[Paddlewise] I Shouldn't Be Alive - Episode 4 - Rosario Strait

I just watched a 2005 program called "I Shouldn't Be Alive" that was about
two kayakers who got into trouble during a November paddle in the San Juan
Islands. I remember several Paddlewisers responding to this episode and have
been watching to see if I could catch it on tv. Well I just did and guess
what? I know one of them. Well, maybe not "know" in the old fashioned
sense... but the leader of this paddle is one of my "friends" on Facebook.
And he is still a super-Alpha personality and leading kayak trips, bicycle
trips, hiking and snowshoe trips out of the Seattle area. In fact he had a
Doe Bay trip last summer (Doe Bay was supposedly the destination for the
episode).

The trip itself is a good illustration of how one mistake leads to another
mistake and on and on. In this case it was compounded by two people who are
seriously competitive and who apparently could not manage to admit to the
other that one was well beyond his depth. One had never been in a kayak
before making a November trip across Rosario Strait. Neither wore a spray
deck. One had a drysuit but the other only had a farmer john. One was so
late to the put-in that they missed their daylight window (it gets dark
about 4:40pm in November) and, probably, the tide. The put-in is also well
sheltered from the nastiest winds outside so it's difficult to know whether
you are paddling into danger; especially in diminished daylight.

And on, and on, and on...

The program was overly dramatic, of course, and the mistakes were so basic
that it's likely people who already consider themselves to be immortal would
be saying to themselves, "I'd never do anything *that* stupid!". Really,
these guys made so many mistakes that virtually any of them would have led
to disaster. LOL.

Imagine my surprise when I recognized the "leader's" name.

I used to have a motto that went: "One third of the world is a bozo... but
we all get a turn being in that one third."  Of course, some of us have to
hog it.

Craig Jungers
Moses Lake, WA
www.nwkayaking.net
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