Archive for June, 2008

The last couple weeks I’ve been engaged in coaching a little closer to home.  Working with a 7 year old of course can be a bit demanding. . .Not that I’ve not been posting at all mind you, Each morning I’ve been over updating Greg Stamer’s Newfoundland Journal.  Greg’s been pulling off some amazing stuff by the way.  Still, here on the home front  I’ve been learning and maybe re-learning a thing or two about coaching and you don’t always need a kayak.  Of course in my life, kayaks are never that far away.

Coaching is a major part of my daily life. Even when I’m not paddling. Having a young person around the house means you spend a lot of time in “coach” mode. In addition I have a unique circumstance that forces me to keep that “coaching” hat on even when the child is gone. Most of the time I enjoy the challenges, sometimes I just want large quantities of whisky. It depends on the day, and the situation. This past 2 weeks though, have been interesting when working with Gryphon. We have taken on the beginning of martial arts training, learned some boat control, built a playhouse, and learned to ride a bicycle all in a very busy fortnight.

Martial arts classes for a kid like Gryphon is a no-brainer. It fits right into his state of play. He was jumping and kicking already with reckless abandon and endless energy. In this case of course you are just taking what the child already likes to do, and molding it into something more organized and thought through. It’s always easier to channel the flow of a river than it is to dam it and force it into a new direction. Using his preset interest it’s been fairly easy to keep him on task. Daily practice sessions are fun and games. When daily practice becomes “work” the student begins to slip.

In paddling he took a big leap from always wanting to be towed to spending an afternoon of strong focus on boat control. It helped of course that a girl from his class in school happened to be paddling the same time on the same channel of the lake. You can’t show off without learning your chops. By the end of a couple hours he was paddling straight and able to do fairly strong rudders and draws in his EPI-Sea. I was surprised by how easy it was to coach him. Once again it just shows that a child with a reason can learn very quickly.

Now on the other end of the spectrum is learning to ride a bike. We’ve all been there. The problem with learning to ride a bike is not that you don’t want to do it, it’s the fears that come along with you. The fear of crashing, the feeling of spiraling out of control, racing ahead and not being able to stop. . It can be much easier to get a kid to practice his 8 point defense, than to get on a bike that may hurl him to the ground. The problem of course is that the fear is in the present for a child. If they crash it will hurt right now. It’s hard for them to see that future when they are riding their bikes around town for fun. Kids do not so much succeed by visualizing a far off goal. They tend to live in the here and now and learn from immediate reward. Martial arts offers that reward in spades; you can wear a cool uniform, shout your “Kiai” with every move”, and kick a lot, where as the bike offers the chance to crash and get a handlebar in the groin.

As a parent I am faced regularly with very different coaching scenarios. With Martial Arts I’m often restraining a wild horse, pulling him back to keep his focus and stay on track, on the bike I’m encouraging him to push a little further. In Martial Arts a 7 year old will practice all day, (whether you want him to or not), on the bike he wants to know if he can be done now. At least, that’s where we were until the weekend. Now two things have changed. First, Gryphon earned is first “stripe”. His instructor has found out how focused Gryphon can be if he’s determined to do something, and fed that part of his character. Gryphon also learned to ride his bike. I had to show him that the mistakes and falls help us learn, not easy wins. I worked with him on accepting failure as just part of the way we program our “computers’. Soon he was dragging himself off the ground and telling me what he “learned” each time. At that point I knew he was going to have it. The success came just a day later.

As coaches in anything in life it is often the same story.  In sea kayaking each student we see comes to us with their own experience, needs, desires and gifts. There are people who want to learn because they have a vision and people who are struggling with fears. At times our students are there because their spouse dragged them there. Sometimes they think they know more than they do. Sometimes they are filled with self-doubt, sometimes they are drowning in self-confidence. Sometimes they can’t swim or are fighting some other perceived personal weakness. Often students bring a combination of these.  It’s a coaches job to understand their students and guide each of them according to their unique perspectives. Certainly hard to do sometimes. Watching Gryphon these last couple weeks has helped me revisit the ideas.  In the end whatever label of “expertise” we wear;  coach,  teacher, father, master or whatever title we enjoy, it means nothing if we don’t understand that “student” is a label we never leave behind.

To quote Mr. Miyagi. . “No such thing as a bad student, only bad teacher.”

Off they go to Ontario. . .

In their sties with all their backing
They don’t care what goes on around
In their eyes there’s something lacking
What they need’s a damn good whacking.
- george harrison

Let’s look at this simply. A pristine land is laid out before you. A land untouched by human hands. The moment you place your foot upon it, you have intruded upon the land. Such is the nature of human expansion throughout time. So when former British Cabinet member Nigel Lawson is quoted from his new book “An Appeal to Reason: A cool look at Global Warming”, as saying “Environmentalism is an unlimited license to intrude.” (a statement that is so far from “reason” that it calls into question his “Appeal”),  I’m again amazed how a formal education and a position of influence can make some people so amazingly dumb.

