Good ideas for interesting reading, Leander. One note: having finished "Knockdown", I'm seeing a lot of connection to what John Winters said in his last post --- paddle with your equipment, but make your judgements as if you didn't have it! --- and even to what James Lofton said originally, setting off some less than PaddleWise dialog. (I felt as if James' comments were completely off base at first --- as did Chuck Sutherland --- but I think maybe I'm reading some of the same sense in John's comments now, and I find myself in agreement. But to "Knockdown": as an ex-CSAR pilot, I find a lot of what happened in the race and the book reflected in earlier posts about risk management and the confidence which some paddlers place in the ability of SAR --- or other civil or private agencies --- to save our collective butts if the situation should require it. And the effect that this has on how we'll paddle. And it lines up perfectly with what John says: we'll accept more risk than we should because (a) we're wearing an $800 drysuit or (b) Coast Guard St. Inigoes is right around the corner and I've got a VHF on my shoulder or (c) whatever else makes us confident that external resources can be drawn on to offset the risks we're then willing to run. Just an observation, but, again, as a former SAR driver, I'm becoming more and more pissed with people who would do things they wouldn't ordinarily do because of these external resources --- and the guy I'm pissed off with in the paragraph above --- having the equipmnet, knowing that the Coast Guard's 41 footer is on the other side of the base --- is me! We shouldn't paddle as if these external resources are there --- John, and, I think, James --- are right. That they're there is good: that I have an immersion-survivable drysuit is good: that I make my decisions on that basis is, arguably, not good. Jack Martin *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Tue Nov 09 1999 - 07:36:11 PST
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thu Aug 21 2025 - 16:30:16 PDT