Tag: Kayaking

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Monkey In a Boat

2013 01 05 Boats at Deview

Our young friend Monkey has been nosing around the edges of our kayaking hobby for a few months.  She and her family went with us one warm day last summer on a Remmel-to-Rockport trip.  I think they all enjoyed it, but I think Monkey enjoyed it a little extra.  Since then she and Mandy have talked about boats several times. She spent a few days with us over the holiday break, and it worked out that I could take her on a group trip to Bayou Deview on the Saturday before school started again. Continue reading “Monkey In a Boat”

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Snow Days

Mandy’s out of town, leaving Bryan and I with quiet days home together on holiday break. On Christmas afternoon, it began to rain, and slowly the rain started freezing on the roof and on the bushes and on the trees. And on the street. And then it was ice. And little pine-tree branches fell on our house. And then it was snow. It snowed for hours, and when we woke up the next morning, we had more snow than I can remember seeing since I moved to central Arkansas.

2012 12 26 Snowy Doghouse

Like a little child, I put on my boots and my rain pants and I went outside. But like the grownup my father taught me to be, I shoveled our sidewalk and then our driveway, throwing the white stuff off into the yard, making strips of piles of snow alongside the pavement. I love snow. I love looking at snow, and playing in snow. I even love shoveling snow. I love every single thing there is to love about snow. Continue reading “Snow Days”

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Merry Christmas (Observed)!

First there was Christmas (observed) at our house.  Since Mandy’s always in Tulsa for the first half of her holiday break, we always open presents either before or after that trip.  This year, Saturday the 22nd was the day chosen to observe the gift-giving part of our holiday.  We kept things pretty simple this year, and most of our gifts to each other involved needed outdoor gear.  A stack of books grew as we opened our presents, too, as it always does.

2012 12 22 Gifts

We’ve tried to move away from using lots of wrapping paper and toward reusing gift bags and lidded boxes.  But I think some of our presents may have gone a little too far away from ‘festive’ toward ‘cheerlessly utilitarian.’ Continue reading “Merry Christmas (Observed)!”

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Ocoee Trip

Yeah… Mandy and I are punting on this post… here are a few photos and a video. Suffice to say, we had a great time and will be back.

[vimeo 50865613]

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Rockport

Mandy learned to roll her new XP9 before school let out. Then she left for six weeks in Tulsa. She was only back for a week or so before leaving on her New York trip. So really, she didn’t get to spend much time at all in a kayak until the first week of August.


Then, when she came back, she flung her whole 100 pounds into kayaking.  We expected her to take a few tries to roll again, maybe even needing another lesson or two.  Nope – she nailed the first roll she tried in the UALR pool.  She’s spent every available piece of August on the water, working hard on kayak skills.  Mid-month, we bought our friend Renee Hanshaw’s Dagger playboat for her. Continue reading “Rockport”

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Swiftwater Rescue Class

We just got into this whole paddling thing this summer and here we are deciding to sign up Mandy and I for a swiftwater rescue class. The class is taught by some very experienced locals who have received training and certifications over the years from a national paddling organization. They are trained not only in how to conduct a swiftwater rescue, but also how to teach the swiftwater rescue skills and how to train other teachers.

What is “swiftwater rescue?” And why would we noobs be signing up? And why isn’t mom getting trained too? Here’s the course overview for the 20 hour class we took: Continue reading “Swiftwater Rescue Class”

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Paddling School

This year, since we just bought boats, we decided to enroll in the ACC’s ‘School of Recreational Paddling.’ In order to feel useful (I like to feel useful) I wrote this article about it for Arkansas Outside. Rather than writing a separate blog post about Rec School, I’m just going to plagiarize my own work and cut and paste it here.The Arkansas Canoe Club is about forty years old, and they’ve organized training weekends for thirty-seven of those years – Canoe School evolved into Whitewater School, and then about ten years ago they began offering a Recreational School as well.  That experience shows in the really good programs the club puts together.  Those good at organizing organize.  Other paddlers work to be certified instructors, and they teach the classes.  Experienced boaters who are trained and comfortable with safety hang toward the back of the groups, and are available to help students with fitting issues and one-on one instruction.  These are people who love what they do, and further, they’re GOOD at it.

Continue reading “Paddling School”

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We Has Boats

Well, we did it.  After a couple of weeks of semi-intensive research both online and in the water, we settled on what we wanted, confirmed our choices on the lake during the Ouachita Outdoor Outfitters spring “Demo Day”, wrote the check, and picked up the boats.

We figure that this year, we’ll skip our usual out-of-state week-long vacation in favor of buying the boats and then taking a couple of super-long weekend trips to boat around in our home state. Continue reading “We Has Boats”