Thursday, May 21, 2009

White Water Kayaking

I have been spending a lot of time lately trying to get a white water group up and running. RIght now the group is mostly focused on kayaking but I hope to expand the group into rafting and short/long boat surfing on the ocean. I have a sponsor which is cool so I don't have to pay the group fees for the time being. I also get to meet a lot of people this way and get to have fun doing it. I am looking into taking some lessons on how to instruct as I think that would be a great way to help me with running the group and enjoying the lessons too. I am not sure when that will happen but I think it will be really cool when it does.

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Monday, May 18, 2009

MAFK

I went to the Mid-Atlantic Kayak Festival this weekend and I had a pretty good time. I was a little disappointed at first that the conditions would not be present for me to do the BCU 3 star training but I think it worked out best in the end that I did the training on flat water then did the ACA L3 assessment the next day which is also on flat water. I learned a lot of new things and learned how to do a lot of old things properly which was great. The last day saw more conditions when the wind picked up and I had a chance to play with some bigger waves and learn how to better control my boat in wind and wave. It was a good weekend all around for learning. It was also nice to just spend the whole weekend up at the camp grounds and not have to worry about tenting (we stayed in cabins), food (they cooked for us), and entertainment (the speakers were great as was the live music). They announced that they would be holding the festival again next year which is great for them. The classes were quite small this year but I think that once word gets out, the classes will be filled up more next year. This was definitely a good way to learn new skills while staying close to home. The drive was barely an hour to get out to the location.

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Thursday, May 07, 2009

Slowing down?

I don't have a lot of stuff to do at work lately. I know there is a pile of stuff coming up, mostly in the form of paper work, but after that I really don't have any projects I am actively working on. My one project will be sending me out of town shortly on a business trip which is never fun. So I feel like I am slowing down. I get home and have no desire to do anything at home. I sit down and watch episodes of stuff I download for viewing and knit. I am working on a large lace project. I have a few things on back burners that I hope will come through soon. I don't have the motivation to work on them from home, plus my internet connection disappeared so I work on them a little at work. Hopefully they will bear fruit soon. I also have a new white water meetup group I started and I am waiting for that ball to start rolling on that one. I am already up to 100 members in about 2 weeks, which is great, but we have to wait for the water levels to drop before it is safe to get out on the river in any large numbers. Right now there was so much rain that the river was at flood levels. I am still planning on going out Friday night with some people, on a flat water, protected section. Then again on Saturday morning as I need the exercise. I really do need to get out of this funk I seem to have slipped into but it is hard. Work is no longer challenging, nor interesting. The economy sucks so I can't just find another job and move on.

I have started a new writing project. I have already fleshed out most of my outline, at least enough to give me a good start. I have started writing each point as a section and have about three sections finished now. This is almost 6,000 words. I haven't actually done much work at the writing group gatherings as I keep forgetting my iPod cable. At first the iPod was the storage location for my outline. I finally moved the outline to my google docs and then I couldn't get a connection the last time I was at the cafe. This week, there was no writing gathering as no one was able to make it. I went home and watched more stuff while knitting. Oh well. At least I have some kayaking friday and saturday, plus a beer meeting saturday afternoon. The I leave on a business trip which are always boring. At least I will have plenty of time to get some writing done.

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