Want to Keep It Fresh? Get a Kayak

by Robin Bonner

I Don’t Think So
I’m sitting at my computer on a recent Saturday afternoon, attempting to finish up some emails and billing left over from the workweek, while in my head I’m coming up with a plan of attack for our very busy weekend. Suddenly, my husband interrupts my trance. “Hey, EMS is having an equipment demo up at Green Lane Park. We can try kayaks, bicycles, you name it,” Gary calls out from the next room. “When is it?” I reply, my eyes not leaving my computer screen. “Today, from 10 to 4,” he says. “I just got the email.” I look at my watch. It’s one o’clock.

“You’ve got to be kidding! Do you really think we have time for that today?” I spit back at him, incredulous that he even bothered to mention it.

As I said, we had a lot going on that particular weekend. For Gary, that included mowing the lawn, moving mulch, putting latticework up under the deck—you know, the fun stuff you need to do in the spring if you own a house. The grass was long, and the latticework long overdue. We had been out Friday evening, friends were coming for Sunday dinner, and I was under deadline for this magazine, a work project (or 10), and managing the household. So the pressure was on, and I was in crunch mode. It was already after noon, and nothing on our collective to-do list had been checked off yet. Running up to Green Lane would blow the rest of the day. I was, in fact, annoyed at EMS (Eastern Mountain Sports). They’re just telling us about this now? If they had sent an email earlier in the week, we could have done some planning and avoided this unpleasant scene. Well, after my outburst, Gary pretty much dropped the subject.

I had to admit, though: The EMS event did sound interesting. My mind wandered: When do you get to just “test-drive” a kayak? I’d never been in one by myself. How much trouble could I get into on Deep Creek Lake, anyway? (That’s the small lake that sits at one end of Green Lane Park, where, presumably, EMS was holding the event.) Like Gary, I wanted to go check it out. Who cares about work and latticework? The work would still be here when we got back, and so would the latticework. We lived without it for 25 years; we’d last another weekend.

“How about we just go over from 3:00 to 4:00?” I offered, about five minutes later.

Point of View
We negotiated a time, I pushed hard in the office, and before I knew it, we were in the car, decked out in our Teva sandals and quick-dry shorts and shirts, quickly covering the 5 miles to Green Lane. An hour ago I had been contemplating our to-do list; now I was contemplating kayaking. Just a small shift in my attention, but an oh-so-pleasant one.

The crowded park was just the place for the EMS team—a helpful group of outdoorsy people of all ages, eager to introduce us to myriad gear for every type of outdoor fun: trail-running shoes, slacklines, Frisbee (or disc) golf, kayaks and paddleboards, and bicycles. After checking out some of the irresistible foot-shaped running shoes (I’m talking with individual toes), we made a beeline for the kayaks. So many boats and so little time! We got fitted for a PFD (personal flotation device, or, a life jacket, as it’s typically called) and paddles—kayak paddles are one shaft, with a paddle on either end.

I don’t recall the model of the first kayak I was assigned, but I remember that it was like a tub. Okay, so it was for beginners and therefore a good place to start. I appreciated the kayak’s width (and therefore its stability) as I gingerly climbed into it, keeping my center of gravity over the center of the boat, lest the both of us do a 180 into the water. Once I was seated, the EMS staff member gave the boat a shove as he shouted instructions on how to use the paddle. Yikes! I thought as I all too quickly moved away from the shore and struggled to take it all in. I wondered if I was in over my head. Well, the point was not to get in over my head, so I did need to concentrate on what I was doing.

It took me a moment to realize that the paddle’s two ends (one handle—two paddles!) could and would drip water all over me if I wasn’t vigilant. Well, it was about 80 degrees out, so I thought, who cares? Once I got the action down—smoothly sliding the paddle into the water and leaning into the stroke when turning—the rhythm felt wonderful, as if I had been doing it all my life. I experimented: paddling fast, paddling slow, turning, paddling backwards, and stopping. I chased after Gary, who had caught up to and passed me by then. Then, just as quickly, I turned and paddled away from him toward the opposite shore. What fun! With all of all of these new experiences crowding my brain, I hardly gave work a single thought.

That hour, out on the lake with Gary, but alone in a kayak for the first time, was easily the best hour of my week. The sun shone down on us, a warm and gentle breeze brushed across our paddling arms, ducks swam past quacking (hey, they were!), and enthusiastic voices wafted across the water. Everything looked different from our vantage point. I had been hanging out at that park for 20 years, but I felt like I was seeing it for the first time. I found myself just soaking it all in, there in that kayak. And, I knew Gary was doing the same thing; he was so in his element out there.

How much are these things, anyway?

