Bird of Kayaking?

Have you ever noticed that lots of important things have a bird to call their own? Sure you have. There's your 'National Bird' and your 'Provincial Bird' and so on. Birds are always attached to really important stuff.

So where's the Kayaking Bird?

Oh oh... Do we have one? Aren't we important?

Of course we don't and we are. So, I'm herewith proposing a Corvidae as our bird. Everywhere I've paddled from the arctic to the tropics, there have been crows and/or ravens. They're all black - which is big in the kayaking world (just ask a certain female paddler of world fame) and they make really cool sounds like a lot of paddlers I know. In short, they're the perfect Bird of Kayaking!

Getting The Dog Out

Of course living in a northern clime isn't all long nights, hot drinks and hockey. There is lots more to do and here is an example. If you own a dog or two and they're large enough, then hitching them up to something or someone is a natural. I haven't actually tried this myself for fear of wrecking my back and ruining my kayaking career, but ski-joring with your dog is lots of fun.

I highly recommend you begin on a wide open area, say a forty acre pasture or something. That way the dog or dogs can be trained to go straight, and turn in the proper direction without you managing to hit something hard and immobile. The next step to try is shown in the above photo. Follow a deer path in the woods. The dog will usually stay on the path, nose to the ground. Finally, when all is in a controlled state, one can try heading off the path and into the trees. On this particular day, a few centimeters of snow over a hard crust allowed for some pretty exhilarating high speed slalom runs through the trees! Gee! Haw!

Not One Thing, It's Another...

Given the hard state of the water in local lakes, I've had to pass the torch over to the few still remaining on the water - what little there is. These ducks, mostly mallards from what I can see, are clustering close to the lake's outlet where a small patch of open water still exists.


Meanwhile a few kilometers downstream, I'm busy 'geocaching'. At this point, I'm following the river along an old rail bed that's been converted to a walking/skiing trail. A series of geocaches have been hidden along the trail every 500 meters or so. I walk along - the skiing being temporarily ruined by some rain - following my GPS from cache to cache. Six of them found today, which equals about three kilometers each way. If it's not one thing - kayaking - then it's another - geocaching!

The geocache in the photo above was hidden right at the river's edge. Perhaps I ought to look into getting a river kayak and take advantage of the running water. I have very little experience in fast water however and wonder if winter is the time to learn... Perhaps not.

Leg Paddling

Living where I do in a northern clime, there are basically two seasons for the paddler. When the water comes in liquid form, there's 'arm-paddling' which for me means kayaking. The other season occurs when water freezes into snow and ice. That's when 'leg-paddling' begins.

So with most of the water around now frozen, I'm back to leg-paddling. Some people erroneously think of it as skiing and/or snowshoeing, but we all have our issues, don't we?

Ctories Revisited!

Several years ago I started a second 'C' blog apart from 'C'kayaker, which I called 'Ctories' my contraction for 'Canadian Stories'. The first piece I began writing was called Ilatsiak, after a mysterious shaman encountered by the Canadian Arctic Expedition in 1914. Diamond Jenness, an ethnologist on the expedition, wrote about meeting this man and some of his comments about him prompted me to forge the link between Ilatsiak and the ill-fated Franklin voyage which was lost about 60 years prior.

My attempt to write the story began well, but over the past couple of years it faltered and then stopped entirely. I have begun 2010 with a new determination to see Ilatsiak's story through to completion. If you're at all interested, click over to my Ctories blog and pick up the story. It's now at episode 73...

Watching It

My brother has an 10 year old European car which came with an interesting computer which enables him to monitor various aspects of his driving style. In particular, it provides him feedback about his mileage. Armed with this information he can adjust his driving style to save gas on a trip. Naturally I lusted after one of these devices, but none of the cars I've ever owned has such a computer.

That has now changed. I discovered a company called 'Scan-Gauge' which makes exactly the computer I've always wanted. It provides all the info of my brother's car and more, 14 different variables in all! I recently purchased one of their gauges and am beginning to learn from it. Plugging it into the OBDII outlet under the dash took about a minute or less, so even I could handle the hi-tech part of installing the Scan-Gauge.

To begin with, as the gauge provides data in real-time, I can now track my fuel consumption more closely and adjust accordingly as I drive. It can tell me whether keeping the roof-rack on the car is costing me money. I now know how much it's costing me to transport my kayak on the rack. I can tell what pulling my tiny trailer costs. In short, this little gauge is providing me with lots of information which, if I pay attention, will allow me to continue to travel to distant kayak venues and still keep my carbon footprint low enough to live with.

Trapped!

I was thinking of going for a paddle this morning, but things got in the way. Bird things! These wild turkeys have been coming around the house for the past few days driving our dogs nuts. I don't mind feeding the birds, but these seems to much. Besides, how can I leave nutty dogs to go paddling? What would I come home to at day's end?

I wonder if these birds are any good to eat? I am feeding them after all, maybe they could return the favour...