Mother’s Day Kayaking

I was dying to do something more interesting than a simple hike for this week’s experience. I found several outdoorsy classes but most were booked for several weeks or even months. Luckily, at the last minute, friends of ours mentioned they had gone kayaking at Tempe Town Center. My interest piqued, I asked my husband, Nik, if he would be willing to go kayaking with me…he very obligingly (albeit less energetically, said ‘okay’). So, Mother’s Day morning, Nik called to check availability and, low and behold, we had a kayaking reservation for that afternoon. Blogging disaster averted! You may have picked up by now that, although I like to plan for things, I’m not always very good at the execution of them.

As my expertise in boat-like activities is based solely upon watching the 1994 “The River Wild” with Meryl Streep and Kevin Bacon (in which, by the way, they are on a raft and not a kayak), I thought it might behoove me to check out what Google had to say.  First, wear swimwear or shorts (not cotton) – tough, I wore jean shorts and a cotton tank-top. Second, wear neoprene footwear – nope, I’ve got tennies and that’s it. Three, wear a hat – check, I got one of those. Score: 1 out of 3…good enough.

I did read through the particulars of how to get situated (such as scoot your butt firmly against the seatback, put the balls of your feet on the footpegs, blah blah blah), how to actually maneuver your kayak by using your paddle (the scoop sides are supposed to face the rear, the longer edge of the blade is on top), and the different paddle strokes (which, let’s be real, I understood the concepts, but nothing would really stick until I got some practical application).

We arrived at the boat rental stand a little before our appointment. Nik, being the only one of us who has ever been on a kayak before, got in the double-kayak with our 9-year-old daughter, Zoe, in front. They loaded up first and even Zoe was given her own paddle; then off they went. My turn. I got situated gracefully enough not to upend my kayak. I looked down at the floor and saw that, apparently, kayaks have false bottoms because I saw a round hole in the floor of my kayak leading to the real bottom, which had lake water already sloshing in it. Having forgotten to grab a zip-lock baggie to shove my non-waterproof phone in, I asked the attendant where the best place to put my phone would be so that it wouldn’t get wet. His response was that I would get wet from the waist down. Good to know. I am not proud of it, but I tucked my phone in my shirt. I wouldn’t have brought it except I wanted to get one good photo of my kayaking debut.

Educational moment: the hole in the cockpit (yeah, just like a pilot) is called a “scupper hole” and its purpose is to let water drain through it…it also means you’re gonna get wet.

I was pleased to learn that I was able to maneuver my kayak at a decent beginner level, although not very quickly. Once I got the hang of it, I got into a rhythm and heard the “slosh…slosh” of my paddles scooping the water and didn’t hear much else. I enjoyed the quiet much more than I thought I would and, once my kayak got moving at more than 2mph, I could feel a nice, subtle breeze. I saw quite a few birds and only one dead fish, possibly the victim of a clobbering over the head by an enthusiastic paddler. I’m sure there were many more live fish but the water was a murky green.

Not long into our hour-long-rental did I realize that I was in for a better workout than I had planned. It just so happened that the muscle group Nik and I had worked out that morning was “chest and tri” …complete with our 100 pushups. Okay, so only half of mine were the “real” pushups while the other half I did on my knees, and my form was definitely not pretty, but, dang it, I finished my hundred pushups. And paddling my kayak, I could definitely feel that I had done every single one of them so I was perfectly content going at my leisurely 3mph pace.

I putzed around in my little kayak down the river, across it, and back up. Nik and Zoe were never far away, usually a bit behind me, which I thought seemed a little odd, since there were two of them and Nik has about a hundred pounds on me, most of which is muscle.  At one point, my daughter said “Hey, Mom, we’re gonna beat you!” to which I responded, “Of course you are, you’ve got Dad on your team!”

Zoe did an awesome job trying to use her paddles…at least that’s what it looked like. Later, Nik told me that she tended to leave her paddles in the water, creating a drag and resulting in him paddling three times as hard to merely travel in a straight (ish) line. Then when she did paddle, she kept splashing him in the face. Thankfully, it was a gorgeous day: sunny and 98 degrees.

Toward the end of our hour, Nik (whose arms were even more tired than mine) led us back to the dock. Zoe nearly clotheslined herself when she held her paddle horizontally trying to go through the two posts on either side of the docking station. I was quite proud I hadn’t even come close to capsizing my kayak and when I disembarked, I didn’t even care that my entire backside was drenched with murky fish water because I had fun.

Thankfully, Zoe and Nik had a great time, too. We stopped at QT for some drinks on the way home and I grabbed some M&Ms to share.  No one had complained even once about being hot and tired or having to deal with crowds, which helped make my Mother’s Day an excellent day indeed. I wonder how many more kayaking trips I should take before I can kick it up a notch to whitewater rafting.