PaddleWise by thread

From: John Winters <735769_at_ican.net> subject: [Paddlewise] Greenland paddles Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1998 14:22:35 -0400 · This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thu Aug 21 2025 - 16:32:50 PDT

Mr Winters has asked me to comment on the Great Greenland Paddle
controversy which I do with some trepidation. You see, this argument has
been going on for centuries with little sign of resolution.

Native cultures have fought wars over this very topic (not having fiber
optic cables they had to debate face to face). Because few had the same
language the simplest method of proving one's point was to assault the
other person with the paddle. The southern natives used a bashing method
because most of the game they hunted was small and agile. A stabbing action
just didn't work because the animals were forever dodging out of the way.
The Inuit, who hunted large slow moving game, found a stabbing motion to be
more efficient so they used a narrow paddle. The hunting method was
important if they were to avoid starvation or be forced to eat bipedal
ground vegetarians so it was soon interwove with religion. Even today we
see the remains of these pagan religions surface in the zeal of Greenland
paddle users trying to convert the heretic Euro paddle users while the Euro
paddle users have resorted to infiltrating the kayaking education system to
promote their wide blade paddles.

You can imagine what happened when the two cultures clashed. The Inuit who
ventured south to enslave the natives of Colombia and force them to grow
cocaine that the Inuit then sold to bikers in Los Angeles were offended by
the sacrilege of bashing game. All attempts to convert the bashers failed
and eventually the Inuit, disgusted with such savages, retreated to the
north and bought all their cocaine from mules. The mules were somewhat
indiscriminate in how they packaged the cocaine and occasionally a bag
might burst and become mixed with mule effluent. This is how the phrase
"This is Good Shit" came into being within the drug culture.

It is a shame the Inuit did not send some of their anthropologists south
with their drug lords. They surely would have discovered native groups
using blow guns. Harnessed to a flatulent Inuit a blow gun would have been
a formidable weapon and could have changed the course of history. The
Amazonian natives never recognised the potential as they had no British
bangers to generate Methane in suitable quantities. The Greenlanders, of
course, had more than enough Bangers having brought back thousands of
pounds of them thinking they would be the beginning of trade with the
barbarian Brits. The attempt failed due to poor packaging. Had the Bangers
looked less like something obscene they might have caught on.

The Brits got the best end of the deal. They got sea kayaks in trade for
the Bangers, formed the BCU and told the world they invented sea kayaking.
Of course that meant they also had to invent the paddle. This they
entrusted to the British public school system that had been using paddles
for pounding knowledge into the minds of nobility. One can criticise the
lack of anatomical knowledge on the part of English schoolmasters but
remember this was the nobility and it is far from certain that their minds
aren't somewhat south of their bellies. Anyone who has eaten British food
will know why it isn't in their bellies. Indeed, it is often said (with
more than a little justification) that the way to an Englishman's heart is
painted with warm pissy tasting beer.

Of course, the noble little blighters were squirmy and a wide bladed paddle
was necessary if one was to hit them consistently. And so we can see how
the Brits unintentionally aided the wide blade cause of the southern
natives of the western hemisphere.

For those of you interested in such things it is worth studying the wide
bladed low aspect ratio paddles used south of the Mason Dixon line. The
Tarascan Indians used paddles that were very nearly round as did the
natives of Virginia. These round paddles served as large serving spoons for
North Carolina smoked bar-be-que.

The Inuit, having no Hickory trees, did not have smoked bar-b-que and had
to make do with uncooked caribou and seal fat.  This, of course explains
the Inuit paddle. The Inuit needed lots of area to keep their slippery fat
slathered hands from sliding off the paddle. Modern North Americans seeking
to duplicate the Inuit experience can use lard or Vaseline. But, you ask
with some justification, didn't the southern Indians have slippery hands
from eating the pork? Yes, they did but in the true scientific spirit they
asked, what would happen if we poured a mixture of hot peppers and vinegar
over the bar-b-cue. would that not make out hands less slippery.

Well it worked and while licking their fingers they discovered that it made
the bar-b-cue taste better. Thus was the first bar-b-cue sauce invented and
if you think this little tempest in a tea pot about paddles is blown out of
proportion then you should try to tell a North Carolinian that they make
better bar-b-cue sauce in Columbia South Carolina.

Dr. Peregrine Inverbon, Ph.d., DD, LL.d, Ph.G
Transcribed by his humble servant John Winters

***************************************************************************
PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List
Submissions:     paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net
Subscriptions:   paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net
Website:         http://www.gasp-seakayak.net/paddlewise/
***************************************************************************