Sections of snips from Scott, with my comments; > Nature can be sad and cruel. Personally, I see incidents like the > uninitiated getting in over their heads (literally) in a > kayak as natures way > of culling the weak and stupid among us. Some accidents happen to people who are "weak and stupid". Other accidents happen to "strong and smart", but who haven't properly been exposed, or exposed themesleves, to the realities of paddling. That doesn't make them stupid, it makes them newbies. Didn't we all start out as newbies? As a general rule, I see it as good, honest, well meaning people who lack an awareness of safety issues pertaining to kayaking. Which, is not to say that some people don't just go out and do stupid stuff. That certainly happens. Clearly, some things that people do are flat out stupid, but I'm mostly referring to legitimate "accidents" not the darwin contestants. Sure, try to educate > the ones that > are willing to listen. Yep, that's the target audience. But there will always be those, in > every sport and > activity, that will resist being educated, and may end up > paying the price > for it. Yep, a sad fact of life. The bigger problem, as I see it, is how do we hold > onto our own > freedoms while the do gooders of society are trying to > protect us from > ourselves? That's why I like a voluntary system with incentive. You've got the freedom to accept or decline the istruction. But, even though I suggested a possible scenairo in a previous post, I'll tell you that it has flaws, and it would take a helluva lot of politicing and work to pull it off, so I don't see it or any of the recent alternatives taking place. In the end, it's up to individual paddlers to "do the right thing", and I'd like to think that the entire padlding community would help the individual paddlers understand what the "right things" are, by example, by word of mouth, by written and visual resources, and by lots of training and learning opportunities. That's one of the great benefits of Paddlewise. I can't begin to quantify the volume of knowledge I've learned from this site (can anyone help me with grammer now?). Rick *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Wed Apr 17 2002 - 08:10:34 PDT
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