That’s what they want you to think, of course. The EMS marketing strategy is impeccable. All the equipment they had on site that day was 20% off, and the sale extended through the following week. No pressure, literally. You are left thinking only about how much fun you just had. When things began to wind down (closing time!) and we steered our kayaks in to shore (at that point, it was kayak #3), we were happy to continue our reverie, even if it was part of EMS’s grand plan. While the staffers packed up, we hung around, trying out the slackline and the Frisbee golf. What was it that I felt was so pressing earlier? I couldn’t remember. It was still warm, although the shadows were lengthening. “Hey, whaddya say we get a pizza to take home for dinner? We can call Chiaro’s, and then hang out here ‘til it’s time to pick it up.” I suggested. Anything to prolong our stay at the park, and minimize dinner fuss. Once we were home, our evening seemed much more relaxed than it would have been otherwise. How desperate our lives become when we never try anything new!

That evening and during the following week, we talked about the kayaks. They fit like a glove! What a way to get out on the water! We marveled that we had so much to see, right where we’ve been living and looking for the past 25 years. “The sale’s on ‘til Saturday,” Gary would joke, egging me on. On Thursday, he said “Two more days!”

And, he was only half kidding.

Finally, it was Saturday again. We were home, puttering around, tackling another to-do list. I was making potato salad and planting flowers; Gary was power-washing the house, the deck, and the patio. Once again, we were having company the following day, so we had a lot to do to get ready. But, this time, I noticed, I was feeling much more relaxed about all of it, as if we had a date to go kayaking again. But of course, we didn’t. Then, about 5 o’clock, I went into Gary’s office. He was hanging out at his computer, taking a break from all the he-man stuff he had been doing outside that afternoon. “Only four more hours,” I said. He looked at me quizzically. “Let’s grab some dinner around 6:00 and get down to EMS before they close,” I said.

A smile spread across his face. “Are you serious?” he asked.

Kayak Summer
Was I ever! Gary went online right away and started looking into how we’d get two kayaks home, not to mention how we’d store them. He barely had time to read up on it, gather up some straps, and put the roof rack on the car. Talk about an impulse purchase!

We walked into EMS in Collegeville at 8:05 p.m. (I’ll have to say that we usually shop for such things at REI, as we’ve been members there for years, but this was EMS’s gig, so that’s where we headed. Both stores were having a sale on kayaks, and we didn’t see the models we “test drove” at Green Lane in REI’s online line-up.) Two enthusiastic salespeople approached and shared their extensive knowledge of kayaks; it was a crash course. Another couple who had tried out the kayaks at Green Lane had also decided to purchase a pair, so the four of us discussed our options. Gary and I climbed into and out of several of the boats again, just to make sure. We decided on the Wilderness System Tsunami 120 and 140—our fave test drives—in his-and-hers lengths and both in “mango” (a yellow-to-orange-to-red color that is just as lovely as it sounds). We picked out lightweight paddles with carbon fiber poles. At 9:44, only 44 minutes after closing, with our two “mango” kayaks strapped to the top of our Prius, we drove away from the store, waving to the EMS sales people, who by now were like family. We were (and still are) amazed. Not that the purchase was truly impulsive—we had, in fact, been thinking about it all week. We just didn’t believe we’d do it.

Now the spring and summer stretch endlessly, almost lazily, before us and we know it will be filled with adventure—much of it right in our own backyard.

To celebrate, first thing the next day—the kayaks were still strapped to the roof—we headed back to Green Lane Park, with snacks, water bottles, and our PFDs, for a little fun in the morning sun. We poked a bit down a creek that flows into the lake, just to see what we’d find. Our tiny vessels glided effortlessly through the water and (almost as easily through) the vegetation growing up from the lake bottom. We came upon water lilies, an old bridge, and swallows sweeping toward us, squawking to protect their nests. Turtles, sometimes up to six at a time, sunned themselves on rocks and driftwood as we paddled by. The sights that caught our attention were endless. Shrubbery growing close to and overhanging the water reminded me of mangroves, with their prop roots, along a waterway in the Everglades that we negotiated in a canoe with the kids many years ago. I half expected to see alligators, rather than turtles, peering at us from just above the water line.

Eventually, we headed home and back to our busy-as-usual weekend. But after that brief respite, we looked forward to our next foray into some local creek, lake, or river. We’d do the Perkiomen Creek and Schuylkill River, and then perhaps take the kayaks up to Lake Nockamixon. Maybe we’d even end up in Maine with these babies, on Frenchman’s Bay or Sommes Sound. It’s not only in the doing but also in the planning that we’re finding our happy place, all because Gary came up with a good idea and I was able to expand my outlook a bit to consider it. Now we’re on our way to summer together filled with something completely different, keeping it fresh.