Canandaigua looms

The first of the Finger Lakes I'm going to kayak is Canandaigua Lake. I have a long history with this lake, as I've biked around it, swum the length of it, and directed a major triathlon on and around it. So, I thought I'd start my Finger Lakes kayak adventure there. Plus, my buddies had a party on it later that day, so I could get beer at the finish.

Accompanying me was my trusted sidekick Peter, the man who brings a feed bag bigger than his boat with him everywhere. He had about 40 lbs of food onboard for what should be (note this phrasing...) a 5 hour paddle, including, and I kid you not, 12 packages of Chips Ahoy cookies.

In an afront to the gods of weather, we elected to paddle north to south, even though there was a relentless 20mph headwind the whole time. Our rational was that the beer was at the south end of the lake, and we didn't want to waste any time having to drive back down once we finished. This turned out to be a fatal mistake, as what should have been a 5 hour paddle turned out to be an epic 9 hour adventure, with waves breaking over the kayaks the whole day, boats swamping us in the rough water, a relentless sun beating down on us frying us, and, my bladder on overdrive.

You can't really pee out of a kayak without tipping it over, so you have 3 options; dump the kayak and pee in the lake, pee on yourself and sit in it the rest of the trip, or pee in a bottle. Being a marginally sanitary green guy, I choose the later. Well, there was one thing that mom never told me about, that being that a full-grown adult can generate far more pee than a bottle can hold; and stopping cold mid-stream is a VERY difficult thing to do...So, picture this: I'm sitting in the middle of the lake, getting swamped with waves. I finish off a gatorade bottle so I have a pee bottle. I roll my kayak shorts down around my ankles, bottle-up, and, ah, relief is in sight. After about 2 minutes, I realize that I'm NOWHERE near done, the bottle is filling up rapidly, the water around me is cold, and I have to stop mid-stream. Not a good situation. So, anyways, I get through that situation, empty the bottle (sorry Greens') in the lake, reset, and continue to empty my bladder. Except, I now fill the bottle a second time! Now I'm thinking, "Hey, I must be loosing every last ounce of fluid out of my body" and begin to panic. I fill the bottle again, repeat the process, and about 3/4 through the third bottle finally run dry.

This happens 2 more times on the trip, and I've now gone from Lumpy to P-Boy. Well, the wind continued the entire day, we fought and fought and finally made the lake inlet, and then paddled over to our friends cottage for a beer. Which, we never got close to drinking, as we were both out cold with exhaustion the moment we hit the shoreline. We slept the afternoon away, with dreams of full gatorade bottles and chips ahoy in our heads.

Lumpy Out