Category: Revelation

Last night’s paddle

Last night I went with the Hugger’s Ski Club for a group paddle. There were seven of us, and we went to what for me is unexplored territory, Braddock’s Bay in Hilton. It was a nice paddle. The stream was extremely placid, and for most of the way Rob and I were forging ahead into water without a ripple on it. Didn’t see too much wildlife, except a fair number of turtles, some large splashes that might have been carp or might have been muskrats, and the usual kingfishers and swallows, and one great blue heron who took off before we got too close. Several of the people in the group spent the entire time loudly chatting, so even though I was up ahead of them I think they scared off some of the wildlife.

As you can see from the linked map, it appears that there is more navigable stream above where we turned around, plus several other streams coming off other parts of the bay that might bear exploring.

A tall person on a low boat, or a low person on a tall boat?

I’ve gone paddling with Rob a few times, and he’s always remarking how low in the water my kayak seems. And I suppose it is – and not entirely because I’m a lard-ass because he’s not too much lighter than me, and in a shorter boat, and his boat sits with gunwhale quite a bit higher than me. But my boat was made for speed, and to be something I would work towards mastery of; while his buying criteria were more in terms of ease of entry and exit, initial mastery, and lightness of craft.

That low-ness is made quite clear in this picture Rob took a few weeks ago at the Hugger’s Ski Club Paddle Power outing. I didn’t catch the name of the guy in front of me there, but it seems to me that I’m a tall man on a low boat while he’s sitting low in a tall boat.

Upon reading this post over, I’m struck by wondering if I would have written in quite this style if I hadn’t just finished listening to “Moby Dick” on my iPod.

Paddling against the flow

I did this paddle again. According to Google Maps Pedometer, it’s 4.6 miles. It rained two days ago, so the creek was higher than normal, and it’s flowing very fast. Both up and downstream were harder than normal – the speed differences between the parts of the river can catch the boat and swing it around or push you into one bank or the other. And of course upstream is just harder because you’re paddling against a strong current. But at least I wasn’t grounding out on a shallow stream.
Continue reading “Paddling against the flow”

Probably not going to happen

Well, I heard back from the guy who wants to buy this domain. He said he’d meet my price, but wants to spread the payments over 5 or 6 years. Oh oh. A friend pointed out that this could very well mean that they’ll be out of business in 2 years, and I’ll have lost the domain and not gotten the full price for it.

So I’m sending him the following response.

Yeah, you see that to me is a big sticking point. As a former nordic racer, I’m all too aware that good ski shops go out of business at a horrendous rate, and the ones that don’t go out of business barely scrape by. I imagine it’s even worse now when you can order from a bazillion on-line shops instead of having to drive 30 kilometers to the next competitor who isn’t trying to sell you some plastic monstrosities with fish scales on the bottom.

So to me that says that if you don’t do better than your most optimistic predictions, I’ll get one or two years of payments, and then nothing. And that’s not worth it to me.

I’m not in the business of evaluating business plans, and while I know banks are often wrong, they *are* in the business of evaluating business plans, and if you can’t convince one of them that having “xcski.com” as your domain is worth what I’m asking and give you a small business loan on that basis, I’m not going to disagree with them.

I wish your business well, but I’m going to have to say no to giving up xcski.com. Like I said earlier, though, I have the domain xcski.net which I will part with for a much more reasonable price.

Oh well, that share in the Cessna 180 on straight floats was nice to dream about for a few hours.