The Kayaking Experience

Kayaking in the Hudson River anyone? It has been quite the transition from Utah where snowboarding, wakeboarding, skiing, hiking, mountain biking, soccer, and many other outdoor sports, are commonplace, to Manhattan where skyscrapers are everywhere you look. The difficulty of this transition was alleviated by an opportunity I had to go kayaking in the Hudson River. My excitement was soon abated when the kayaking guy brought out this huge orange section of foam and placed it around my neck. I felt like I was sticking my head out of a mattress. Or even better yet, I felt as though someone was taking a picture of a large painting with a hole for people to stick their head through to complete the picture. The reason I say that is because these paintings allow you to stick your head out but you really don’t know what is going on and everyone is just laughing at how funny you look.

Of course when I was actually on the kayak, I soon forgot how funny I looked in the “personal floatation device” and concentrated on how stupid we looked, rowing in circles. If you notice in the picture above we are not exactly rowing in syncopation. We decided to further humiliate ourselves by racing one of the other kayaks. It was “neck n’ neck” until we started the race. By this, I don’t mean one kayak blew the other one away, quite the contrary. I would like to compare the race to chickens running around with their heads cut off. I have never seen this phenomenon, but I am sure it doesn’t resemble organization in any form. I bet if we didn’t have the expression about the chickens we could use the comparative phrase, “we look like first time kayakers trying to race in the Hudson River.” It might not be as catchy, but I am sure the image is still created.

After being in a state of confusion and disorientation and realizing that the path we should have taken was a straight and narrow one, I realized that I had a great “story” for a singles ward testimony. I could share a 20 minute story of the kayaks and then in the last thirty seconds I could relate it to having direction in our life. Of course it might not be as compelling as the favorite hiking anecdote, but I could give it a try.

After a while we decided to explore a new region but as we tried to get there, our kayak seemed to want to go back to the dock. I looked up and saw people watching us, so I decided we should look like we did the move on purpose, and head back to the dock. After getting out of the kayak and orange foam, I became relieved because I didn’t have to be humiliated anymore. At that moment I realized I had been sitting in water the whole time and the back of my cargos were dripping. I then swallowed my pride and just walked home like a penguin (literal) and with my tail between my legs (figurative).