Cracking the code

Last night, I walked in the door and the phone was ringing. Or bleating or beeping or whatever the hell it is they do these days. It was Cat, a friend of mine. “Glad you called. I’m busting. Just had one of those in-the-zone times. Finding that sweet spot.”

“If you only could’ve waited until Saturday…” Always the comedienne.

I was kayaking with some friends. Water conditions had imbued one of our favorite surfing sites with some very unfriendly traits. Usually, it’s a breeze. But, tonight it was downright hostile. I watched my fellow kayakers struggle to get up into the wave, only to be unceremoniously spit out.

My turn came and I casually crossed the eddyline with a single stroke. I felt the forces assault the hull and subtlety adjusted my balance and lean of the boat to turn them to my advantage. I just had that feel tonight. My kayak moved effortlessly up into the wave and stayed poised there. There was an eerie, pleasant equilibrium. John came to mind.

I thought back to when I took up whitewater kayaking and had the sense to sign up for a course. It required a kayak.

I shopped the web, reading and comparing in great detail. I even compiled a database of statistics and features to facilitate comparison. Most of the data came from the manufacturers of the products. I was not familiar with them, so assigned equal credibility. Should’ve known better.

One kayak stood out for my size and what traits were important to me. I bought it.

I did have the judgment to take it to a lake to put in some seat time before showing up at the course. Good thing. It meandered all over and constantly tried to slice an end down and capsize. This wasn’t fun. Had to be a trick or two I was missing.

John was teaching the course. He was older than me by a number of years, but was whipcord lean and tough. He was also a consummate paddler, if a bit old school in technique and equipment.

I walked up to him, kayak slung on my shoulder, and extended my hand. “Hi, John. I’m one of your students.”

He ignored my hand and glared at my boat. “What the hell is that supposed to be?”

“It’s supposed to be a state-of-the-art kayak.”

“It’s one of those new pieces of crap. They’ll never replace the long boats.” He was wrong about that. “Damn it. I’ll be fishing your sorry butt out fifty times today.” He was wrong about that, too. By about three times. He wasn’t far off about this kayak. Years later, I would see it made a top ten list in a poll. Top ten worst whitewater kayaks ever made.

We went over the basics on land. John skimmed through techniques for peelouts, eddy turns and draws, like they were as natural as breathing. We stared at him like dogs that had just been shown a card trick.

Then, it was onto the river. He has selected a chute suitable for s-turns. That is, a ribbon of fast moving water flanked by still eddys. You shot out of the upstream side of one eddy (peeled out), turned downstream and punched into the eddy on the other side of the river. Or, that was the theory.

John demonstrated, making it look ridiculously easy, if not downright boring. It was our turn. Within minutes, the site was afloat with paddles, water bottles and other assorted flotsam and jetsam. Looked like the Titanic had gone down.

As we emptied out our kayaks and shook off the river water, John zipped through a rehash of techniques at a speed you’d need a Pentium chip to download. We tried it again, with similar results.

After numerous repetitions, about half the class was starting to get it. The other half was spooked by his screaming or by floating upside down in an oxygen-free environment, and they bolted.

With the survivors, John decided it was time to head downstream. About a mile passed, with him directing us in and out of eddys. Not too much carnage. Then, he gathered us in one large one.

“That is a good surf wave.” There was a deep crease across the current, fringed with boiling foam. Seemed like a good place to avoid. “We’re going to surf it.” Great.

John edged out into the current. But, instead of pivoting downstream, he moved across the river. He barely seemed to paddle, yet wasn’t swept away by the current. It was as though he simply willed the kayak to go where he wanted. His absolute calm stood in stark contrast to our wild flailing and struggling.

As he approached the frothy trough, I experienced a feeling akin to that I had felt watching old horror movies. “Don’t open that door!” And yet, he slid his kayak right into the maw of the maelstrom, and he stopped paddling.

Whitewater thrashed all around him, but he and the boat stood stock still. He sat in complete repose, looking like the Buddha. Several jaws dropped.

After a minute, he turned toward us and said those dreaded words. “Your turn.”

I wasn’t about to volunteer, and pretended to take an intense interest in something upstream. But, my classmates were smarter. They backed up, leaving me alone at the eddyline. “C’mon, Henry, you’re burning daylight. Ferry your damn butt over here.”

Oh well. In for a penny, in for a pound. I poked my bow through the eddyline and attempted to vector laterally, as John had done. No dice. The current grabbed me, turned me and whipped me downstream. As I struggled to remain upright, I heard John boom, “Next!”

One by one, my fellow students emulated my frantic paddle movements to fight the driving current. All, with the same outcome.

John was disgusted. “Just watch me.” He glided ghost-like out of the eddy into the current. His moved effortlessly across the river, seeming impervious to the force of the current. As though drawn by a line, he moved directly into the wave and serenely perched there.

Now, I was mad. He didn’t have to draft a volunteer this time. I was already moving.

I hit the eddyline with all the speed I could muster and added a directional correction stroke to prevent the current from spinning me downstream. That barely worked, but I didn’t wait to see and was already digging furiously. I wasn’t going to rely on telekinesis or whatever he was using to move his boat. I was going at it full bore with my paddle, the only card I had to play.

It was an epic struggle, but I was remaining even with the wave as I inched across the stream to it. If I could only maintain the frenetic stroke rate long enough to get there.

I did. Ah, now the easy part. Just stick it in there and sit. What was I thinking?

The wave not only accepted me, it sucked me in with alarming urgency. I froze. It chomped down on the bow, catapulting me up in the air. Then, there was a violent twist to the side. I had a brief glimpse of sky before the translucent greenish-brown.

I exited my boat and bobbed to the surface. “You leaned the wrong way, idiot!” I didn’t recall leaning at all, or exercising any control whatsoever for that matter.

We stayed there and cycled through, over and over. A third of the class never made it out to the wave. They may have been the lucky ones. The rest of us swam repeatedly.

Not entirely accurate. I learned a little bit each time and enjoyed a few brief moments of stasis on the wave before it ate my boat. But, clearly, I was missing a whole lot of John’s Zen.

When he tired of the boat swamping exercise, John shook his head in disgust. “Just watch me,” he intoned very slowly, as though addressing some foreign tourists. Once again, he seemingly floated on air and hovered almost above the wave. I had no idea how he was doing it, but vowed to myself right there that I would figure it out.

I did, a couple years ago. But, last night was just one of those rare times it felt completely dialed in. Probably because the wave usually facilitates surfing and this time, it had to be all me, and I just happened to have it on this occasion.

I don’t kid myself that I’ve even approached John’s level. But it feels good when you’ve finally cracked the code of something.