Kayak Time!

TOP: Where I spend most of my kayaking time...sunning on the shore!
BOTTOM: Peter with "the phantom raft"
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Today Peter, Koz, Jan and I went out for a long paddle on the Genesee River...Avon to Rochester (about 20+ miles). We start early morning; the river is quiet, calm, and meandering. A lovely day for a paddle.
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At one point the river really starts meandering, looping back upon itself time and time again. We head north, south, east, and west in the space of a couple of hours.
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Peter and I round a bend, and as it customary, we wait a second to insure that Koz is with us. Seconds turn to minutes, and about 10 minutes later, I decide to head back upstream. He is polish you know, so god knows what manner of evil he has fallen into.
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As I round the corner, here is Koz with a stupid 2 man raft tied onto his kayak, and he's paddling like he had a barge tied on...which, in effect he did, since the raft was very low on air, had about 50 gallons of water in it, and was full of sticks, bug, and other assorted river scraps. It must have weighed 200 lbs.
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Koz yells out "How far is it to the finish?". Oh, only about 18 MILES!!!!!!!!!!!
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We finally talk him into ditching the raft, as the month would be over in 5 days, and he would still be pulling it home come July. Later, during a food break, it comes around a bend and drifts right by us. Thus, the "Phantom Raft"
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STORY #2:
Jan was going to start with us and go half way, but after dropping her car off midway she got a bit spooked by the distance and rapids. So, she decided she'd ride back with kathy, pick-up her car, and meet us closer to the end for a shorter paddle. As they're riding back to get her car, kathy shares the info that this is her first time ever driving the car with the trailer on, and that she can't back it up...or turn it for that manner. She can barely go forward. So, she'll drop Jan off at the corner closest to where her car was. Which was all well and good, except for the fact that the corner was OVER A MILE FROM THE CAR, in the middle of a freakin' cornfield. So jan being jan, says "thanks for the lift" and walks on down to the car. An hour later she gets back to the road, sweaty and corn-skewered.
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STORY #3:
We get to the finish, and Peter and Koz head out to pickup the trailer, while I hang out with the boats next to the launch (a man's got to do what he does best....mine is lying in the sun). As I'm waiting there, one inept boater after another hits the launch. One guy pulls in with his girlfriend (clearly a girlfriend, as a wife would have been far more emasculating), gets out of the boat, and proceed to watch it drift downstream...he never tied the boat to the dock...Me being the nice guy I am (after I finally stop laughing uncontrollably), put-in and paddle down and get the boat. I play tugboat and have to push the boat back upstream...notably, it weighed less than Koz's phantom raft.
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A fun day on the Genesee River, as I train for my Hudson River paddle. And to think, just a week ago I touched all 5 Great Lakes in 48 hours!
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"Tugboat" Lumpy out