kayaking on the mighty chattahoochee • 05.09.09
ok, so it’s not entirely mighty, but it’s still a good time. i had promised lil some time back that we’d get kayaks. i finally made good on that promise a couple of weekends ago. we couldn’t get regular hard plastic ones, b/c our condo is not quite big enough to accomodate 2 10.5 ft boats, and we couldn’t store them on the balcony b/c the guy who stole lillis’ bike off my balcony (and is very lucky he didn’t come back to get the other bike b/c i set the motion sensor light and slept with the sliding glass door open so i could beat the crap out of him) might somehow scale the wall and steal those, too. soooo, we ended up going with the advanced elements kayak from rei. it’s semi-rigid (that’s what she said) but folds down into a duffel bag. takes about 10 minutes to get them set up and water ready. they were a little slower than a regular kayak, but not too bad. plus they’re pretty stable, so that was nice. we plan on using them a ton this summer. anyway, here’s lil out for a spin in the new ‘yak.
and here’s a turtle that she later ran over with her kayak. he then proceeded to hold his breath underwater for like 10 minutes until she left. by the way, he’s about 2 or 3 inches across….it was a wee turtle she accosted.
here i am. not at all worried that my right foot is in goose poop, about to hop back in for some more paddling. i gotta tell you, it is quite difficult as a novice to actually paddle back upstream in some of the swifter places. we could definitely use some paddle coaching, but in general, i think when we want excercise, we’ll paddle up and back, and when we want fun and relaxation, we’ll use two cars and put in and pull out in different spots. btw, i’m just now realizing that i am completely incapable of describing kayaking without it sounding suggestive.
the next day, we were back at the chattahoochee park (about 10-15 minutes from the house)
going for a hike. the park is located at “f”. we live at about the middle of the letter “c”.
we leave shortly for our trip out west….san fran, yosemite (and hiking half dome), and then tahoe for jeremy’s wedding. should be a good time, but the half dome hike is somewhere in the 9 to 12 hour range, so we need to get our butts in shape. we’ve done a couple of two hour hikes, and and up and down twice back to back at stone mountain (pictured below),
but i think this hike may in yosemite may have its way with us. we’ll see.
