I hope I can be forgiven for introducing a non-secular note to this paddling forum but there is a kayaking angle to it. Like millions of others around the world I have been transfixed by the pope's visit to Israel this week, particularly the moving ceremony at the Yad Vershem Holocaust memorial. It is so seldom that we have positive world news to watch on TV, amidst headlines of current day horrors, that I just felt a need to say something. It has been truly a wonderful week. All the time while watching a frail John Paul II slowly move along on his personal and historic pilgrimage, I envisioned not the bent frail body but a photo of him kayaking as a young seminarian in Poland. Of all the photos in my book I am proudest and most delighted with this one of the pope in double folding kayak. That image, in a very small way, ties me and fellow kayakers to this clearly great and saintly man. I got the photo from the Klepper archives but earlier I had seen it in the German book on the history of folding kayaks, Der Hadernkahn. The photo depicts him paddling in the front seat of the double with a fellow paddler in the back. In reviewing the book in my newsletter, I decided that this photo would be a good one to scan into the article. I had a hand scanner then rather than a flatbed scanner. I took a swipe with the hand scanner and eagerly awaited the image as it slowly emerged on my old 386SX computer's monitor. When it came in, I jumped back in shock. The pope had completely vanished in the scan and his paddle was now in the hands of the fellow in the back seat! What had happened to the pope? I got scared. Could it be you could not get an image of the pope just as you can not get one of the Devil or a vampire? I was so scared at what had just happened that I zapped the scan! A little later I thought a bit about the seemingly unworldly phenomenon. A likely reason is that the book page on which the photo sat had lots of curvature to it because of the hard bookbind spine; and so the hand scanner had skipped a portion. But as a paddler, I know the real reason: The pope wasn't wearing a PFD!!! ralph diaz ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Ralph Diaz . . . Folding Kayaker newsletter PO Box 0754, New York, NY 10024 Tel: 212-724-5069; E-mail: rdiaz_at_ix.netcom.com "Where's your sea kayak?"----"It's in the bag." ----------------------------------------------------------------------- *************************************************************************** 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 Sat Mar 25 2000 - 07:07:55 PST
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