My Crazy Thoughts
my thoughts on various topics.

The Point
So, another thing that is a tradition when we go to Montauk is that one day a canoe trip is planned. The first year I thought it would be a good idea to go canoeing. Everyone seemed to have enjoyed it on previous years. We were excited. Because of the numbers it ended up that the three of us, my mom, my sister, and I, would be in one canoe. My mom used to go to the current river as a kid. She canoed often. I had never canoed before but it sounded fun. A couple weeks before the vacation my sister had gone on her first canoe trip with a snorkel camp. She was a pro. We started out with my sister in the front, and me in the back paddling, with my mom in the middle. My sister desperately wanted to be in the back, but the lighter person should always be in the front, and her being lighter she had to be in the front. Ever heard of a front seat driver? For the very short time I spent paddling she continually screamed at me about how I was doing it wrong, though she couldn't see without completely turning around (I'm sure that's a good paddling technique there). So it didn't take me long to give up. I turned over the controls to my mom (the one with actual experience on this river, which in my opinion is the closest thing you can get to white water canoeing, without it actaully being white water canoeing). I was in the middle. I don't think I actually paddled for more than 20 minutes or so. You would think that since it was well known that my mom had canoed those waters as a kid my sister would stop yelling and the ride would continue peacefully. Nope. Still yelling about the wrongness of the paddling. I should now explain that I have a problem with yelling. Verbal sparring is one thing, but I do not deal well with actual confrontation. Whether the confrontation is with me, or simply around me. So I'm not really having the greatest time. I should also explain that we as a canoeing whole weren't very good. Even at our best we weren't very good at controlling the stupid canoe. Do you know how cold the Current River is even in the summer? Trust me when I say it is loose-your-breath frigid. The people on the river were very nice. People that had previously tipped over and were now taking a break on the bank always rushed out to help us grab our canoe and paddles when we tipped over. We tipped over and were then propelled by the current into a tree only once. My mom only got one huge bruise on her thigh from it. However, we tipped over more than once, and got the distinction of tipping over more times than anyone else in our group. Did I mention there are a lot of us. I think the most memorable portion of the trip though was when we almost severed a man's leg with our canoe. You see, on one of the bends in the river a canoe got caught up and a passing canoer, also got stuck (I think he was trying to help the first guy). We, being the great canoers we were, simply floated head on into them. We ended up in a stack, our canoe on bottom, his in the middle, the other on top, with the guy's leg stuck between two of the canoe's (I remember the guy was wearing american flag trunks, it was July 4). We saw him further down the river, he seemed to take the whole thing fairly well, he even made a crack about our canoeing ability. So, I suppose the ordeal could have been worse, we could have tipped over AND almost removed his leg.
This is the reason I no longer canoe. Beware, my sister still does. If you are ever on the Current River around the 4th of July and hear someone yelling about improper canoeing technique, look out, that's my sister.

posted by Malissa at 10:20 PM