Monday, write prompts
I don’t normally do write prompts since I tend to write several times a day without being prompted. My brain never stops churning and there are times where the writing muse takes over and I ‘stop everything’ long enough to set down some notes. If I don’t, the idea scatters like a murder of Crows in a corn field being shot at. (You did know that a group of crows is called a murder, right?)
Todays writing prompt that I don’t use (🤪) was inspired by a short conversation on FB. “When did the kayak bug strike you?”
Well, it wasn’t in July of 2018, though that was the first time I owned one. The real bug bite was in ’92, when I lived in O-side Kaliforniastan. I lived across the street from a custom surfboard shop and the owner lived above it. I liked the atmosphere of the shop and would hang out when Shem, my GF, was in her creative phase and a complete terror to be near. He was getting out of the shortboard craze and going back to long boards when one of his customers came in, wanting a repair for a sea kayak. When they showed up with it, I was lost. Those lines and curves, just bedazzled me. Then I saw that same kayak out in the surf off La Jolla, near seal rock. I watched it out there for two hours, skimming the waves, backsurfing, rolling under breakers to come up the other side and get back out in the swells. I was in awe.
I wanted one.
A short spurt of shopping.
Hope sank like the Titanic with TWO holes in it. There was no way I could even consider $4000 for a boat that only held one person and was twice as long as my car (not quite, but I was driving a Fiat X/1-9 then. Where do you strap a kayak to a two seater sportscar? ) (and as I have found, the intial cost of boat/lathe/car/house, is just the admission fee, its the add-ons that get ya!)
26 years later, serendipity dropped the Carolina in my lap and the ramp up began. 2 years later ,,,
Three skin on frame kayaks, two white water yaks, and a stripbuilt expedition boat in process. And I have more investment in the peripheral gear than the boats themselves. Spray skirts, PFDs, wetsuits, dry tops, dry bags, floatbags, etc. I can outfit another paddler my size without stretching things and two if one has their own PFD.
And like I saw another person say, “I’m still on the swim team” meaning. I haven’t learned to roll yet. Oh, but so so close. Just need more seat time and a couple more sessions with someone in the know. B swears I only need one more session and I’ll be rollin’, but I am a pessimist. I know how stubborn I can be. I practice the different motions so the muscles know the routine, and keep the dialogue in my head. Soon,,,,
But that was the day I knew I wanted to kayak. I can even tell you the make and the designers name. It was a P&H Biadarka designed by Derek Hutchinson. I knew NOTHING about either the boat or Derek until recent years, but I remember the owner being VERY proud of his boat and who designed it. Now, I own books written by Derek, made a paddle based on one of his designs, and used some of his lines when designing Serena.
Talk about a long gestation period for a bug!!! LOL. It was just one of those things that kept getting shuffled to the side or to the back burner to simmer a bit longer. It was never a priority in my world, but it NEVER went away either.
I’ll be back at the running commentary of this Asylum we call 2020 tomorrow.
Words of advice
As another once told me: Everything you want or desire is on the othereside of HARD.
The more effort you exert, the easier things become until they seemingly happen without effort.
But if you don’t put forth that effort first, nothing will ever happen.
More later.
Wudooyadoo?!?!
When the world is topseyturvey and normality is asleep in the trunk of an old lead sled careening out of control without brakes?
Build a flippin paddle. Thats my answer anyways. Weather is just as crazy as the rest of the world right now with the remnants of a hurricane breaking over us, so paddling is out (its not the rain, its the electricity in the air that stops me)
Here are the pics.
Same length as my older paddle, same loom but I decided to try a shoulderless design this round.
Not finished, still a lot of shaping to do and sanding, sanding, sanding. I plan on glassing the lower section of the blade, more as protection than looks, from beating anti-social rocks into submission. The loom will be a linseed oil and beeswax mix I found works great and doesn’t tear waterlogged hands to ribbons.
Alright, thats that for the weekend.
A question to all the readers, please respond in comments. Do you feel something in your soul right now? A kind of ‘impatiently waiting’ feeling?
No need to elaborate in comments (unless ya really wanna) a simple thumbs up or down will suffice.
Somedays, the bear gets you
This ‘bear’ has been creeping up on me for awhile. Not real certain how it came to be, or if there is even a ‘fix’. But the problem is very obvious now.
The gunwales in Serena have warped and the entire boat now has a noticable twist from bow to stern. Seen on deck the bow leans to port where the stern deck leans to starboard. At the hull, the keel, which when I first skinned her was dead straight, now has an obvious ‘S’ shape and the cutwaters are leaning at odds to each other. Last time I had her on water was for rolling practice and she was quite damp inside after the fact. Being tied down to the rack probably helped keep things from being worse than they are (and a possible clue to a fix, maybe,,,)
She can be paddled, she will roll, but she is no longer the “Expedition class ” kayak. Sure, you could do it, and after a 1/2 mile, the correcting strokes would be as absent minded as my ex-wife, but you would feel it the next day. And getting into a ‘good’ boat would have you flustered in seconds until your hind-brain adapted again.
I’m tempted to try this and see if it fixes the issue. Fill her with water and let it soak in for a period of days/week. Drain it out and clamp in the rafters of an out building over the winter. Let the frame ‘relax’ by being wet then ‘train it’ with the clamping. Over the winter because the humidity slowly shifts from “scuba req’d” summer months to “dry out a mummy” winter chills.
That will likely be my course of action as I have time and money tied up in her . If it doesn’t work, I’ll strip the frame, clean it up and put in on the market as a conversation piece. I’ve seen yak frames in th Rafters of seafood places a time or two, and if she isn’t a good boat afloat, she can be a great wallflower for others to enjoy seeing.
Keep watching,,,,
I’ll keep saying it. Watch this stuff and you are gonna want to learn more about it.
The basics aren’t hard. If you were to want to start ‘mining’, thats a whole different game, but learning what it is and how it is used; that, you want to learn.
Seeing how the last couple of posts about this are showing growth in credible markets, I am seeing the beginnings of a snowball effect. Keep watching.
Personal hurdles
One of my biggest issues and one I have fought time and again is ‘perfection’. I say it all the time; ‘I’m an imperfect perfectionist ‘ and it has been my Achilles heel since time out of mind. I’ve always been of the ‘if you want it done right, do it yourself” types. Even now, DIY is very much the center of my universe (and likely always will be for much of what I do.). When I was touring, it worked for me, but only during the shows; load-ins and load-outs were ‘hands-off’ thanks to IATSE and Teamsters unions, all depending on where we were and how the house was setup. New York was the worst for me and I would have to jam my hands deep into my pockets to keep from jumping in: directions by voice and head nods only. Otherwise, the unions would go to break, and I’m not talking about a 15 minute smoke break here, but schedule busting, budget eating hour long lunch breaks.
Well, that hurdle is one I am facing again, from a different perspective. I want money to work for me, but there are only so many hours in a day available to me.
Heck, everyone is limited to the same time frames, so how do you ‘get more time’?
Hire it out! Leverage with other peoples time. The saying is “build your dream or get hired to build someone elses” and that is where my learning curve is at right now. I’m trying to build that dream and finding there are things that will be far better for me to pay others for than to do myself. Like spending an entire saturday doing yard work, blech! If I can hire a local kid to do it for me, even if I have to pay him $50-75, I come out ahead as that frees up my time to do those other things that make money, and more than I am paying him. He’s happy, I’m happy, and my yard doesn’t look like an abandoned field.
Now where did all those kids split to,,,
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Addendum: this goes back to those questions I began asking myself a few months back, and is an answer to the last one. If you aren’t buying time, your spending it.
Or wasting it,,,
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