’s got the potential to be a doozy.

During my senior year of college, I was the Vice President of the whitewater kayaking and rafting club, which we called “Paddle Sports.” The club itself was having a great year, and the President (a buddy of mine, Bryan) and I agreed that we wanted to do something to further drive up the club’s membership for the following year.

Every Spring our college had a talent show, and Bryan and I determined to make a video that showed some of the fun things that could be done in the club. We used some footage of fun stuff we did in the pool and some trips in local rivers, and we wanted to combine it with shots of Bryan and I (and maybe a few others) doing weird stunts using some of the club’s gear. As an example, one of the things we wanted to do was to get footage of the two of us bombing down the college’s small ski slope in one of the club’s smaller whitewater rafts.

Well I forget why, but we never got around to that one. We did, however, come up with another idea. Both Bryan and I had some background in rappelling, and between the two of us we had a fair amount of equipment. We came up with the grand idea of recording me rappelling down a cliff in a kayak.

This was a pretty intriguing idea to us, and we actually put quite a bit of thought into it. In November we scouted a location with a very tall cliff and set up the rope, but then when heading down in a normal rappel just to check things out, I discovered that the cliff was too tall, and the rope didn’t reach all the way to the bottom. That’s a dealbreaker. It was a tough break, too, because there’s not a whole lot of afternoon daylight at that time of year and Bryan and I were very busy as the semester went on.

November scouting trip; kayak in the background. Need a ladder or a longer rope.

Fortunately we were able to get our schedules to line up again at the end of the semester, on December 16^th (it’s funny how far some students will go to avoid studying for finals). We found another spot on the same wall that was a little shorter, but if we didn’t pull it off this time, it probably wasn’t going to happen. There was likely to be too much snow on the ground to make it work in January.

It’s funny how much “ridiculousness” you’ll put up with for the sake of doing something challenging. We had to hike a kayak, two ropes, harnesses, and gear up a huge hill and through the woods to get to the top of the cliff. We needed to use a very steep wall in order to reduce the chance of getting the boat hung up on something on the way down. Thankfully most of this wall was very steep, with the exception of a sloped portion at the top.

Second attempt. Bryan’s turn carrying the boat.

We got topside and found a spot where we could set up solid anchors. After confirming that the ropes reached all the way to the bottom, we each did a test descent to get a feel for things, then decided to go for it.

Bryan and I both knew a good bit about knots and anchors at the time, but rigging a kayak for descent was something new for us both. Circumstances necessitated that we set up two systems, one for me and one for the boat. I couldn’t just ride down in a kayak without being harnessed in; I might fall out, for one, and kayaks aren’t designed to be suspended from the bow and stern while holding someone in the middle. Also, kayaks are heavy; if I were harnessed in and the boat wasn’t, I’d have to have Superman’s lower abdominal strength to hold the kayak level during the descent. Besides, this way if something absolutely nuts happened, I could get out of the boat and still maintain independent control of both my body and the kayak. (I just wouldn’t have any shoes on during that event because I couldn’t fit in the kayak while wearing them.)

Well, I slid over the edge of the cliff in the kayak, but I ran into trouble almost right away. As I slid sideways down the cliff, the bow got caught in a shrub growing on the side of the cliff. It wouldn’t have been a problem, except for a funky dip in the terrain where the tip of the stern got wedged. Due to this freak terrain feature, I was stuck in a boat, I dunno, probably at least 60 feet up, without even being able to reach the wall with my arm.

It seemed like no amount of shaking or rolling would break the boat loose. I was stuck for almost 25 minutes doing one long sit-up while trying to figure out what to do. The double-rope system ended up coming in handy; Bryan held the trailing end of my line taut from below while I got out of the boat and stood against the cliff (with no shoes) while shaking the kayak loose. He literally held my life in his hands as I let go of control of my rope to focus on breaking the boat free. (Thanks Bryan…much love!)

After that things went much smoother, though it still took almost 10 minutes to descend the rest of the way. It’s slow going in a kayak that was meant to conquer whitewater rather than cliff walls. All told, it took about 35 minutes to get from top to bottom when it could have been done in less than 60 seconds without a kayak.

Well anyway, we showed the video to the student body during the Spring semester. A few new faces started showing up at our pool sessions, but I think most of the rest of the students were permanently put off by the demented maniac in a boat.

Fast forward 20 years, and I’m still waiting for that Mountain Dew or Red Bull sponsorship to materialize. Know what though? That experience is part of the recipe that makes me who I am today. Who rappels in a kayak? Unless you know some hardcore paddlers, you’ve probably never met anyone that’s done it. For me though, it’s helped shape the way I think. While many people scoff at crazy ideas, I’m one of those that say “well hang on, just because it’s crazy doesn’t mean it’s impossible.”

