Building The Perfect Beast
Published November 21, 2005 | 
. . . the moon gazed on my midnight labours,
while, with unrelaxed and breathless eagerness,
I pursued nature to her hiding-places. – Mary Shelly
Congratulations to RS for getting his boat from bone to skin. The gallery is up as well, just click here and go to the top gallery.
The gang in South Georgia are doing well. To Keep current you need to go to Jeff Allen’s website. It looks like the Templar site (and email alert) is having problems keeping up. 
Thanks to Josh for keeping us privy to that. Everybody looks so nice in black by the way!
I think I have most of the website updated now. Little fiddly bits here and there. At some point I’m going to share with you some of the numbers and stats for kayakwisconsin.net. It’s pretty interesting. Can you guess what photo in all the galleries was the most viewed over the last year? I’d bet you’d be surprised. We’ll come back to that. I’m also working on upcoming posts about “Towing” and of course my 2005 Christmas list with some neat little ideas I’ve found around the web. That’s going to have to wait, today let’s all just bask in the warm glowing, warming glow of Dick’s boat!!!
Otherwise all is well in our little corner of the earth. The snow that came down in such a rush last week, melted away on Saturday to leave us with nothing but cold barren earth. Yesterday under clouds and 35 degree weather I took my Piranha out to roll amongst the little bits of ice that are now floating free on Devil’s Lake. I’m still shocked by how easily the little boat rolls. 
You can see by the picture I’ve nothing even close to a horizontal blade going on. I can just sort of put the paddle out there somewhere and just roll up. However, to be fair that’s about 50% boat and 50% experience. After you spend enough time rolling you find that the paddle becomes less and less important. Especially if you take time to learn traditional rolling. As you bring more focus into rolling the boat up with you’re body, you become much less dependant on the blade itself. That’s the only reason I can get away with such seemingly sloppy technique. So if you’re just learning don’t use this picture as a guide. Listen to your coach. Nice sweep, blade angle, and all that!
Thing about rolling in winter is, I always feel so brave as I drop over into the cold water, and so stupid when I come up. . .
-d
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5 Responses to Building The Perfect Beast
Ice?
OK, I am officialy done with my post-Caribbean self-pity-party now.
and it’ll get worse before it get’s better. Good thing i’ve got my 5mm hood! On the other hand neoprene hoods are NOT a fashion item. . .
Nope, but they do keep the dizzies at bay.
my guess is that your seat replacement photos got the most hits.
heh. speaking of things that are not fashion statements. A few weeks away from my boat didn’t make that any prettier.
Curiously, I think the #1 google search for my blog is “Sandy and Elvis”. That was a photo I posted one day of the woman who pretty much brought a public paddling program to Hoboken with, yep, Elvis. No, Elvis didn’t go paddling.