White Water Canoe Cert Day 3

Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Met at the boathouse and heard Joe's presentation on boat construction, the one I initially passed on. As always, Joe gave a good pres despite only getting the topic the day before. Headed out to the Millers River again but a different spot--again, below a waste water treatment plant for a business! Didn't have the odor of yesterday's.

Evan had us start with leadership boats, two people, one in lead boat and one in sweep to take the group downriver. They would do the riverside safety review, scout out the river and bring us down doing different maneuvers into eddys and ferrying across. Over the course of the day, we had 2 or 3 rescues and the leader boats would be the bump or tow boats, unless someone else happened to be in a better location.

Now the hard truth to face. My fear and trepidation is no fun. For anyone. I've been focused on what I can and have accomplished over this year, but how much fun have I had doing it? Often I go through deep processing to push myself through fear to accomplish a challenge but I don't so much feel or show the fun of what I've done. And sometimes it just wasn't what I'd call fun but truly about the accomplishment. But now we're out on the water. It's not a place I'm comfortable being when I'm underwater and flipping over typically leads to under. And as I told Evan yesterday, I need reinforcement and repetition to get something. Even when I play cards, if I haven't played in a while, I need a review of the rules and then I'm good to go. Cards is a simplistic example given that the worst I could do is lose some change but I typically just play for fun. Running a river in a tippy canoe is a thrill but I don't typically show that I'm stoked by the run but more that I did it well enough that I didn't cause us to flip. . . but more than that. Yesterday I paddled with Evan in the morning and Kate in the afternoon until I did the last short run as a sweep leader. I feel confident paddling with our instructors. They give me clear instructions that I trust. I know that they know what they're doing. They trust that I really know what to do if, as Evan says, I don't think about it too much. And if I screw up, they're accomplished enough that I don't rattle them like I do other students. As the day progressed, I did feel much more confident of what to do. Kate was all about getting out to surf in the class 2s and I, being in stern, needed to keep us on course to hit the spot we needed to ride over or slip down into the wave. We all were ferrying through the curling and spraying current to the opposite shore, or peeling out into the current to do S and C turns. But their ability is what gives me confidence that I can do this. As Erin and Aaron good-naturedly mocked Beth and me, "Eileenie, you can dooo this!"

So, when I don't have a student paddling partner and everyone else does, it's because I don't have fun. Who wants to be with that energy when you're heading out for thrills. I wouldn't. So see what you can do today to be more in the thrill and fun rather than the fear and accomplishment. You've come a long way from when you started this week but you can break through some walls still. Go have fun today--or show and share it! It's not like you don't know how to have fun. Don't take it so seriously. If I were with friends just hangin' for fun I'd feel it and show it. Oh, damn, I'm going to say it. Just do it! Now get out of here before you're late.