Bad-assery

Photo from Kokatat's blog: Destination Torngat

I recently had the privilege of watching a screener for Ben Stookesberry's new film, Destination Torngat. If you're a whitewater kayaker you've probably seen some of Ben's films; if you're not, you should still check them out. I've seen his film-making evolve over the years and the best thing about the recent ones is that they really tell a story - a story that is about more than incredible whitewater shots. It tells about the people and the adventure and contains truths that relate to everyone in many aspects of life.

But his lates film made me think even more about the lessons of kayaking relating to life. The film centered on an expedition to a remote part of Canado to kayak a river with amazing waterfalls and difficult rapids. The paddling required phenomenal skill, but the grueling nature of the approach impressed me the most. The team hiked for hundreds of miles, carrying hundred-plus pounds of kayak and gear on their shoulders, through mosquito infected arctic tundra, up and down hills, video-ing the action all the while. It was bad-ass.

It didn't look especially fun. They looked miserable during the hikes. There were comments about being more tired than ever before and hating life and the bugs that ate them up. All for some whitewater to kayak. Don't get me wrong, the kayaking looked amazing, but I live in California and there's some pretty amazing kayaking just up the road, whatever road you end up on. I certainly haven't done a lot of the high sierra classics, but I know that they match up to anything in the world. So why spend all that time and effort, why face all that pain and agony, just to kayak some similar but slightly different rivers?

Because the pain is part of the pleasure. Most of us enjoy something a little more when we have to work for it. The effort sharpens our appetite and adds to the flavor. For most of us, this combination is best taken in moderation. We love a cold beer after a hot paddle, a ice cream sundae after an evening run, a bonus for an extra effort at work. We want to know the world rewards hard work and a sense of self-satisfaction is hard-wired by evolution. It's part of what makes us human and is a very good thing because it's the source of much that is great in the world.

For some people, this balance tips to the extreme. They constantly seek greater and greater reward through greater challenge. It's the spirit of adventure, and it puts them out in front of the crowd, where the wind is fresher and it carries a little salt - be it sea, sweat, or tears. I don't need to ask why people climb the mountain (or kayak down it) - I see it in their eyes and hear it in their voice (and it comes across very well on the screen). They're bad-ass, and I'm thankful they exist. And now I'm off to do a few push-ups before indulging in some chocolate.

Fun from the shore

As much fun as it is to play on the ocean, sometimes it's nice to play around it. There are days when the waves are too big, or the seas too rough, when you just want to sit on shore and enjoy the majesty of the sea. There are also days when you're looking for a different perspective, a new way to see the waves and wildlife, or see it all through the eyes of a non-paddler. Those days can be just as fun as paddling.

Over the weekend, in between some garden work and writing, while the sun was still out and the wind was blowing, I headed down to the coast for an oceanside hike. So simple, so rewarding. We saw ocean creatures and could sit calmly and watch them without drifting or scaring them away. We looked in the tide pools, calm water clearly showing the many inhabitants living in close proximity. No paddles, but a couple of lenses and a full battery in the camera. I live in a very beautiful place. I hope you enjoy the pictures.

Mendocino from a different angle

These pictures were taken from the Spring Creek Ranch hike, a new addition to Van Damme State Park, just north of the beach.

Lots of great tidepools to esplore

Protected from the fierce ocean by a friendly reef

Water so clear it didn't seem to exist

In addition to the small creatures, there were some larger mammals out and about. The whales were a good mile offshore, so I was pretty lucky with this shot.

One of several whales probably headed north for the summer

Some seals about to lose their sunny perch

While I'm actually quite happy living inland a few miles from the water (much warmer, less fog, peaceful evenings), if I were to live on the coast, this is how I'd like to do it.

My future home when kayak blogging becomes the next big money-maker

Playing on the Mendocino Coast

Not a whole lot to say about it, but in the past few weeks we've gotten out in our whitewater boats for some coastal exploration nearby. The video footage below shows what the coast is like here in Mendocino: lots of tunnels and caves, interesting rocks to paddle around and over, and gorgeous scenery wherever you turn. It's a compilation from a couple of days, one launching out of Caspar, and one just south of Van Damme State Park (both under twenty minutes from our doorstep).

While there definitely isn't a single boat that's perfect for everything, there are definite advantages to one over another in certain situations. We chose our whitewater/surf kayaks for these adventures because we knew we didn't have far to travel (about four miles total on each trip) and the play features were dense and waves plentiful. Even if you're not a whitewater kayaker, it's worth it to have a short boat that surfs well for such ocean paddling. You can tell from my wife's smiles and laughter that it makes playing around easier and more fun. Give it a try if you get the chance - and visit Mendocino for the best place to do it.

