July 15, 2005

Gatorade doesn't Float

It was a hot day as Joan and I paddled around the end of Mason Neck. A group of young people were swimming and drinking heavily off the stern of their boat between High Point and Sandy Point. As we neared one of them kept yelling for us to come closer so they could have sex with us, and another person jumped off the boat after passing a drink to someone and started swimming toward us. We turned our kayaks out toward the bay to stay away. Assholes.

We paddled on around the neck but it was hot and a clap of thunder made up our mind to turn back. This time we headed much further out in to Occoquan Bay to avoid the drunken swimmers.

Back at the launch we played a little. Paddling around on the backs of our kayaks trying to maintain our balance. A woman sat on shore awaiting her maiden voyage but the thunder concerned her so she was waiting to see what would happen.

Further from shore I needed my webbed paddle gloves out of my rear hatch, so Joan opened it up for me and accidentally dropped the cover in the water. It sank like a rock and I thought it was gone. Joan sank the end of her paddle in the water to mark the spot and I drove my paddle into the sand also and wet exited. The water was only waist deep and after a few minutes of searching with my feet I found the cover.

I put on the gloves, thought about how I would accomplish the roll and went over, trying to use the momentum to help carry me all the way around. The first time I missed it but came close. I knew it would be about timing.

The second time I went over I focused on the timing of when to fire my hands to roll up. And to my surprise I came up with a little momentum to spare. But by this part of the day I was pretty tired and the 6 or 7 attempts afterwards failed to get me back up. When I failed I'd pull the paddle off the front deck and roll up, but the last two attempts resulted in me wet exiting because the paddle hung up in the deck rigging. The timing seemed to be there but my energies were drained from the heat.

Back in my boat I decided to end the hand rolling practice for the day and reached for a fresh bottle of Gatorade from my day hatch. I played with the day hatch a moment, and found that it will float. But as I pulled out the Gatorade, I fumbled it and it splashed into the water. In my mind I knew it would float back up so I didn't reach for it when it fell. I sat there in disbelief as the bottle went straight down. When I realized what happened, I drove my paddle into the sand again and rolled over to wet exit.

I passed Joan my boat to keep from drifting away while I felt around with my feet for the bottle of Gatorade. I must have searched for 15 minutes but it was nowhere to be found.

It was a bit of a defeat for me. The Gatorade was going to be a celebratory treat for getting the first roll with the web gloves. And I felt quite guilty about leaving trash in the water. There was nothing left to do but call it a day.