[Paddlewise] Who Are We

One of the last to respond, I suppose.

I'm 3 days short of 54, and living in south-central Mississippi, where 
there's no big water, no whitewater, and no warmth (in the 40s at the 
high point and in the low 20s at night). I started paddling canoes as a 
Boy Scout in Alaska, rowed a skiff in Mobile, AL as a teenager, and 
sailed small boats some in college there. I bought my first kayak 
(Perception Jocassee) almost 3 years ago as something for my son and I to 
do together. I bought my second kayak (a used Prijon T-Canyon) about a 
month later, after I realized that (1) a teenage boy has too many 
hormonal influences to enjoy spending much time out on the water where 
there are no teenage girls, and (2) the Jocassee is too big and heavy to 
want to toss it in the back of the pickup and go paddling alone.

I use the Jocassee mainly for coastal paddling (after some modifications: 
see <http://home.earthlink.net/~iadams/> for details) and the T-Canyon 
for quiet, contemplative paddling on land-locked waters nearby. Brandon 
still paddles with me on rare occasions when his social life permits, but 
mostly I paddle alone. Kayakers are rare in these parts.

I worried for about a year about how I was going to learn the 
all-important roll with no-one to teach me. After several unsuccessful 
attempts to make either kayak turn upside down, I decided it would be 
futile to attempt to roll them rightside up. They're both wide and stable 
and if the difficulty of rolling them under is any guide, it would be 
nearly impossible to roll them back up. I just concentrate on practicing 
re-entry in case I ever broach on a big breaking wave or a ship's wake. 
I'd love to learn to roll if I ever have a kayak that's rollable.

So maybe I'm an "outlaw" kayaker: I don't roll, I mostly paddle alone, 
and I've never been to kayaking school. I get by on what I learn from 
books, magazines, Paddlewise, from the Web, and from experiences I've so 
far survived. Heck, I survived being a student pilot long ago: kayaking 
is done much lower and slower.

I pay the bills by practicing clinical psychology for the state. It pays 
the bills, but I won't be buying any Kevlar boats anytime soon. I toy 
with the idea of building a wood or skin boat, but haven't yet found a 
place in which to build it indoors, and the weather outside is much too 
fickle.

Ira  Adams
N31°53' W89°47' (or pretty nearly nowhere)
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