A Paddler's Journey: What it takes to create a book

As my regular readers know, I've been working on a book, a paddling memoir tracing my career as a kayaker. But I know from experience that most people don't really understand what all it takes to make a book, so I thought I'd explain the process a little more.

Putting words on paper (or into a word processor). That's what most people think of when you say you're writing a book. And you do have to do that. But that's the fun and easy part, and it's just the beginning. Sure, you could just ramble on for page after page, just collect the stuff I've already written here, but a book - a real and true book - is different than a collection of blog posts.

When I set out to write A Paddler's Journey, I needed a theme, something to hold it all together and give it a backbone to build around. I wanted to share some fun paddling stories, but that alone wouldn't be worthy of a book. I decided to show my progression through the sport and all the lessons I learned along the way. How becoming a paddler has influenced my life as a whole. I did this through stories, and the stories can be taken by themselves and enjoyed as individual adventures, but each one builds on the previous and they all lead somewhere - to the person I am today. I had to leave out some good stories that didn't fit. I had to include more than just the paddling - I had to talk about the people, since they influenced me as much as the water. It took a lot more thought and careful deliberation to come up with the content for the book.

But then I did write it all down. That was fun. Then I reread it and saw all my mistakes - mistakes everyone makes in a first draft - and that wasn't so fun. I edited, changing large chunks of text, deleting some chapters, including more of my emotions, trying to be more descriptive and entertaining in my prose. It takes a lot to edit a couple hundred pages.

Then I sent that draft off to several folks for feedback. Quite a number never responded. It's very understandable - everyone is really busy and even if they squeeze in the time to read it they might not know how to critique it. But spending months pouring your heart and sole into an artistic endeavor, one that reveals your innermost thoughts and lays out who you are as a human being, only to get chirping crickets in response, is never easy.

But some did respond. They said good things and they also made suggestions of ways to improve it. I didn't agree with all of them, and some were contradictory, but it gave me more information and allowed me to go back in for another draft. That's right, I re-wrote the entire book, tightening it up, making every sentence the best I could. Months of hard work.

That basically got me to a near-final draft. Currently I'm working on a little bit of final editing - more proofreading than anything, making sure there are no typos, no missed words or clumsy constructions. Going through 57,000 words individually to make sure each one is correct. It's not fun or easy and requires a huge amount of concentration. I take books seriously.

Is that it? Is having all those words sorted out enough? Not even close. I plan to publish my book as a physical thing as well as in electronic form. Both formats require more preparation.

Digital books are pretty easy to format. It takes a little more than just uploading your Word document, but not that much. The main thing is to make sure your code is clean, that the conversion engines can handle it (there are multiple eBook formats, so you have to have a slightly different source file for each one). It's about adjusting styles, removing tabs, including title page info, lots of little things. I've done it before so I know it's not too hard, but once again it requires a lot of attention to the details.

A physical book is a much larger beast to slay. You have to choose a font, decide on a trim size (how big the book will be), set chapter breaks, create drop caps for chapter openings, check the line spacing, the leading, the line wraps (removing widows and orphans), confirm margins and adjust headings for each section. It's typesetting, an art and industry unto itself, but as a self-publisher all the work falls on me unless I pay someone else to do it (which isn't financially realistic for a book that will likely make me a few hundred dollars). There are so many little things about a book that readers don't notice - unless it's off, then they know something's not right even if they can't name what it is.

Then there's cover design, another job that I'm doing myself. It's easy enough to put a title on top of a picture, but that cover is the main thing that sells the book, so choices of color palette, text sizing, font choice, word layout, all have a huge impact on how the reader first perceives that book. And if you get them to pick up the book (or stop to read the Amazon page), there's the back-cover copy, a one-paragraph summation of the entire project that needs to sell the book to a dubious buyer.

All of that to create a book, but it all means nothing if you don't market the book. You need to get people to look at the cover, to read the copy, to read sample pages. Again, with no budget to hire professionals, that means me talking about here on my blog, asking my friends to spread the word, calling distributors and even individual kayak shops to ask if they want to stock a few copies. All for a couple of dollars for each book you sell (and if you consider the average self-published book sells less than a hundred copies, you start to realize why very few authors actually make a living at writing books).

I'm nearing the end of the journey. I expect to have a proof copy by the end of next month and be ready to go to print a couple months after that. But I'm trying to do all this work while holding down a full time job and living the rest of my life (including teaching some kayaking now and then).

