My Arms Hurt (01.10.08)

Neither Karyn nor me had ever kayaked before. We were both a little apprehensive about a full day on the lake rowing, Karyn perhaps more so than me. We were picked up at 10am and driven 40 minutes to the far end of Lake Gutierrez. We layered on our kayak gear: water-proof jackets, life-jackets and rubber kayak skirts and slid into our canary-yellow kayak. Our instructor gave us a brief lesson on kayak control: 'push the right peddle to turn right, push the left peddle to turn left', then pushed us into the water. The morning session was surprisingly easy, Karyn and me both amazed by our speed, agility and stoic argument-free endurance. We led a pack of three kayaks. In the other kayaks were an Australian/Irish team and a poorly coordinated Mexican/Peruvian team (dressed more for night-clubbing and cruising Chapel St than kayaking) who were paddling in circles. We were excited to have found a sport we excelled at; one we could do while sitting down.

We reached our lunch time destination first and ate three courses on the edge of the lake amongst huge trees and native bamboo. During lunch our fortunes turned as did the wind – a complete 180 degrees in fact. With the wind came choppy waters, dense cloud and rain. We consumed far too many Argentinian pastries – carne (meat) pastries, onion and cheese pastries, spinach and cheese pastries, and four cheeses pastries. Brimming with cheese and still confident from the morning's perceived victory, we squeezed into our kayak ready again to defeat our Mexican/Peruvian friends.

The afternoon session started poorly with me loosing the rudder peddle. This meant we drifted in circles for 10 minutes as I tried to recover it. Somehow the Mexican/Peruvian couple learned to row over lunch (I don´t know how as they still couldn´t coordinate their timing and they looked like they should sink) and they steamed ahead while we drifted in the shallows and were pushed back by the wind. We noted that if Karyn stopped paddling (which she did every 20 strokes) my paddling alone would hold us stationary; if we both stopped paddling we would drift backwards at a rate of knots. So it was for the following two hours, we battled the grim forces of nature attempting to assert ourselves on the lake, pushing forward ever so slowly. Karyn's arms burned with exhaustion and she kept asking why I chose the full rather than half day of rowing. Not having a convincing answer I would instead yell encouraging and inspirational remarks such as 'Row, dam it!' Not soon enough the other side of the lake appeared through the rain inspiring us to exhurt what little strength we had left. To our dismay the Mexican/Peruvian team (though still lacking some coordination) had maintained a good pace against the wind and were first to reach shore, followed by the Australian/Irish team, and Karyn/me following a lazy five minutes later.

We dried/thawed out in the club over a beer. Karyn carried several blisters as reminders of her new found favorite sport. Bewildered by our 'second half defeat' we dissected the race concluding we had obviously gone out too fast – not saved anything for the second half – needed to pace ourselves better. We tried to console ourselves with clichés such as 'it's not about winning, it's about having a good time'. It was shallow comfort, we knew it was a lie.