Re: [Paddlewise] A non-secular note

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "ralph diaz" <rdiaz_at_ix.netcom.com>
To: "paddlewise" <paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net>
Sent: Sunday, March 26, 2000 6:05 AM
Subject: [Paddlewise] A non-secular note


> 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

Thank you for that Ralph.
Obviously the moral of the story was that those who do not wear a PFD
are much closer to their Wings?

Kia Ora
Eddie. 

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