Dispatch from Boat 200

I went kayaking today, at 5:45 am, with my seal team regatta. All of our boats have numbers; mine is 200.

Today we learned some new strokes and just paddled around a bit. There were also seal team swimmers nearby, so we watched what they were doing. We had to get out of our boats and get back in, and go underneath our boats. I had to cheat a little bit. A lot actually. Don't report me.

We rowed over to a scruffy little island and got out of our boats. Actually we got out before reaching the island and pushed the boats to the shore. We left our boats clustered together but not secured. We swam away from them and learned to do the gator. The instructor yells gator and we all scramble to get out of the water as though being chased by a gator. There isn't a beach, mind you, just some shore line without trees. We did pretty well at this (even me, the senior member in the kayaking group); we saw a rope hanging nearby which was very tempting so we swung off of that rope to get back in the water. One at a time, of course. We aren't crazy you know.

hey, look over there ... those swimmers had stolen our little boats and were most of the way to the opposite bank. We swam towards them and guess what, it was gator time again. Back to the shore to scramble out. I was starting to feel my age by then so I was relieved that is was time to get back into the boats and row towards the boat landing. But first we had to learn to turn our boat in circles. I was quite good at that.

We paddled to shore and the sun was coming up over the downtown skyline, making a nice pink and yellow glow over everything. You don't get that at the gym.

Have a great day, no matter what you do.
Janet