Squirt

A couple of weeks ago, I dropped in on the pool program run by my friend Matt at Prime Paddlesports. After teaching a few lessons there, I hadn't been in a couple of weeks. I brought along my newly-repaired Gemini SP to practice some rolling.

What a pleasant surprise to see fellow Manhattanites (and paddlers extraordinaire) D&O there, with an array of small boats. OG, the "Original Jersey" girl from the Channel Islands, had brought along her squirt boat.

Squirt boats are meant to be extremely playful, mainly in whitewater, finding current features to twist and shout and dance upon. The boat sits practically submerged to begin with. Just a little momentum, and it starts to dive and place the paddler perpendicular to the water.

As I watched her practice, I was intrigued. No way would I fit in that! I'm a good deal taller, and the boat, sitting on the floor, was no higher than my hand! But OG encouraged me to try, and with a little shimmying, I was able to slide in.

One of my friends, TI, took some video while I floundered about. Friends, it was like a real rodea, gettin' pitched around. 

Unfortunately I seemed so trimmed to the stern, I had to go backwards to make it dive. You can hear OG exhorting someone to push down my bow.

Well, it was a holler and a hoot. I'm not sure when I'll have another chance, but I'd take it if I had one. It was not quite the death trap I feared, but it was a lot of work to stay upright - and getting out in an emergency would be a bit more terrifying than in a pool surrounded by friends.

Brutal Winter

Holy cow, has it really been nearly two months since I blogged about kayaking?

But I've been paddling, I would say. I've been to pool programs, played polo.

I suppose I haven't felt like anything has been blog-worthy. If you want to keep up with Kayak Cowgirl, be sure to look her up on Facebook and Twitter.

After my last paddle on the Hudson, the ice overtook the river for about six weeks. New York City and the surrounding area were hammered with blow after blow of sub-freezing cold waves. The city was encased in ice, and ice flowed down the river from further north. The New York Times had a little video about a hardworking icebreaker farther north on the Hudson. Heck, even just getting to her day job, the Cowgirl found herself slipping downhill backwards on the iciest of days.

Looking North, Tubby Hook, Early March

All that started to clear up by the third week of March, but while the days got warmer and prettier, there was still a lot of wind out. And, by then, I'd been to enough pool programs to make some progress in skills that would have just been uncomfortable on the river.

For a while I did Kayak Polo. That was amazing, and if you want the full picture, look back at some earlier posts. Sadly, that came to a premature end the very day a fun tourney was organized. Enough people signed up ahead of time that everyone was organized into teams and we'd have a little playoff. Unfortunately, something happened to the physical plant of the pool building, and the season was cut short indefinitely.

After that, I'd go to Riverbank State Park, a program run by a collective of people from different clubs. Not far from where I live, Riverbank State Park is a large water treatment facility with a sports complex built on top of it - including an indoor pool. In exchange for offering the occasional lesson, your fried the Kayak Cowgirl got a sheltered space to work on her roll and certain rescue techniques. That less-consistent (well, less reliable) side has improved nicely.

So that's been the winter. Hopefully the work of it is over and, with Easter coming right up, the real start of spring will begin, and we'll be back to our regular scheduled programming of adventure and instruction and just plain how-do-you-do observations of paddling life in New York City.

Polo

I went to my second session of kayak polo last night. I mentioned my first in an earlier post on pool sessions. I'd meant to go this morning instead, but when the added another "Saturday Social", I opted for it instead.

If you're interested in kayak , you can read about the NYKP on their site, and the game in general here. NYKP relies on Meetup now for scheduling, so don't be put off by stale dates on their site. It's a fun game, the NYKP people are amazing, and it's a great way to stay active in the winter seasons.

We started with some warmup drills. OG worked with me to improve my throw which, surprise, works better with torso rotation. The trick is that you end up rotating your boat as well, which is why polo players get good at one-handed ruddering - a skill I meant to develop this summer anyway.

Once we'd played pass-the-ball on a bit, we lined up and too turns shooting the goals. Each had a goalie, and a passer to collect and pass balls, and one by one we took our runs at the goals. I was much better at getting on target than last time. Now, if I could only do something about that pesky goalie.

The lead organizers had us try working a play. This was a good idea, because my experience with polo so far is that with these being pickup games, most people play with no tactics other than, "get the ball, block the ball". In the play, basically the ball started in the corner and the offense team would pass the ball, one player to the next, across the pool, to shoot from the opposite side. I's refreshing to know that tactics are a consideration - and not a total surprise that they are, considering some members have actually played competitively and won championships.

So we played. We switched up teams a bit, the took a halftime, then played some more. While I didn't score any points this time, I did play "chase" role to harass whoever has the ball. By the way, it's easy to foul in this game if you aren't careful. Player competing for a ball will clash their paddles but once a hand is on the ball, paddles can't touch it. A player with possession of the ball also can't have a paddle wielded lass than an arm's length of distance from their body. I learned this one in zealously trying to block passing options.

In between halves, people practiced their rolling skills. Most of the regulars worked on their hand rolls, which are a bit easier in polo boats than sea kayaks. I'm pleased to report I managed at least a couple of paddle rolls he side I need to improve on, but I also completely failed once and had to wet exit. What happened was, my paddle angle was in completely the wrong angle and  couldn't get it right. One trick, which tried but needs development, is o let the paddle float for a bit to let the blade align with the surface.

Well, I did a few more, including a couple in the improve-on side, and that more or less restored my confidence.