Unusual? Yes. Unconventional? Absolutely. Here’s the beauty of it, though. When God made you, He broke the mold. You can search the world over, but there is simply nobody like you. The places you’ve been, the people you’ve known, the experiences you’ve had…for better or for worse…all combine to make you who you are. Quit trying to fit into the image of what you believe other people think you should be, and just…be you. God saw you coming millennia ago, and He knows exactly where you’re going.

You may not have combined multiple adventure sports, but maybe you’ve done things that make you feel like it’s hard to fit in or like you don’t have a group of people you can relate to. Just know this: if you’re yourself…no matter how weird or zany that may be…God won’t have to “figure out” what to do with you or how to use you to grow His kingdom. There’s been a role waiting for you all along.

So if you’re a Christian, go ahead. Be you. It’s who you were meant to be all along, and God’s got plans for how He’s going to use you.

September 19, 2019September 18, 2019

You’re Not the First

Here’s a paddler going over a 10+ foot drop

By the start of senior year of college, most students are thinking about their last classes and life beyond their degree. I was thinking about it being my last year to take advantage of all the institution’s adventure sports programs.

I was into kayaking and whitewater rafting at the time. Coming back to college at the end of summer meant that the water in the local creeks and river was still warm. For kayaking, that was nice, but it was also the time of year where the flow rate was the lowest, so a lot of creeks and rivers were either too low or too slow to be enjoyable. Thankfully, we had a solution for that.

Not far from the college was a man-made lake with a concrete dam. The lake provided summer boating opportunities for visitors and residents. Every year, about this time in September, the dam operator dropped the lake’s water level roughly 10-15 feet to kill most of the shallow water algae over the winter. That way the water in these areas the following spring and summer would stay clear of excessive plant growth.

The faculty adviser for the college’s paddle sports club, a guy named Tim, was in touch with the dam operator. The operator was pretty cool about releasing the water in a time and manner that Tim would request. If we wanted a longer, sustained flow, this guy would accommodate us. If we wanted a bigger, shorter burst, he’d make it happen. The two would agree on a schedule for when the release would begin, and prior to that date’s arrival, Tim and a few other people would walk down through the creek bed with chainsaws to clear potential obstacles. It was a custom-ordered whitewater run!

I had only become interested in kayaking the previous academic year. I’m not sure why, but I got it into my head that I wanted to go over a drop in a kayak. A drop is just like it sounds…it’s a sudden change in the elevation of the creek/river bed. It could be a shelf that spans the whole width of the body of water you’re going down, or maybe a formation where one side of the river has a big drop while the other side has a more gradual slope. As it turns out, this run had a drop of probably 4-5 feet right at the beginning…great for a first-time drop. When I got the invite, this is the feature that sold me.

The day arrived and I met up with a few other guys. One of them, a maintenance guy at the college, was named Charlie. Charlie’s hobbies included woodworking and generally “MacGyvering” things. He carved his own wooden kayak paddle. He also fashioned a wooden bumper for his car when it needed to be replaced. His family hosted a number of us for dinner once, and his kids showed off a system of pulleys that allowed them to raise or lower their beds depending on whether they wanted more floor space or to go to bed. Charlie was going to walk me through my first drop.

We drove to the lake, geared up, and carried our boats down to the creek. We put in just downstream of the spillway, and the drop wasn’t far beyond. Charlie had walked me through the process a bit, laying out the mechanics of what needed to happen and the order in which they needed to happen. Much like I had learned years before, it was important to not reduce speed as you approach the drop.

Charlie was going to be the first to do the drop, so I could see where to do it and how to approach it. He worked out a signal with me before he went over the edge. A drop of 4 or 5 feet isn’t that much, but when you’re sitting in a boat that’s barely on top of the water, your eyes are only about two feet off the surface, so it looked much higher. After Charlie went over the edge, I wouldn’t be able to see him. Once he was safely down and he was ready for me to proceed, he’d stick his paddle up in the air and wave it back and forth, and that would be my “green light.”

Deciding that we were both ready, he went for it. He started paddling and kept going, right up until the bow of his boat dropped, his stern popped up out of the water, and he disappeared over the edge. A few seconds followed, and then I saw one end of a hand-carved wooden paddle stick up in the air and start waving around. It was my turn.

I went for it. I started paddling, and got faster as I neared the shelf. As I slid over the ledge, my boat’s bow dipped and for a fraction of a second I was in midair. The bow then sliced deep into the water before the kayak’s buoyancy bounced it back up to the surface. It was easier than I thought, and it was cool!

The thing that made this part of the adventure so easy was that I had someone right there to walk me through it. It was someone who had been through it before, who knew what to expect, and was physically right there to help me in case I got into a jam. In this situation, Charlie mentored me through the challenge successfully, and it was much different than if I had been there by myself and decided to try it and see what happened.

How about you? Do you have a mentor that can help guide you through a situation that’s foreign and scary to you? This life is full of unknowns, but it’s also full of people with lots of experience that you don’t have. Don’t be afraid of taking a shortcut to spare yourself some painful lessons by learning from others’ hard-won experience.

