I don’t sit and wait
I don’t give a damn
I don’t see the point at all
No footprints in the sand
I would give you all my love
Nothing else is free
Open up your heart to me
And I would be your slave
-bowie

You can call me stupid, crazy, or just weird, I can live with it. It’s ok. Still I will go on with my quest. You see when we’re children we can find adventure in our own back yard. We can explore the vast unknown in just an hours time. Children never limit the opportunity for adventure by ridged adult rules. As we grow older become jaded. “Fun” is “mature”. Adventure must be traveled and paid for. We don’t play silly games. We don’t laugh at jokes that don’t contain double-entendre. It worrys me. It’s something I’m trying not to let happen. You see, as much as I enjoy big adult adventures I know that sometimes we can’t go to Disneyland. Sometimes we have to make our adventures out of cardboard and string. We must find our jungles under the maple tree. Children know that. Imagination and discovery carry them into far off lands. I’ve never been sure if I like maturity. I’m not sure I quite get it all. And I just keep hoping that maybe, just once in awhile, at 41 I can still be a lost boy.

I got up this morning to email from a friend. I couldn’t help but smile! I wanted to let the fingers fly over the keyboard. I wanted to play. But soon I was pulling out my pinstripe suit and choosing a tie. Something rare these days, but I had a proper business meeting. When one meets a potential client in the aerospace industry, one wears a tie. We talked in our professional tongues. After our business was behind us we waxed on about our connected world. We mourned the loss of time without connectivity. “Connectivity” is a word devilishly double edged. I am not the first to answer a cell phone from a kayak or to look for a hotspot near my campground. We are rarely alone. With a shrug, those of us gathered around the table accepted our modern fate.

But I’m an odd one. As I’ve often been told. I couldn’t accept that MY fate was so mundane. I had control. We All have control. I can play. So coming home from that meeting I was determined for a little back yard adventure. I set my heart on the deepest, darkest jungle. And soon I was there. I found myself carrying my kayak almost a mile through bramble and forest to a little known gorge just a 12 minutes drive from my home. One that I dare say has never seen a kayak, or any boat I imagine. It is not navigable by any sense of the word. Just a small stream passing through rock over small drops into deep, dark, ice water pools until finally emerging from cold stone walls and again taking form as an unremarkable stream trickling through rural, red barn, farm fields.

By fallen trees on a small sandy wash, I launched out in my little red kayak. I paddled into a dark cavern below the final fall. The air was nearly as cold as the spring fed water beneath me. There hidden from the sun, I reached for the bottom with my paddle. I hit it just as my fingers touched the water. Suddenly rain fell in a momentary torrent from a single rebellious cloud. Then with a deep breath, I braced for the cold, and dropped into the darkness. In just my tee-shirt it felt as if I were diving naked into a snow drift. I floated in cold, dark space. Then, I was again on the surface, listening to the sound of my breath entwine with the tin roof splash of the falls and bounce around the stone walls of the gorge.

As I paddled back out into the sun, I knew I had done something no other human had ever done before. I had rolled a kayak in a little “who cares” spot called Pewitt’s nest. The adult in me knew that it meant nothing. But the child felt like it meant everything. It was an adventure. If only a tiny one. Sometimes I wish I could share that feeling. But these days, I often feel like the last kid at the playground.

Here’s The Photo Gallery

And every road I walked would take me down to the sea
-sting

The Faroe Islands (Sheep Islands) are a group of 18 islands in the north Atlantic located like the hub of a wheel between the United Kingdom, Norway and Iceland. The islands are considered an autonomous region of Denmark and were actually invaded (occupied?) by the British 1940, but returned to Denmark after World War II. The people that call the Faroes home have a quite unique culture but have much in common with Norway, Iceland and of course, Denmark. In fact the Faroese language is based in the old Norse of the Viking era. It is thought that the islands were first settled by Vikings around 850. The most famous of those being Naddoddr who is credited with the discovery of Iceland. The islands cover about 545 square miles with 687 miles of coastline and interestingly have no major lakes or rivers. From any point on the islands you cannot be more than 3 miles from the Ocean. The Climate is generally cool but with mild winters. The skies are most often overcast with frequent fog and a percent for heavy winds. Sounds like a fun place to explore by kayak. Which is exactly what our sea kayaking heroine and filmmaker Justine Curgenven recently did.

To see more pictures of her Faroe Islands Adventure Click Here. (mind the puffin)

To Learn More About “The Faroes” Visit the Faroe Islands Tourist Guide. (mind the airport)

To Learn more about Ove Joensen Click here. (who?)

(And if you’re British, play nice, please keep the invasions down to a minimum.)

Ok Experts, what did this guy do wrong? That second boat coming in over the top seemed a bit sketchy. Then in the end, it looks like 2 guys in the water and only one coming out. . . Where’s the other guy? Interesting clip.

