duct tape hull repair

Mr. asparagus boat and I are having a few relationship difficulties. When I strap it to my car it creaks and protests as the hull bends slightly. By the time I take off the river, it has taken on a few cups of water.

Mainly, it needs a new deck. Oh, and a new hull.

The seam between them is actually the real offender. It looks repairable -- but the hull is also covered in small cracks. It has been patched and repatched and slathered in excessive amounts of epoxy – I don't think one more layer would fix it. It needs to be sanded way down, then patched everywhere and re-epoxied. And I'm not sure I have it in me to spend so much time on a boat I hope to outgrow in a couple of months.

So it’s duct tape for now.

But I do love this boat! It is my first slalom boat and my daily companion on the Meramec. Way lighter than anything I've paddled before. But I can't help wondering... What’s it going to take to get me in a used short C1 this fall? Does such a thing exist yet?

Ocoee!

On Monday we ran the Ocoee, a river in Tennessee I've been looking forward to for a long time. The stories in the MWA had me pretty intimidated. At the put in, the water looked pushy and squirrely. I can make that ferry, I can catch that eddy... my slalomized mind broke it all down into little pieces.

It was a great day -- challenging but not intimidating. The big water was really a blast and I found myself thinking "so this is what whitewater is supposed to be like!" I took off itching to do it again, and fantasizing about running it in a C1. In the not-to-distant future, I hope.

One more picture: Me at the put-in
Below: Tablesaw quickly flipped me. I'm anxious to run this again and punch through it all.

Back to the Nanty

7 months ago at GAF, the Nantahala River was my first whitewater run in a kayak. Today it was my first whitewater run in a C1 (not counting the Apple River race).

I was incredibly comfortable on this water! The wave trains that freaked me out last fall were simply fun. I focused on paddling through them aggressively instead of riding them out. I worked on catching every possible eddy tight & peeling out high.

Slalom has made me a better boater, period. I now break rivers down very analytically. Where do I want to be next? That eddy. What do I need to do to get there? Surf that wave over, and start my turn high. Nanty falls used to be a big slush of white to try and power through. Now, within the rapid, I can see different lines and feature to use.

I flipped my first time through the falls. I was off-line and slid into the bottom hole sideways. The next time, I picked a rock on the horizon to aim for, carefully set my angle after passing the first hole, and paddled hard… my first clean run of the falls.

Fantastic day. I can’t wait to get in the C1 on the Saint Francis.

the land of bluegrass

It was 4am when we finally pulled into the Kentucky campground. Around 30 boaters were fast asleep -- in bivies, tents, trunk beds, and snoring away on top of the picnic tables. I picked my way through the crowd, looking for two trees to hang my hammock from. Most of the good ones already had clotheslines of drying neoprene strung between them. Finally, I found a spot and settled in for my 3 hour nap.

The Cumberland was a perfect choice for our first day. Several pushy, class III rapids were spread out in between large pools – a small cave and a huge 360 wave made the day perfect. The landscape is so different that Missouri. Giant boulders the size of houses turn parts of the river into a maze. I had never paddled around undercut rocks before, and it was a very safe river to eyeball them for the first time. Undercuts are scary stuff.

I paddled my EZ. In retrospect, I would have been fine in the C1. The hour and a half flatwater paddle to the take out would have killed me, though.

One more photo: me at the falls

Here it is again…

Why am I paddling anyway?
I could just save the money I’m spending on gas this weekend.
I could stay home and get so much done!
Why am I doing something that scares me?
I am going to die in a freak accident in an undercut on a class III rapid.
This isn’t that important to me anyway.

Yeah right, kiddo. Nice try. Rob Horn calls these thoughts “the demons.” And the best way to get rid of them is to fire it up, paddle like crazy, and get addicted all over again.