Maybe you’re more like Charlie. You’ve been around the block a few times. You see someone who’s enthusiastic but inexperienced, and it looks like they’re in an awfully big hurry to get themselves hurt or stuck in a bad situation. Why not see if they’re willing to allow you to help channel that enthusiasm into something productive? Don’t do it because you think it’ll make you look good; do it because you can help them.

December 6, 2018December 5, 2018

Punch Above Your Weight

After I started going to Paddle Sports pool sessions in college, I got hooked. (See this post for a refresher.) It’s a little tricky to learn how to kayak in college, though. Unless you’re in summer school, you miss out on some of the year’s best kayaking weather. You start a new academic year at the end of summer, so even if you start playing around with kayaks in the pool right at the beginning of the school year, you’re going to have to work very hard at it to get out in the whitewater before winter.

Fortunately there was a happy medium near where I went to school in western New York state. There was a canal that flowed along (I think it was the city of) Rochester; parallel to the canal some group had built a kayak course. A kayak course is a series of 25 gates that paddlers are supposed to go through in sequence without touching any of the poles with any part of your boat, paddle, or you. You’re supposed to go through green gates while moving downstream, and red ones while coming back upstream. The water wasn’t flowing fast, but it was moving enough to make a difference between paddling in a pool and paddling in real water. It was a good way to work on technique, control, and gain a better understanding of how kayaks handle in moving water.

Since this was my first time in a kayak outside of a pool, I wasn’t very fast. On my first run I moved through the course slowly, trying to figure out how a kayak behaves in a current, seeing where I was going to need to make turns, cut across areas of hardest flow, and spot the more difficult places in the course. In a rookie moment, I even flipped over and couldn’t right myself. Embarrassingly, I had to slip out of my capsized kayak in a shallow little pool of water as these much better paddlers zoomed through the course. Even that was important though, as it was my first bailout in moving water (I’ll have a future post about a much more dramatic bailout later).

It’s kind of a strange tie-in, but in your service to Christ even your perceived failures are important. If you find yourself needing to bail out of a kayak, it’s probably because you’ve failed at righting yourself. Once you get used to bailing out of a kayak in a swimming pool, it becomes very easy, because there’s no current, there’s no major danger, and there’s probably someone standing by, ready to jump in and help you if you really need it. Bailing out in moving water, even on a little course like this, is different. The water’s cold, you’re wearing a life jacket, helmet, and other gear you don’t normally wear in the pool, and if you open your eyes underwater, you’re not going to see much. Whether it’s kayaking or some other aspect of life, failing during difficult circumstances increases your confidence and abilities during easier circumstances. Failures can make you better.

There’s an expression for attempting something that you’re probably not qualified or equipped to try. It’s called “punching above your weight.” In boxing, the two fighters in a given bout are generally very close in weight. That’s to make sure that the fight is fair. If two boxers are both in great shape, with little or no fat on either one of them, yet one is 60 pounds heavier than the other, it’s probably not going to be a fair fight. When fighters are very close to being the same weight, they might have different body types, but they’re close to being evenly matched. If you’re punching above your weight, it means you’re taking on someone that has an advantage in defeating you. In the Bible story of David and Goliath, David was definitely punching above his weight according to men’s standards. By taking on an obstacle or challenge that’s “beyond your weight class,” it makes the challenges that are in your weight class seem easy. Over time it also brings once-feared challenges within your class, and prepares you to take on something bigger and more formidable.

To continue with the kayaking course…as I spent time trying to figure out the best way to approach certain portions of the course, I started paying attention to how other kayakers were doing it. It was fun to see them shoot through the course and try different approaches to the various gates. “That was a cool move…oh, okay, and that set him up for the next gate.” I learned by watching others, and by listening to conversations that more experienced paddlers were having.

You might see where I’m going with this. The people you surround yourself with are the people whose attitudes, habits, and characteristics you adopt. You become more like them. Hanging out with people that are better or more experienced at something than you are will make you better at it. It’s tough to maintain a strong drive to improve if you’re already the most capable one in a group. Similarly, if you hang out with people with negative attitudes, poor character, or bad habits, it’s a fair bet that you’ll soon find yourself with the same outlook as them or doing the same things they are.

God’s going to give you challenges in life. Some you’ll feel confident about handling and some you’ll be more doubtful about. You might even fail at some of them, but it will be for a reason/purpose that you might not see right away. Some people get discouraged by failure and stop attempting the grand things, opting instead to take on things they believe they have a more reasonable chance of accomplishing.

It’s good to share your wisdom and experience with people less skilled than you, but also understand that this practice won’t help you grow your skills, it will only slow their atrophy. By all means mentor or teach those folks, but remember to spend time punching above your weight, too. It will make your current weight class seem easy, and that overwhelming challenge seem a bit less scary.

Time to open the floor for discussion. Has God ever placed a seemingly impossible obstacle in your path, only for Him to walk you through it successfully?