So, it might be interesting to take Tuesdays and feature a YouTube kayak clip. There’s like a billion to sort through but it looks like some could be interesting. If you’ve got a video clip you’d like to share, just let me know and we’ll see about featuring them on Tuesdays.

Happy Christmas.

It was probably a good thing we cut our teeth on The Beatles, Doors, Elvis and all those other icons of the babyboom generation. Otherwise we probably wouldn’t have got those early gigs. If you filled your sets with enough 60s pop and a few obscure tunes from the big acts everyone knew, you could usually get away with plugging in a few of your own tunes along the way. Oddly we seemed to do very little 80s music, (it was after all, “the 80s”.) other than an occasional kickin’ version of Elvis Costello’s, Watching the Detectives” and a slippery Boomtown Rats number.

One way to get in a lot of stage time early on was to play for drinks. Thing is, how do you go about doing that? Well, Pete (the guy on the right) was always game to just ring up local dives within a gas tanks radius and make an offer for weekend nights. We played a lot those days. All over the place. It meant a lot of nights going home broker than we came in, but too drunk to notice. (Sort of like kayak symposiums. . . ) We’d often drive for miles on cold snowy nights to these little towns with a population of less than 500 and set up in dives called things like, “The Catcher’s Mitt” or “Jakes”. We’d bring in all our gear and set up in places where the pool table had to become part of stage, or the dance floor. Our choice. We’d just rip into numbers we knew, then half knew, then had heard once. . . “Ahhhh Pete, that’s an A minor right?. . “. But by that time everything was sounding good anyway. . . At some point in the night you’d always end up getting requests. Usually such classics of the musical world as “Tear in my Beer” or “Mama Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys” which of course. . . are obvious requests to make of a band that’s been playing rock music all night. But then, requests for country music let us know we had a more “classic” crowd. Even if you didn’t know country music (or want to. . .) you could compromise. Time to pull out those 60’s GEMs.

“This looks like a good spot for the Beatles wouldn’t you say? And a-one, and a-two, and a-

WHY DON’T WE DO IT IN THE ROAD?!!!! . . . .”

“This is going to be another great night! Yeah, all right, where’s my beer? . . “

. . . NO ONE WILL BE WATCHING US ,

WHY DON’T WE DO IT IN THE ROAD?!!!!

So while loading up my gear to get out on the water, this nicely dressed young lad in a grey suit appears in my driveway with a fist full of magazines saying he wanted to save me. So I tossed him a tow rope and hydroskins and said, “Well, why don’t you come along? Maybe you’ll get your chance!”

The picture today is of my new dragon. I call him “Tacky” and he lives on the bow of my Warhorse. He is the 4th dragon on my Explorer. The other three are more content to just stand there. I think Tacky will be happy living on my bow. Odds were that if I’d not bought him he would have ended up in the rear window of a rusty 1979 TransAm. Speaking of upgrades, I wonder where I can get a leopard skin kayak seat cover!! Now THAT’s tacky!

Happy Monday!

With summer quickly fading into the cool, grey, misty, days of early autumn I recognized I’ve not paddled near home too often this year. It seems I’ve been always on the go. I’ve certainly not shown you around our area other than Devil’s Lake of course which services my daily addiction. Yet within just minutes drive I have access to Lake Wisconsin, the Wisconsin River, including the amazing upper and lower “Dells” and of course Mirror Lake which is just about 10 minutes away. Then another hour opens up another world of possibilities. Then within 2 hours drive I’m back to Lake Michigan which of course has seen me often this year.

A few days back I took off about two in the afternoon when the computer screen was starting to burn into my eye sockets, and drove through a light rain to Mirror Lake. From the landing I paddled north exploring every little nook and cranny along the way. I’ve posted a few pictures here. (Top Gallery)

Maybe one day, one lazy afternoon many years from now, Wendy will be sitting in a big comfy chair enjoying a fresh ocean breeze lifting white flowing curtains. She’ll be reflect back through the years to Newfoundland and 2006. She’ll remember headwinds and fog, brisk blue days, and wind bound afternoons. She’ll remember the waiting. She’ll recall days of big swell and nights of dead calm. She’ll think of open water crossings and making great time. She’ll get pitch-poled. She’ll see a perfect sunrise and remember the feel of a damp sleeping bag. She’ll remember sprawling out on the sand, exhausted. And she’ll hate stumbling over rocks, all over again. She’ll feel swollen fingers and a swollen heal. She’ll hear the echos of waves reflecting deep within a cave. She’ll see faces, rooms and homes. She’ll pass random little buildings on otherwise empty shores. She’ll see memories like waves; days folding into weeks then receding into moments. She’ll almost hear the sound of whale somewhere off in the distance. Maybe she’ll smile. Maybe she’ll catch her reflection in the dusty glass of a nearby window. And she’ll think to herself, almost mischievously, “Wow, I AM amazing!”. And she’ll be right.

Wendy Killoran completed her “Round The Rock” circumnavigation of Newfoundland, Wednesday, August 16, 2006. Congratulations Wendy!!!