My friend Scott mused (referring to life in general): how does someone know what it is they want? For me, there are moments of magnetic clarity when my gut takes the wheel – when I watch a C1 stern pivot turn and my neurons fire in one big, collective “YES!!! *that* is what I want to be doing!” Reason and logic don’t have much say in it.

But these are just moments. Then there is the in-between… packing for the trips and driving all night, icing sore shoulders and gluing foam with contact cement, flat water drills and bruised legs. I get through all this gladly because I know that the next time I get a paddle in my hands, and usually within about 10 seconds, my gut will remind me what it is that I want.

It's my birthday and I'll philosophize if I want to

"At the heart of the mountaineering experience lies an optimistic expectation, a belief that tomorrow will be better than today -- the ice pillars a little less rotten, the wind a little less bracing, and that you will be able to go further that you have before."

Peter Metcalf looked out at the room of 100 REI employees, all on the edge of their seats. His address returned again and again about how fundamental this gut attitude of "optimistic expectation" is to climbing mountains (and, of course, running a business). You have to wake up believing that today can & will be easier than the day before. Of course mountains don't care about your expectations. No matter how many routes you've flashed, one misstep or change in weather and your life may be out of your hands. But people who are true mountaineers, he said, just have this attitude in their blood. "The best years are still to come," he said as he left the podium, "of course, they always are."

I regularly have a strong feeling that my real life is beginning tomorrow: from now on, I will really be living my values. For the first time, I have found the balance in my life I have been searching for. Finally, I will set & follow clear priorities. The feeling is one of excitement and positive anticipation, but I am really hard on myself about this attitude. I have always thought it means I am not being present in my life; that I am doing a disservice to my daily adventures by always thinking "that wasn't as good as it could be, next time I'll do much better."

Metcalf's speech planted a little seed in my brain that maybe, just maybe, my "life actually begins tomorrow" outlook may not be such a bad thing. In fact, it may be an incredible tool that I can use to succeed in difficult situations, even when the ice pillars are rotten.

The 8,760th day of my life ended with fantastic sashimi, a petite caramel flan with candles in it, and meeting a giant troll that lives under a Fremont bridge. Then my new friend from Kennewick and I walked along the shore of the dark, wide Puget Sound - soaked through, in the pouring rain, the seattle skyline in the distance. 24 is going to be a good year.

Tomorrow I come home! I am thrilled to have a really productive day at work, one night in my own bed, and then it's off to North Carolina!

we put the SPE back in "special"

The SPE conference has me totally jazzed about the outdoor industry and working for such an amazing organization as the REI cooperative. Our CEO often says that our biggest competitors are not other outdoor outfitters - they are TV and video games; the american trend towards a sedentary lifestyle. I couldn't agree more.

I've taken over 70 pages of notes - some specifics about my new position, but mostly wild brainstorms, ideas for the future of our company, thoughts on the american economy, sustainability, and promoting outdoor stewardship & exploration. The juices are flowing and I want to get every ounce of this down on paper before it fades, i.e. before I leave the mountains & the sea to head back to the land of planísimo.

I spent the day touring our headquarters, including finding the failure load of a carabiner in the test lab. The engineer who is still living within me was like a kid in a candy shop, and I busted out all sorts of technical lingo and questions for the lab staff.

I have never felt as invested in by an employer as I do this week. The SPE position will present huge challenges for me, and my role could have a huge impact if I am successful. Even if I end up in a totally different field in the future, this job will give me whole new skill sets to carry with me. Right now, the optimistic expectation is boiling over.

sticks, snow, and a standpipe

I had been eyeballing the snow covered peaks in the distance with a lusty craving ever since my plane landed. Scott and I decided that we absolutely had to touch snow today, and drove toward Mount Rainier. After 30 minutes in the car (and a pit-stop for sandwiches), the road began to curve up and up. I was pressed to the window once again, amazed at the size of the evergreens and the spunky class II wave trains so close to the city. We also passed a produce market with a sign for "Yakima Asparagus" - in my corner of the globe Yamika is not a town but a car rack company. Mmm, roof rack asparagus. The road finally ended in a parking lot, and so we continued on foot.