Afterwards, a few people went out to dinner, but the Cowgirl and her ride-sharemates were plumb exhausted, and we drove back to Manhattan and went home. I'm feeling it all this morning - some minor aches and creaks, but that beats the slothful loss of musculature I've been feeling in these cold winter weeks.

Till next time.

Pool

Winter is here, and that means all manner of kayak pool sessions. There's at least four I can think of in the NYC area, and I'm pretty sure I'm forgetting at least two. I got invited along to two on the same day, because hey - this cowgirl is popular. Despite icy sidewalks and a numbing winter's rain, I made it downtown by 0830 to catch the carpool (poolcar?) to the first session, put on by New York Kayak Polo, in a small community college in Jersey City, NJ.

Kayak Polo, commonly known as canoe polo in some parts of the world, is pretty much what it sounds like: polo, but played in kayaks. Simplified versions get played in camps and clubs, often in whitewater boats, but it's a discipline of its own, with its own kind of boat, reversible PFDS (to make team-matching easier on the fly) and faceguards over the helmets.

It's as insane to describe as it sounds to the non-paddling laity.The idea is, you are in large swimming pool, lined up as two teams of 4-5 players with substitutes, and the teams compete to lob a ball into a goal on either end of the pitch. You can only hold the ball fore five seconds before either passing or dribbling - which means tossing the ball forward and paddling after it. You cannot paddle and hold the ball.

New York Kayak Polo, January 2015

It's an exciting game and it really got the cowgirl's blood flowing after two weeks of behind down and out with an awful, coughing cold. I even managed to make a goal! I am thankful for my friend who nudged me to go when I considered backing out. I met up with other people in the community whom I haven't seen in ages, including D&O, two friends I made last summer on a trip to Sedge Island.

They were heading up to an afternoon pool program not far from where I live, so I took them up on an offer to go along and have some fun there. It's a more open-ended program, where we get to practice on our own a bit before instructing newcomers. So, I worked a bit on my rolls, and also took a shot at learning a hand roll. I have a long way to go on that. But, I'm happy to say, I managed hanging draws in whitewater boats with a Greenland paddle. I found it a lot easier to slice forward than with a euro blade.

That was easily twice as much paddling as I intended for the day, and couple with a weekend jaunt the day before, I was plumb tuckered Monday. So 2015 is off to a good start. As slack as I've felt, I've kept paddling, at least once a week on average.

Dedication

It's hard not to feel dedicated when you find yourself part of a line of people carrying whitewater boats over should across fifty yards of snow eight inches deep, from their storage spot underneath some stadium bleachers to the indoor pool, and back again later on. Especially after the session, effectively a full workout, the cold night air is refreshing, cooling off all the heat worked up inside.

It's a bit of effort to get out there as well. Bereft of my car-equipped friend, I took the PATH train all the way out to Newark, and then local light rail to New Jersey Institute of Technology's campus. It was about an hour commute, and remarkably cheap if you think about it, but still, an hour each way, plus another forty-five minutes to get home once I'd got back to the city. I was a tired pup the next day, but in a good way.

I've been working on my right-setup roll. I've got my left-setup roll down, both a sweep and a C-to-C (and, more often, what I actually do is like a sweep-to-C). On the opposite side I am developing the fluid body motion. I know what I need to do; my reflexes aren't cooperating.

Step one, getting my hip flick. I realized that I simply wasn't snapping my hip as well, so I practiced that a bit.

Step two, getting the paddle in the right place. I feel like I'm not reaching far enough with my forward (that is, left) arm, and I'm diving the paddle. I'm rotating, but at a cockeyed angle.

I am improving. I've been able to do one or two of these per session. I'll give it two or three shots and then if I'm running out of air, I'll switch and come up on the other side.

One more thing: nose plugs. These make such a huge difference for practicing. True, in a real life situation you won't have them, but for practice, going in repeatedly, they're great. Without them, a couple of rounds of chlorine will force me to take a break. With them, I can go, and keep going, and really take the time underwater to figure out what's going wrong.

Pool Jam

I've been to two different pool programs lately, one operated by some acquaintances from the Yonker and DTBH programs, another through a friend who does whitewater with the AMC. With as much as ice as there has been cluttering the shores of the Hudson lately, I've welcomed the opportunity to really work out - and practice instruction - in a more hospitable venue.

There's a pretty common dynamic to pool programs. The first hour or so is pretty empty, as only the hardcore regulars are there on time, and help set up, and get in the water. Then the students and other neophytes come in, and the lead instructors peel off and give them all the time they need, standing in the pool, supervising wet exits, and so on. Then, as more students get to where they can noodle around on their own, the pool fills up, till it's a shifting seascape of boats and paddles.

Then, theres rolling. Everyone is rolling except the newbies. Pools are great for rolling practice, as the water is clean and clear, and you and your mates can really see what you're doing. Did the paddle dive, was it not in the right position? Was there no hip flick? And so on. I worked a bit on my "offside" - remember, there is no such thing as an offside - but also got in three in under a minute, which is practice for a particular long-term goal I have.

Pool programs tend to be less structured, ironically given how much goes into organizing them. I think this is because the ratio of instructors to students can vary widely and change on short notice. I'm of the opinion that most instruction, especially for newbies, really needs to occur in stages: one or two things and then practice, and next time, review, add one or two things, practice. Color me skeptical of being able to teach a someone everything in an hour and have them remember even half of it the next week.

I spent a fair amount of time practicing my hanging draw and some bracing turns, which are kinda ridiculous in whitewater boats. The extreme stability of the boat I was in allowed me to push my own mental limits. With one of the instructors, I really got low on my sculling brace, and that felt good. Now for warmer climes, when I can take my own boat out on the river and attempt the same.