So if someone says they're writing a book, you might want to think that they're just typing away, writing out stories or ideas and having fun doing it. And that might be true. But if someone is a real author, if they're putting out a book that's equivalent to what would come from a professional publisher, then they're doing a whole lot more than that. As a reader, you're free to just enjoy the words, but maybe somewhere in the back of your mind try to appreciate all of the effort it takes to bring you each and every one of those books you breeze through and throw on the shelf to fade into memory. Writing is something special and I applaud anyone who takes it seriously and does it well. It's a journey every bit as challenging and rewarding as any kayak trip.

Storm Gathering USA

Over the weekend I had the wonderful opportunity to teach at the first Storm Gathering USA put on by my good friends Helen Wilson and Mark Tozer of Greenland or Bust in Trinidad, CA. When you go to the first time of anything, you're never quite sure what to expect. But Mark and Helen have put on other symposiums before, including the Storm Gathering UK, and Trinidad is their home base, so I expected they'd have everything dialed in pretty well - and I was right.

I've talked before about what makes symposiums so fun in general, but what I really liked about the Storm Gathering was how local it seemed. While the coaches and the participants came from all over, everyone involved in putting on the event was a local. From Mark and Helen, to the many safety boaters from the local paddling club (Explore North Coast), to the caterers, to the sponsors (Kokatat is based a few minutes away in Arcata), it was put on by a bunch of people who knew the area and knew each other.

So not only did we all get great local information to help decide where to take our classes, but we also got great recommendations on where family members could go play, or how late the local shops were open. The truth is we didn't need much because everything was provided for us, from great accommodations for the coaches within walking distance of the launch site AND the dining hall, to fresh, organic meals that were some of the best food I've ever eaten, to free boat rentals from P&H (Thanks Jaimie!). It was all so easy and so fun.

I also liked that a number of the classes, especially the ones I got to teach, focused a little more on the mental side of things. As a coach, I find that teaching skills is fine but very transitory. People learn physical things through repetition, and technique really comes down to practice more than instruction. But I like to share a mindset, the things worth thinking about that can be hard to come to on your own. Some things it's far better to learn from others' experience than having to go through the hard knocks yourself.

I started with a class on Practical Leadership with Rob Avery. I've known Rob for years and he used to work for California Canoe & Kayak (but way before my time), but he now lives and works out of the Seattle area. We had a quick chat and exchange of ideas before meeting our students and it felt like we were on the same page, each with different ideas for the particulars but ones that blended together nicely. Among the exercises that Rob came up with was a variation on the 'leading the blind' that I hadn't seen before and it was a highlight of the class for lots of the students. It's so fun when you can teach and learn at the same time!

The next day I taught a great class on Incident Management with Cate Hawthorne of Liquid Fusion Kayaking and I really like how we laid out a simple framework to get people thinking (CLAP) and then did a number of scenarios to have them use it. We found a good balance of realistic situations and then twisted things a bit to make them harder and more complicated. It seemed like everyone got something new out of the class, even though it was a very experienced and skillful bunch.

I ended up with the afternoon off and got in a little paddle with my wife, who was volunteering with the ground crew and did a lot of cleaning up and sorting out over the weekend (the volunteers for this even were AMAZING and did so much hard work. Thank you all so much!). While it's always nice to get out on the water with my honey, we were joined by some migrating Grey whales, including a mother and pup. It's always great to see this giant creatures up close and at water level.

And after that great display, we got another one when the CoastGuard arrived to give a rescue demonstration (take home lesson was that rescue swimmers are seriously bad-ass). Then we had permission to fire off any expired flares on hand - with this group that ended up being quite the fireworks show. No one was harmed in the making of this picture :)

On the final day I got to go on a Coastal Journey with none other than Justine Curgenven of This Is The Sea fame. I've met Justine before and know she's great fun, but never had the chance to work with her. For someone who's always smiling, laughing, and joking, it's great to see how she works in lots of really solid concepts of tons of great wisdom learned from more time in a kayak than even most die hard instructors can dream of. We also got treated to a presentation on her latest DVD, Kayaking the Aleutians, which was once again super entertaining and very educational. If you ever get the chance to hear Justine present, don't miss it!

And no symposium would be complete with an after event pub dinner with whatever coaches were able to stick around. It was fun catching up with old friends and new, and I only wish more people had had the time to stay.

Once again, if you ever get a chance to go to one of these events, make sure you revel in all the people and the time spent off the water. Sure, you'll learn a lot in the classes, but it's the time in the community that makes the sport great and worth more than any individual skill.

More pictures on my Picasa page.