Re: [Paddlewise] Subject: another old man in the sea story

----- Original Message -----
From: "Doug Lloyd" dalloyd_at_telus.net
>
> I also wanted to posit my position that amidst all the usual PW
techno-talk,
> including the relative merits of various hull lamination technologies,
it's
> probably a good idea to remind ourselves (me, anyway) that there is a
whole
> wide world of "low-tech" paddlers out there, each in their older Klepper
> Aerius kayaks, paddling thousands of incident-free miles, safely
negotiating
> their way to shore in what I would arguably consider lest robust hulls
> (softshells naturally equating a less-robust image than hardshells).

I see the day 20 years from now when a future paddler runs across a still
paddling, still cursing, still ornery Doug.  With the way technology is
going that future paddler will be in a kayak that uses magnetic forces to
move smoothly a millimeter above the water and he will be enveloped in a
thermal field that will allow him to be in Bermuda shorts and sandals.  He
will be use a Toledo paddle, at the point all the rage . . . not named for
Toledo Ohio but for the Spanish famous Toledo tempered sword steel of which
it is made and based on a paddle design recently discovered in a nearby cave
of Neandertahl drawings.  Doug in his crusty, trusty old reinforced Nordkapp
and antiquated dry suit insulated with that old stuff they called polartec
will be written about by that future paddler as the old man and the sea.  No
where in sight will be any Greenland paddlers, the whole movement having
been debunked by the Toledo discovery and disappeared as quickly as it arose
in the the early 1990s.  Meanwhile that older crustier, more cursing
original old man and the sea will still be moving along in that same old
Klepper...they tend to last forever, i.e. both boats and paddlers.  :-)

Is it April 1st yet?

ralph diaz

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