Tag: try something new

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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.

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Outside That Door There’s a 10,000-foot Drop

This is my hair BEFORE skydiving…

Once I finished college, I didn’t do anything related to my academic major. I needed a job, but didn’t have anything professional in mind, so I moved back in with Mom and Dad and worked construction.

Since I had worked construction the past few summers, nothing felt different initially. Doing the job as a college grad didn’t feel any different than doing the job the previous summer. It didn’t really seem strange until the end of the summer, when I ordinarily would have prepared to head back to school. To help mark the occasion of our entry into the “real world,” a college buddy and I decided to go skydiving.

We made some reservations, then showed up at the airport one Saturday morning early in September. We signed the waivers, took the short class, then waited our turn.

We signed up for tandem jumps. That’s where you’re connected to an experienced jumper that’s trained to do two-person jumps. You don’t have to focus on any of the flight plan, what your altitude is, etc. All you have to do is go along for the ride and enjoy yourself. My tandem instructor was Frank. He took us over to the tiny plane we’d use and walked us through the steps we’d later take when exiting the aircraft. After that we squeezed into the plane, took off, and started the climb to 10,000 feet.

(I paid extra to have my jump recorded, so there was a jumper with a camera and video camera on her helmet that went along. Unfortunately I don’t have a digital copy; it’s still on VHS format, so I can’t show it here. I can share some of the pictures though.)

There were six jumpers and a pilot crammed into a little Cessna. As we reached 3,000 feet, the door opened and one of the guys jumped out. I’m not sure if I was aware of this at the time or not, but it turns out this man was Don Kellner, who was (and still is) the world record holder for the number of sport parachute jumps. At the time, he had about 30,000 jumps or something ridiculous like that. In order to set and build on his record, he’d be on just about every plane that went up, and most of the time he’d hop out around 3,000 feet. He’d skip the freefall and deploy his parachute right away. They called this type of jump a “hop ‘n pop.” I didn’t see it coming, so all I knew was that the door blew open without warning and a guy fell out.

The rest of the climb to altitude was uneventful. It was my buddy and I, our two tandem instructors, and a videographer. They kept the mood light by making plenty of jokes, so that we’d stay loose and not seize up when the door opened and we stuck our heads outside the plane and looked down.

The time finally arrived. We shuffled around inside the plane to get connected to the instructors. We went over a few last-minute things, gave a final thumbs-up, and then they opened the door.

Inside the plane it got windy and much cooler than it had been on the ground. We inched up to the doorway, and the videographer actually climbed outside the plane and hung from the wing strut while she waited for us to exit. Frank shouted in my ear, I did what he had showed me on the ground earlier, and out the door we went.

This is the only part that feels like you’re falling

There’s really not a good way to convey what it’s like to freefall. It’s unlike anything else. There was only a brief fraction of a second where there was any falling sensation, and that was as you fell out of the plane. The ground didn’t seem like it was rushing up at me at all. It was just windy, loud, and amazing. You can judge for yourself just how miserable I was.

We fell for about 30 seconds, reaching a max speed of around 120 mph. It didn’t feel that fast, because there were no references other than people falling at the same speed (it’s not like you fell past a bird or a hot air balloon at 120 mph, for example). It was smooth. The video shows that Frank and I did some goofy stuff and made weird faces (imagine what kind of silly stuff you’d do if someone pointed a leaf blower at your face). Then Frank deployed the main chute, and after the rapid deceleration the loud rush of air gave way to a gentle breeze and relative silence as we slowed down to about 20 mph. He then gave me an aerial tour of the surrounding area as we continued our descent. Five minutes later we were safely on the ground, and I was ready to do it all again.

I fell over a mile and a half straight down and lived to tell the tale

I was hooked. Eventually I went back and did it again, and I’ll share more skydiving stories in the future, but for now here’s what’s important. When you jump out of a plane, there’s no doing it halfway. There’s no way to stay in the plane and at the same time experience what it’s like to leave it midair. You either leave the plane or you don’t, and the two outcomes are vastly different.

Despite what many people seem to think, access to Heaven is based on an either/or criterion: you either have a saving relationship with Jesus Christ, or you don’t. Here too, the two outcomes are vastly different. If you don’t have that relationship, you’re not going to get into Heaven.

“That’s incredibly intolerant!” It’s okay to think that, because it is. I serve an intolerant God. For some reason that seems to shock people. God doesn’t tolerate our antics and rationalizations.  I can’t really blame Him. Why should He? Imagine you had a child that wanted nothing to do with you, yet demanded all the benefits of being associated with you. On top of that, they replace you with someone else and still want the rights and privileges of being your child. How tolerant would you be?

These days there seems to be very little in terms of pure black and white. Just because the world looks at things with a “everything is relative” mindset however, doesn’t make it true or mean we get to water down God’s truth. There ARE absolutes. One of them is that the only way to Heaven is through Jesus Christ.

