WATERLINES
HOMECOMING
PHOTO: RYAN CREARY
LISTEN
AND LEARN Kayaks speak volumes about love, personalities and dreams
“FOR SALE: USED VALLEY QAJARIAQ. Good condition. Some spider cracking. $1,600.” Like pets, we choose boats that resemble us, and how we see ourselves. In my case: tall, skinny, serious, slow-twitch for long distances, but with idiosyncrasies—design quirks and bit of a playful side.
Follow these intuitions and they can guide us to a perfect fit. Ignore them at our peril. Some things are inevitable, and we inevitably orbit back to them.
Buying the Q-boat felt like this, like com- ing home.
I’ve had a few such reckonings in my life. One led me to love. Another to a career. And most recently, back to kayaking—another kind of love.
When I first met my wife I found her ir- resistible. But she was like a kayak with poor primary stability that I lacked the experience to handle. I couldn’t think straight. One day after I first met her, I was so distracted I cut both of my thumbs in two separate kitchen accidents. Later that same day, I got pulled over for an illegal U-turn and the cop asked about my two bandaged thumbs. “It’s just not your day,” he surmised, and let me off with a warning. —continued on page 42
40 | ADVENTURE KAYAK
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84