Wanna know why I am about to change the band-aid on my face? Keep reading….
When I graduated from college I swore up and down that this was the very last time that I would ever be in a classroom. I literally hated school. Perhaps part of it was the fact that I get easily bored from just sitting around. Well, ironically, I have been purposely putting myself through more class work through my professional organization, the Paddlesports Industry Association (PIA). This organization’s purpose is to promote paddlesport recreation, access, and education. No other group does as much for the sport or for the folks who like me are frugally unemployed in the industry (a.k.a. trying to convince themselves that someday they will get paid to paddle.)
For the last four years I have been involved in many ongoing education classes. Part of this enabled me to certify as a Wilderness First Responder, another portion upped my coaching skills with ACA and BCU certifications, but the part that I have gained the most practical knowledge from was the PIA’s Paddlesport Business School. Coursework included everything from marketing, retail store design, managing effective employees, and so much more. This second year of training fulfilled the remainder of the requirements I needed to certify as Oklahoma’s first Certified Professional Paddler or CPP.
Now, lest you be fooled, being Oklahoma’s first CPP ever comes with great responsibility. Anyone who has ever been on a trip with us or has attended one of our paddles knows that I am serious as a heart attack about risk management and safety. Occasionally I may even go a little overboard, as evident by my first aid kit that is as large as a 33 gallon garbage sack. Frequently I get made fun of for my overly cautious approach. I have even been accused of making people wear lifejackets on hiking trips, although I can assure you that this has never happened. The end result though is a perfect safety record, so neither I nor my insurance man is complaining.
Following several days of PIA coursework indoors beside the Meramec River in Missouri, seventy degree temps forced us to have an impromptu outdoor classroom on a nearby Class I stream the last day of the school. Let me repeat folks, Class I. This means that at most this waterway is characterized by nothing more than a few riffles. No waterfalls, no standing waves, no giant obstacles, NADA!!!
When it came time to pair up canoe partners, I had a host of other friends and colleagues to choose from. I immediately sought out my buddy Jared Carr, owner of Osagian canoes. Now, I spend a darn lot of time in kayaks, and a decent amount of time in canoes, but this guy is something like the third generation of family members who have been making aluminum canoes forever. This guy can do a J-Stroke in his sleep and would prove to be just the man this tandem canoe team would need to make our little craft look good in front of all our peers. …or would he?
About forty of us launched our canoes on the river in about 15 inches of water. The weather and company were making for the perfect float. Our group had the entire river to ourselves. I would be willing to wager a bet that we were one of less than a couple of dozen of folks to have paddled the river since the last of the tourists staggered home after Labor Day weekend had come and gone. For this very reason, the trees and other debris that had fallen over the course of the winter had not been removed either.
Canoe after canoe managed to be drawn towards one particular “strainer,” a large tree that had lost its footing on the stream bank during the last bout of high water. (Missouri folks term these things ROOTWAHS, which roughly translates in a upturned tree with a big wad of roots on the end.) I cautioned Jared to hold back until the traffic jam of canoes worked their way beyond this mess. Otherwise, we too risked getting hung up in this collage of tree limbs and Old Town Discovery 169’s on this all too narrow stretch of the creek. “Good plan,” Jared replied. Immediately after deciding this, our buddy Robby Baker from TNT Hideaway canoe livery in Florida booked an extended stay in the ROOTWAH hotel. He got tangled up like a family of contortionists playing the game of twister. We tried our hardest to hide our laughter with an abundance of pseudo concern for the man. (To my defense, this same guy spent five full days trying to make me tip my kayak when I recently was in Florida for another conference.)
After things at the rootwah had finally cleared a bit, we began our approach. We were easily sliding our watercraft past the obstacle, when suddenly the stern spun out of control bring us into the tree as well. We had a bit of speed up, so Jared was forced to tuck his head to avoid an overhanging tree limb that was as thick as my leg. I too was faced with the choice of taking the limb in my chest, causing the quick moving canoe to come to a dead stop, or bringing some of my limbo moves out of retirement from my roller skating days. I stretched my upper torso backwards, sprawling my back across the stern of the canoe. Not a moment later, I was whacked in the face as Jared turned loose of the branch that he was trying to duck under. Instantly, I knew that this was not good. Luckily most of my peers were already ahead of me. This surely must have been karma for making by fellow school attendees play a game of memory that had all the matches removed, or for tricking my friend Cheryl into thinking the decoratively designed rosettes of butter were really white chocolate morsels.
Time was certainly of the essence in treating my wounds. This was not because it was some dire injury, but instead because we had just spent the entire day learning about how to market your business through the internet using sites like facebook, myspace, and UTube. I was envisioning all forty of my peers popping a picture of my scraped cheek onto every social networking site out there. This certainly was not the sort of highly visible marketing angle that I was looking for.
I went home with nothing seriously injured except my pride. At least I had seven hours of driving time to thing up stories about how the raspberry on my chin got there.
….. bicycle wreck, violent girlfriend, really crazy shaving incident. HMMM!!!!!