I’m certainly not an environmental activist by any sense of the word. Each debate has truth on both sides, however I live and breathe and understand the necessity to be careful with our limited resources. I accept they are limited simply because our earth, this little ball in space, is quite obviously a closed system. It does not take a scientist to see oil slicks on the water and imagine that oil getting into our drinking water and the fish we eat. When mudslides bury people because the hills have been stripped of trees I can amazingly extrapolate the problem. When 10% of a population consumes 70% of the food, I understand the injustice. Are not such things sort of well, obvious?

I also understand something that Mr. Lawson apparently missed; Environmentalism is a RE-action. Environmentalism at its core is nothing more than someone seeing a negative consequence to a human action and saying something about it. I can’t help but think that someone should at least understand the difference between an action and reaction before they are deemed an authority on anything let alone, the environment.

Can you imagine? By this logic if you are hit by a car, this is not a problem. However if you react (assuming you survive) you are intruding on the freedom of the guy who ran you over. If someone punches you in the nose its hardly worth noting, and yet if you were to punch back you suddenly are intruding on the attacker. Interesting. “Environmentalism is an unlimited license to intrude.” Is in a sense, intimidation. It implies that one must keep their mouth shut. That if you don’t allow a person or government or corporation to do whatever they wish, YOU will be deemed an intruder. One only has to guess what is done with intruders.

Of course as paddlers we all probably lean a bit more toward environmental preservation than not. We do have a vested interest. Still it has to be said that in general we come down on the side of “leaving things alone” and only find conflict with folks who want to profit in some way by changing or taking from the environment in a damaging way. Still, if all sides in any discussion are to come to a realistic compromise they certainly have to understand the most simplistic realities; Up-Down, Left-Right, Action-Reaction and so forth. These days however we are apt to face a bizarre new reality where doing as we wish has neither cause nor effect and is the base point of the discussion. Any suggestion of deviation from environmental anarchy is of course an obvious intrusion, a twist of reality that takes Orwellian “New Speak” to an exponential new level.

Me and my arrow
Straighter than narrow
Wherever we go, everyone knows
It’s me and my arrow
- harry nilsson

Steve Gordon of Israel is an amazing boat builder. You can see pictures of some of his work on his website and over at Guillemot Kayaks website as well. Starting in February this year he put over 150 hours into building a new Greenland style Guillemot Night Herorn for Hadas Feldman. Hadas as I’m sure you know has done some pretty challenging expeditions in the last few years including circumnavigating Newfoundland where Greg Stamer is at the moment. If you head on over to Steve’s website you can see a fun little video of Hadas unwrapping her new kayak for the first time and read a bit more about the work Steve put into it.

*photo by steve gordon. used by permission. Thank you!

So everyone is everywhere at the moment. . Unless of course, they’re not. I have a bit of a break at the moment, but soon enough things will get a bit busy. The plan now is to head up to Rawley’s Bay in Door County around July 7th or so and meet the master paddler K. Blades for a trip around the Door. If all goes well and we don’t find a 24 hour pub. . . we’ll land back at Rawley’s just in time for the staff meeting. . . Now in the midst of this trip I should be doing a review of a new kayak sail along the way for Playak.com. I’m sure between Kelly and I we can give ‘er a right goin’ over.

The following weekend I’ll be heading up to Grand Marais, Michigan for the Great Lakes Symposium. So, since it’s hardly worth driving all the way home in between given $4.00 gasoline and such, I think I’ll be footloose for a few days before Meeting Keith Wikle for a paddle around Grand Island in Lake Superior right before that symposium. Of course Justine (Curgenven) and Barry (Shaw) will be guests there along with Sam Crowley. (No, Sam was not called the “wickedest man in the world”. . that was Aleister. . .) All in all a good couple weeks.

Speaking of Wicked All the while deep in my dark mad scientist laboratory. . a new black PFD is being born. . .

Oh, Oh, and did you see those pictures from WMCKA on Keith’s website? There’s Derrick doing his version of “Crouching Kayaker, Hidden Belly”. . some photos are better left un-published! LOL!!

Avoiding the impulse to head North-East to Greenland Greg instead turned his Sea Kayaking UK Greenlander south this morning and began his trip around Newfoundland.  You can read more here.

The Narrows region of the Baraboo Hills

Wouldn’t you just know, the hardest thing to do in a flood is find a place to paddle! It almost feels as if every road out of town is met with a barricade. In fact it’s more than a feeling, it’s true. Yesterday through a series of side roads we were able to actually see the extent of the flooding that was closing of the major highway into town. (in fact this is the road I live on). When you finally come to the barricade it is quite shocking. For miles in all directions there is in fact a new sea. The low hills have become islands & shorelines. It will be a while before the road re-appears and much longer I’m sure before the miles of farm fields will see the sun. One highway is left to carry all the traffic of the region and on it you can expect to get about 10 miles for an hour of drive time.

Gryphon paddling his EPIsea on Mirror Lake, Wisconsin.

We did finally make it over to “Mirror Lake” which is not more than 6 inches above normal. This is because it was from here that the water ran into lake Delton causing the destruction there. Mirror Lake however just let the water move through and survived quite well. As you paddle along you will see debris in overhanging tree branches nearly 5 feet over the current water line. For those short hours even this little lake must have been raging.