Today I learned that Keen sandals are not optimal for hiking steep ascents in snow. Especially when you're not wearing socks. Snow gets in the holes and ends up in hard packed lumps under your feet. But despite the totally inappropriate footwear, quads burning, we made it well above the snowline and proceeded to have a snowball fight. In Saint Louis the humid summer is already building, so to be here later the same day felt like I had hiked into a different world. And to top it all off, I fell through a well-camouflaged snow bridge into a creek!

The whirlwind Seattle tour concluded with a visit to the Space Needle, fresh raw fish and wasabi, and bouldering on the standpipe water tower in Volunteer Park. I also got an early birthday present today - a pair of drumsticks. No, I'm not a drummer. Two years ago, while sporadically banging on a giant hollow sculpture in Laumeier, Scott told me I had no rhythm. No rhythm!! Anyone who knows me has seen me break it down on a dance floor. But Scott is right, my left wrist can't seem to handle a 16th note. Anyway, I'm now learning patterns and starting to get faster. Scott and I drove all over Seattle, each with our own pair of drumsticks, beating away at the dashboard in his car. It was goofy, giddy fun that made me feel like a kid again. Great birthday present.

Four more pictures from Volunteer Park:
Saint Louis statues are missing this sign
Buying a subaru? This one comes with 4 bags of leopard clothing! pic1 pic2 pic3

Mount Rainier is Huge.

I've never seen a mountain this big before. The woman next to me on the plane (who owns a llama farm in St. Charles County, incidentally, and she says llamas are like potato chips, you can't have just one and pretty soon you've got a whole damn bag. She and her boeing-engineer husband are retiring to seattle but having trouble finding property that will allow their herd of llamas. Apparently the anti-llama regulations in Seattle are pretty strict.) Anyway, we were looking on the right side of the plane for Rainier, peering down at distant peeks of white speckled with black. The peaks looked like a heard of very pointy cows. I was searching for a mountain perhaps twice as big as the rest, but, I assumed, comparably the size of a large dairy barn.

Then, the captain came on and said "Now, if you'll look to your left..." And across the isle, there it was. As high as our plane!!! A wall of white & jagged rocks moving past the left windows like a mural on a subway line.

I was like a three year old, squirming in my seat, trying to get a better look. But half of the people on the left side of the plane weren't even looking. Miss too-much-hairspray was so buried in last month's Reader's Digest to even glance up and was blocking my view with all her hair twirling. I don't understand; I will never loose interest in gluing my nose to the plane window.

On a positive note, when all the REI SPEs sent back their flight and meal preferences for this conference, a large percentage of them requested window seats. That is a good sign.

good to be home, at least for a night

There's nothing like finally turning into your garage after a long weekend alone on the road. Now I have one night to rest and pack, then it's off to Seattle for a week. After that, I will get one night to rest and pack before I leave for 4 days of paddling in the southeast. Not much time to get anything done around the house, but a girl's gotta have her priorities.

And apparently those priorities are boating & more boating. From the looks of my garage, it's hard to believe I wasn't even paddling a year ago. The little orange Skip is feeling neglected with all this slalom fever! Maybe I'll take it down Nanty falls for old times sake. Perhaps even in the boat and right side up this time. We tried every other combination (my boat alone, me in my boat upside down, etc) last October.

C1W - a class of our own

That's right folks, we had enough women in not only C1 plastic, but also C1 race boats and C2 race boats to make each an actual, legit class. Awesome! Here it comes!

This was great water for me. The Apple is very mild, but yesterday was my first day in actual whitewater in a C1 -- ever. It's just been flatwater and more flatwater until now. The wave trains and tight eddy turns were challenging, but a challenge I was able to rise to by the end of the weekend. After today, I feel ready to take a C1 on some runs on the Memorial Day southeast trip.