People will decry this view as having a lack of inclusivity. I’d counter that Christ was one of the most inclusive historical figures ever. He went out of His way to reach the dregs of society; He violated cultural norms by empowering and addressing women directly; and He advocated for fair treatment of foreigners.

The difference is that Christ wanted all people to hear the truth so they could make their own decision. He wanted everybody to have access to this information regardless of their background or standing. What they did with it was entirely up to them, but He wanted everyone in the world to know that the only way to God (and Heaven) was through Him.

You either have that saving relationship or you don’t. There’s no doing it halfway, and there’s no middle ground. The good…no…the great news is that you’re welcome to start that saving relationship right now. Even if you think you’re beyond saving or that you’ve done things that are too terrible to be forgiven, He won’t turn you away.

Maybe you’ve never prayed before, but if you’re open to this, pray this prayer along with me:

Dear Jesus…thank you so much for loving me even when I don’t deserve you at all. Lord, come into my life, change me, break me, make me new, make me whole…forgive me. Purify my heart. Jesus I believe you died on the cross and rose again three days later. You are my savior and one day I will live with You forever. But meanwhile, help me to stand for you. To shine for you, to make a difference and let your truth be known. Use me Lord, Holy Spirit fill me to overflowing. I love you so much! In Jesus’ name, amen.

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Fight the Need to Breathe

Learn to kayak in calm water before you hit the whitewater

The college I went to had a lot of programs and clubs that were geared toward adventure sports. The school’s gym had a pool, but the hallways that bordered it had windows so you could look in and see what was going on. A couple of nights during the week, I’d be walking through the gym for one reason or another and look through the windows to see a bunch of people kayaking around in the pool. During my junior year I finally wandered into the pool area during one of these sessions. The people in this club, called “Paddle Sports,” were whitewater kayak/raft enthusiasts.

I’d never kayaked before. It’s a little intimidating to see people practicing how to right a flipped kayak (while inside it), especially when that neoprene thing around their waist looks like it would make it difficult to get out if you really had to. I ended up walking into a pool session to check it out one evening, and the people seemed friendly enough. It wasn’t long before I was squeezing myself into a kayak and sliding off the deck into the pool.

For safety purposes, the first thing they had me practice was getting out of a flipped boat on my own. Until you get a feel for how a kayak handles, especially during a turn, it’s easy for the boat to flip over. Practicing this move first gives you confidence to start paddling around the pool and knowing that you can get yourself out of a jam if you flip over unexpectedly.

Once I was ready to move on to another skill, it was time to learn how to right a capsized kayak. This is where it got tricky, because not only do you have to coordinate a number of motor functions so they execute at the right time, but you also have to become comfortable enough with the process that you can suppress your survival instinct. Many people are able to lean far back during the maneuver to make it easier to roll on the long axis, and lots of beginners are able to figure out the right way to snap their hips to make the boat begin to roll, but what really takes a lot of getting used to is the idea that your head needs to be the last part of your body to come out of the water.

In order to make the roll work while you’re upside down, you position the paddle on the surface of the water by feel, you snap your hips while pulling against the paddle, and you lean back so your head nearly hits the stern during the roll. If you try to make your head come up first, it’s not going to work because the weight distribution and momentum just aren’t right. If you try it you might be able to gasp a quick breath, but you’re right back down again. When that happens you slowly move the paddle into position again, but the situation is more urgent now; that last gasp wasn’t a deep inhale. You start to focus on how badly you want to breathe, rather than the synchronization of the moves that needs to occur. You give it another shot, but if you lead with your head again, at best you might get another short gasp. If that happens, panic sets in and there’s much less of a chance that you can pull off the move on the third try. Part of the reason is that now there’s almost no focus on the technique; you only think about how you probably don’t have enough air to both give it another shot AND bail out if you fail.

Even with help from a teacher, this roll didn’t work because the guy led with his head

By then most people “pull their skirt” and slide out of the upside-down boat, happy to be in a pool rather than in the middle of some rapids somewhere. For most beginners, this experience of being panicked becomes crucial in understanding exactly why it’s so important to leave their head underwater until the end of the roll, and in helping to do something that feels completely unnatural: leaving your head underwater when all you want is air.

Living a life for Christ can be a lot like this. At times you have to fight against your own instincts and learn to prioritize your own needs lower than you otherwise would have. Sometimes the ability to do this only comes through failures or painful experience, but that experience helps you understand exactly why you need to do things differently. As time goes on and you intentionally spend time developing your relationship with Christ, you learn to act in ways that the world finds unnatural, but that you have come to understand as necessary for God’s glorification.

If you feel God pushing you a certain direction, but you’re avoiding it for no other reason than because it doesn’t seem like what a rational person would do, fight the need to breathe. It could lead you places you wouldn’t have expected.