Well, you see, this is me. And that's a problem. I tend to get sidetracked. A lot. And then I don't get back to the things I should get back to in a timely manner, so a week goes by, no one cares anymore about the outrigger race (cause I've talked about it Way Too Much in real life) and I'm left feeling like I should say something about it, but what's left to say?
OK, quick rundown on the rest of the race. Actually, this should be easy. Imagine being in a washing machine in a boat. Imagine the boat has an ama (that's the outriggery part) on the left side. Now imagine that the wind is generally trying to blow from the left and that's bad because it increases the likelyhood of all of us ending up in the water. So there we are in crazy water that is coming at us from three directions at once. We've lost our carrots as the teams ahead of us are no longer catchable (one reminded us that we really didn't want to huli and the other reminded us just how much endurance we lack) and we really don't like this water at all. Not to mention (again) the fact that we are definatley lacking the the endurance department. No singing now; just continual encouragement/direction from Lyse. What else to do but paddle? Not much really. We havn't a clue where we're headed and we certainly aren't gonna get to terra firma any other way. At about this point it occured to me that maybe I'm not really a water girl after all.
So yeah; we paddled. and paddled. and paddled. and after an hour and 43 minutes we were back on firm ground. Some of us a little less gracefully than others; I fell quite neatly on my tush (in the water) as I got out of the boat. What's that saying about dancers who are anything (and everything) but graceful in everyday life?
We weren't exactly thrilled with our performance. While we had no delusions about our abilities as outrigger paddlers, we don't lillydip and our timing is good. We ahd hoped to at least give the other novices a good race. we didn't feel that we had done that.
Then a curious thing happened. We started listening to what was going on around us. Lyse admitted that she wasn't goign to tell us just how hard that water ahd been. Some other team wasn't goign out becuase their steersperson wasn't comfortable withthe conditions. They shortened the afternoon course (ok, well by that time there was even more wind - so it's not directly related to our experiences). The Comox women came back and Lyse told us that she had as much didfficulty then as she did with our race. And hey, it turns out we came in second (in the novice category of course).
On Wednesday after the race we met up with the expereinced paddlers before we went out...there was much joking about us not being scared off and hmmm, if you aren't sore maybe you didn't paddle hard enough! (yeah right! If we had paddled any harder we may have been missing appendages now *wink*) and in the midst of that it came out that we weren't entirely happy with our performance. This comment was met a couple of incredulous looks and much "what?! you guys did great!" This continued despite our attempts to explain our reasoning. We gave up. What else can I say? It's easy to be critical, especially when desire's involved. It's much harder stand back, to look at the whole, and to be realistic about your involvement in something.
About that not being a water girl...I'm quickly forgetting that feeling of desperately trying to keep my weight on the ama side and still paddle on the right...While engaged in my first attemps at steering, I found myself wondering on Wednesday night how it would feel to be in control of 45 sleek feet of shiny boat while trying to ride the swells...hmmmm, maybe I better not dismiss this water thing quite yet.
Comments:
Marc: I reckon you people are all nutters. Congrats on finishing second though! (http://spaces.msn.com/members/eloosive/)
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