4th place, C1W plastic - I missed at least one gate on each C1 run, but I feel good about my performance. It was my first weekend in whitewater, geez.

3rd place, C1W - So I found the guts to race the green glass boat! So glad I did. And I know what I need to fix - I think I can win this class later in the summer. (Many things, one of which is setting my angle earlier, and then punching across the eddy line to turn up. Trying to cut gate 4 close I was turning on it and it would really slow me down.)

4th place K1W - I had my first 100% clean run ever! Wow! My mom told me she wanted a clean run for mother's day, so I had to deliver. My best times were about 10 seconds behind the winner of the class. Hailey, the speedy 13 year old, placed 2nd. She really knows where to place her boat's edges.

3rd place C2W - Susan and I missed a few gates but had a great time. We were both pretty exhausted by this run!

2nd place OC2 Mixed - Dave and I had a great run. I had so much fun in the OC2. I just let him call the turning strokes and I paddled my guts out. Mary (and Dave) took first and we beat out Jean (and Dave). I guess when you bring an OC2 you become a popular guy!

A few more pictures:
Three of the C1W class, right after our runs
A tricky set of gates, including the random gate 24
Susan and I power to the finish line
If you're going to hit a gate, hit it with style!

It's long and it ain't pretty.... but it's glass!

Until I can get in my very own short slalom boat, I have been loaned a glass C1. It's held together by patches and is missing the tip of its stern, and I love it! I am so excited to hit the water with this! Finally, a boat that can at least do the sort of maneuvering I want to do. Apparently it is also "really heavy" - but after hauling around the barge that is the cascade, this boat seems LIGHT. Wow. It should also be a good lesson in how to patch, paint, and outfit a slalom boat, because this tank needs all three.

Everyone that loans gear to newbies deserves a huge pat on the back. I never could have gotten started in this sport without several different people supplying me with gear as I learned the ropes. Thank you all so very much. I've been lending out my gear and boats whenever I can, and I plan to keep it up. Passing on the good boatin' karma.

I am so excited about this C1!

An Apple a day...

Day one of the slalom race on the Apple River (Buttercup series #1):

Set-up was fun. Just a few of us came out but we worked quickly. Poison Ivy EVERYWHERE! For those of you who don't know, I am very very allergic to the stuff. Have to get shots every time I touch it. I washed in the river repeatedly (thanks for the soap, Mary) and no signs of it yet.

Anyway, I helped set up both here and at the MWC races - a great learning experience. At these smaller races, you get to chat with the race director / course designer as they discuss which gates go where and why, what moves they want people to make, and how they want to challenge the boaters as you fine tune the gates. Not a bad deal for just crawling out of bed a couple of hours early. For a newbie like me, it's a guided tour of the course though much more experienced eyes.

This race was a junior olympic qualifier so half the competitors were juniors or cadets. Amazing kids, many who will be making the US or Canadian national teams in a few years, no doubt. Hailey, 13, from Wisconsin was a delight. Such a positive & determined girl. We ran our K1 and C1 practice runs together, and took a practice run in the C2. I later raced C2 with Susan and OC2 with Dave.

C2 and OC2 rocked my world. Seriously. Until today, I thought I would hate having another person controlling the boat with me - the thing that is supposed to be just an extension of my hips, moving easily with my body - but I loved racing tandem. It was like figuring out a puzzle with another person, having a supplemental engine on your boat. The power of two paddles was awesome. We had so much fun every run. And, interestingly, I raced harder on both of my C2 & OC2 runs than I did solo. Something about being instantly accountable to another person made me bring it, pure and simple.

That scares me a little. Where is that extra drive when I am solo? I think this might mean two things: 1) I need to figure out how to harness it when I'm alone in a C1. How can I become as accountable to myself as I am to other people? I do think that I can develop this. 2) This might just mean I would rock the C2 someday.

land of 11,842 lakes

Okay, the creek that runs across the street from my mom's new house is not only boatable, it has wavetrains. In the middle of the city! Granted they probably vanish during parts of the year... but I would kill for this. You can walk 500 ft, hop on and boat upstream (1/2 mile?) to the lake. Haven't tried it yet, but it seems possible. It seems damn ideal.

