Re: [Paddlewise] What activities do you do?

Matt Broze said (in a rather unusually friendly and fantastically fun
way):

<snip Todd's remark>

<<If you haven't tried it yet you might want to add downhill single
track
Mountain Biking to your list.
To me the similarities of them all are the adrenaline rush (in fresh
air)
that comes from moving very fast, powered by gravity, where there is no
way
to stop immediately and lots of things you need to dodge quickly coming
at
you--real fast. I find the totally focused concentration and split
second
decision making and physical reaction (while faced with the possibility
it
is really going to hurt if you screw up) to be heady stuff indeed. I'd
include surf kayaking with whitewater too...Matt Broze
Author of "Freestyle Skiing" (1972) and "Deep Trouble" (1997)
(a recovering adrenaline junky--who fell off the wagon and went mountain

biking the other day, alone, so much for the "company of friends" Todd
mentioned)>>

For me, there are no aspects of sea kayaking that I consider off-limits,
as long as you approach the said sea kayaking activity with prudence,
training, dedication, skill development, etc, etc. What other activities
do I do other than sea kayak. Well, there are three main ones: As well
as "tour" sea kayak, I "storm" sea kayak, I "surf" sea kayak, and I
"solo-sanity" kayak. Hey, those are all "sea kayaking". Geesh, I guess I
don't do much else other than sea kayak. Guess you could call me a "free
boater", which is the popular slang up here in Canuk land, that the new
bread of "river runner" white water kayakers are now applying to
themselves. It means you can work the river whatever the hell way you
want to. You can take out from a different places than a put in and work
the river wherever you want to. You can spin, boof, or wave wheel -- or
do whatever you want. Like snowboarding's free boarding or skiing's
'free skiing', you can freestyle anyway you want, in any fashion you
want. You can also just be mellow and casual when you want to be too.

Oh, and Matt's rejoiner. Yeah, I've done a lot of mountain biking too.
Had to give up the downhill stuff though -- got tooooo addicted to it.
Forget the downhill single-track stuff. Been there, did that wussy stuff
for awhile. I went way more extreme. I "progressed" to Fire Roads -- or
simply, old abandoned logging roads -- steep, tormented, rain washed
gullies with 500 foot vertical side drops and mean cut-backs with ravine
wash-outs . I'd travel by car for miles into deep wilderness, find a big
tall mountain (which Vancouver Island has a ton of steep ones), spend
hours and hours peddling up, then come racing down, solo, at breakneck
speeds, completing descent in mere minutes. Man, the rims I went
through, the tires, the tubes, the skin off my shinny shin shin!
Narrowly missed a few bears here and there - made 'em crap their
blueberries. Finally, the jarring to my shoulders was too severe. And,
my wife put her big foot down. Alas, the end of my "free biking".

Doug Lloyd  Author of "Freestyle Sex Kayaking" (direct to internet) and
"Deep Drivel" (unpublished).
(a recurring adrenaline junkie who busted off his bow's keel strip today
while surfing BC ferry wake into a reef off tiny Newcastle Island while
paddling with a company of timid environmentalists from the Georgia
Straight Alliance  - tenth anniversary celebration weekend - who headed
to deeper water).

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