With a sore knee plaguing all of my movements, I decided it was time for kayaking. I knew it would be easier to have someone along to help loading and unloading the boats…and I like the company…so I asked Marie if she would be up to an early morning trip on the Upper Cuyahoga.
We met and were on the road before six, but could have been an hour earlier. I’d been reluctant to ask a teenager to get up any earlier, but she said 5 a.m. would have been fine. As it was, we didn’t get our boats in the water until almost seven, but we were easily the first on the river. I like to enter my boat with dry feet and have perfected a method of getting in the kayak and then lifting it…and me…into the water by pushing down on the ground/river just below the boat and raising/scooting the kayak into the water. I demonstrated this method for Marie, but when I watched her attempting to launch by pushing her paddle against the shore, I reminded her of my method.
“I don’t want to get my hands wet,” she said as way of explanation.
This puzzled me since it is quite impossible to kayak and not get wet hands.
“You do realize the Cuyahoga River is full of water…don’t you?” I asked.
I paddled back to pull on the stern of her boat. Her bow was firmly planted in the sand and she wasn’t getting out without my help…or by getting her hands wet. I pulled and suddenly, she was in the water…with dry hands that would soon be wet when the water running down the paddle reached them. I hoped she wouldn’t throw it into the river should that happen. I had no intention of towing her on this trip.
She quickly overcame her phobia for wet hands and paddled behind me through the extensive blow down that litters the river just south of the put-in at Russell Park. We spotted our first of three beavers in ten minutes and had numerous sightings of Great Blue Herons. At one point, Marie was startled by a large fish splashing in the shallow mud along the river’s edge. I suspect it was a carp and easily measured over three feet and looked to be a monster.
“Could be a gator…or an Orca. They’re both known to be in these waters and will flip kayaks and eat the contents,” I warned.
In all, we spent a little over two hours on the water and were returning to our take-out just as the deer flies were becoming seriously annoying. As we pulled out kayaks from the water, about 10 people were preparing to launch. We’d done the right thing…gone early and grabbed all the serenity the river had to offer that day. I don’t know why I fail to remember this and force myself from my bed more often at the crack of dawn. For run, rides and kayaking, there is no better time to beat the heat and have the roads, parks and waterways to myself than to start early. And then I have the rest of the day to turn it into a double by doing something else.
Kayak Duration: 2 hours and 15 minutes.
Training Heart Rate: 80 bpm.
Calories burned during workout: 675 .
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