It's 7:30 am and already over 100 cyclists, stroller mamas, and pooch walkers have passed by my Mom's front window. At least. We're averaging about 4 a minute. More than I'd see in Saint Louis in a week.

Minneapolis is not good for my "I'm going to be excited about the 'lou for one more year!" plan. It'll happen, but being here reminds me strongly what Saint Louis is missing. If I go out tonight, I have about 4 great live shows to choose from. There are at least 6 or 7 local artists who I follow. My mpls restaurants-I-really-want-to-try list is limited only by my budget. There is breathtaking and accessible architecture. The greenways seem endless. And everywhere cute, interesting people in their mid-20's seem to ooze out of the sidewalks.

Downsides to the city of lakes? The demographics are heavily white - it's a little surreal after spending so much time recently in STL, Memphis, and Atlanta. But I love and am very comfortable in the city's neighborhoods with larger immigrant and african american populations -- I think they're communities I'll seek out no matter where I end up. It also gets really frikkin' cold from october through march! Obviously I'd just have to take up ice climbing.

Saint Louis has sponsored many fabulous laura-adventures, but Minneapolis is yet another reminder that the STL is not where I want to settle down. Seeing the northwest for the first time next week will be an interesting contrast.

Ok, only 8 hours to knock off my MPLS must-do list!

who needs kayak stackers?

I'm picking up a friend's slalom boat in Iowa, and so I'll need to fit 3 big boats on my car. Yakima or Thule kayak stackers would be perfect, but it seems stupid to pay for something so mechanically simple. Boats flying off my car at 70mph is bad news, though, so my makeshift stackers need to be bombproof.

My solution? Two decommissioned forks from crashed / imperfect bicycles, mounted to V2 tray heads. Without the boats on it kinda looks like someone sawed the forks off to steal my bikes. With the boats on the set up looks sweet. I really laid into the straps and it is extremely sturdy.

On a side note, Yak is now selling most of their rack components as "carbon free". Looks like this means both working to shrink their carbon usage and then offsetting the rest with credits. Awesome. Thule still rocks my world, hopefully they'll be on the bandwagon soon.

last night in the shop

Tonight was my last shift as Laura the Bike Mechanic. It was a classic bike shop night - Rage in the CD player and Rob supplying the ice cream. Casey and I wrapped up the night by building an Electra tandem. It was fun to build - we had to pull two repair stands together to support it. It was even more crazy to test ride! Fits of laughter and a few wobbley starts in the parting lot before we got the hang of it. I guess when you put two aggressive, competitive cyclists on a bike it's hard for one person (read: me) to sit back and not be in control.

Even though I will miss the shop, I'm pumped to start my new position. I head to Seattle next week to train. On the to-do list: inspired brainstorming sessions with other SPE's from around the country, eat sushi, and go paddling. And, of course, go see the troll under the bridge.

new job, new year... new blog?

let the mad blogging begin.

Although my to-do list has grown extremely overwhelming, these days feel like they are brimming with possibility. I have a birthday just around the corner, a new job, and some new priorities on the table. Everyone has been complaining about the constant rain in the forecast, but to me the storms are dramatically signaling the start of the hot season - and giving us paddlers one last bridge-level spike in the Saint Francis.

I told REI I would commit to one year in my new position, which means I have a solid, definite block of time to plot my eventual escape from Saint Louis. One year to figure out where I want to be next. One year to chill, relax a little deeper into my groove, ride my bike along the Mississippi, paddle the Saint Francis, go to free concerts, run sprints down alleys lined by crumbling red brick, drop it to some STL hiphop, and eat Ted Drewes.

Summer, we're ready for ya.