Here I go, calling myself Kayak Woman all over the internet and y’all are probably wondering something like, “Well, she calls herself Kayak Woman but she never seems to do any kayaking. I bet she just sits around and hangs around on the internet in front of the soap operas all day.” Roight. The truth is, although I *love* to kayak, I have not been in a kayak since August 30, 2007. That’s almost a whole year ago. And why do I remember the date, you might ask? Well, because. It was a rather momentous day in my life. Oh, not that anything particularly out of the ordinary occurred that day. Uber Kayak Woman and I had been up here on Fin Family Moominbeach for 10 days and we were scheduled to leave that morning. UKW wanted to kayak before we left. *I* wanted to kayak before we left. Problem. For me, not UKW. It was just a leettle bit windier than I am comfortable with in my little Walden Vista on the Big Lake They Call Gitchee Gumee. As UKW would say, I would be riding my edge out in those waves. No spray skirt or anything. Now, UKW’s edge, so to speak, is a lot farther out than mine is. She is an expert with a lot of experience and she knows better than I do when it isn’t safe so I finally screwed up my courage and we took off. Out around to the back side of the island. It was a little bouncy but the waves were really not *that* bad and I relaxed and had a fantastic time. I remember almost every minute of that trip. We got back to shore, swam one last time, had tea with our mothers, hopped into the Dirty Old Green Honda Accord, and hit the freeway. Back to The Planet Ann Arbor and the filthy old cluttered up Landfill for me, UKW to jet off to Maine the next day.

It was all just regular stuff but somehow my life made a sea change that day. Because that night, I had a class to go to. And that was the night that I began the process that resulted in my new career. After a summer of constant worry and wonder about what on earth I was going to do *next* with my life. And just when I least expected it.

For whatever reasons, I haven’t had a chance to kayak since. Either it’s too windy where we are or we don’t have enough vee-hickles to spot one somewhere or I just plain don’t have time. I’ve been here since last Saturday and my kayaks are sitting right down there on Fin Family Moominbeach, so all I have to do is drag one down and fling it in the water. Except it’s windy! Nor’westers every day. Big waves. Etc. Etc. Except this morning! Calm and sunny. Grinch and Dennis were blathering away about oil wells and stuff and I said, “I think I will go and see if I can still kayak.” And I did and I could and I got sunburnt and then the wind came up and I probably *won’t* get to kayak much this summer but there are plenty of kayak rides in my future and you can click here or on the pic for a short and sweet little slide show.

Sayonara,
Kayak Woman

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 30th, 2008 at 9:16 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.