What Was I Thinking? Vol. 4 and 5

WEEEEEE! Ow.

I've gone kayaking exactly twice.
Exactly twice I thought I was going to die.
Afterwards.

Place: Wales, UK
Time: November 1997
Story: There I am, paddling a single boat alongside a bunch of American strangers, all enjoying the ridiculousness of kayaking in the cold when my boat tipped. Not only did it tip, it tipped and threw me against a huge rock covered in barnacles. Painfully sharp barnacles. Then I'm underwater thinking, ok how do I get out of this damn thing? There really wasn't any panic, I was way too shocked to think anything coherent. I struggled for a moment until suddenly the boat released me and I surfaced, grabbing onto the upside down boat like a bewildered animal clutching a piece of wood. Turns out the girl behind me couldn't control her boat and kept ramming into mine. The instructor paddled over immediately. Are you ok? Are you ok? I'm looking around thinking, what the hell just happened? I said, I'm ok. I guess. When I got back into the boat and tried to paddle I realized my hands looked and felt like I had dipped them in a bucket of broken glass. And that I could have drowned. I loved every minute of it.


Place: Upstate, NY
Time: August 2005
Story: There I am, paddling a single boat alongside Angel and Wonderturtle thinking, damn this is hard work. But I carry on, being my foolish self much to their delight and getting stuck on a rock, stuck going backwards, and shooting off to the opposite of the river to look for our landing point down river. I'll go check! When we got back to our camp and settled in for some dinner, I realized I could not lift my arms without feeling a surge of unbelievable pain throughout my body. Every time I tried, a new wave of nausea washed over me so I eventually gave up. After the girls helped me change I tried to lie very, very still until it passed and I fell asleep. Or I died. It didn't help that I kept laughing at my own idiocy. Blackened veggie dogs, 3 cold smores and a night spent in the rain later itsallgoo. There was no way I couldn't love every minute of it. PS that's a picture of a sleeping ass.