How do I start? I loved canoeing as a teenager in high school and even afterwards. Then life got busy, working lots of hours and I didn’t do it for a couple decades.
My husband said he used to go all the time with his parents when he was young and really enjoyed it.
I know my brother, Rusty, liked to canoe, so I asked him and his now ex-wife to go with us. When we were paying for the trip, the guy asked us if we wanted to go the three mile or the ten mile trip. Me, being all gung-ho, said let’s do the ten miles.
So, me and Tom get in our canoe and head down the river. I’m in front, paddling. We start heading for the bank, so I switch my paddle to the other side of the boat. Then we zing to the other side of the river towards that bank. My brother’s canoe is calmly going right down the middle of the river. He ends up pulling away by a far piece, probably to avoid all the yelling going on in our canoe.
My canoe bounced from bank to bank and back again. At one point, I grabbed ahold of a large tree, that was jutting out over the river, before being slammed into it. I think that veer was intentional…
I kept asking Tom what he was doing and he said paddling. I said, “I thought you said you loved canoeing and did it a lot as a kid.” He said, “Yes, but I was always in the middle, and my mom and dad did all the paddling.” That explains a lot.
I don’t know why we couldn’t sync together and go down the middle of the river, but those ten miles seemed like one hundred, and was probably at least 30 miles, the zigzag way. I kept telling him to paddle on the opposite side that I was on, to go straight, but it never happened.
So, my advice would be, before canoeing with anyone, get a background check to see how they came about learning to paddle. And then ask their family and friends.
I never lost my voice canoeing before. First time for everything, I guess.