I spent the morning letting Mike practice is white-water rescue technique on me again…by necessity, he’s getting quite good, which rocks. I think I attained a new personal low for core body temp this morning. But whatever…we made it and I still like kayaking…I’m pretty sure.

And I can’t think of a better way to cap an ice-water start than with a pool-water finish. I guess we can call last nights tub exercise a success too. FROM THE TUB TO THE TANK Clarissa and Theresa rocked it hard today for a few hours of “please do that again…ok, adjust that…ok, again…ummm, please don’t drown please, yes, thank you!” Shooting under water isn’t really as easy as it seems, but anything worth doing rarely is. Going SLOOOOWWWW and deliberate seemed like a good idea for a change, and it worked out nicely. From just this one shoot I came away with a mountain of ‘brain data’ to crunch on for making this easier/better/more! in future shoots. I’m looking forward to taking this up a few large notches in a pool, and then seeing what and where we can take it from there.

Kudos to EVERYONE today. Mike and Nate for a great kayaking ride. Clarissa & Theresa for knocking it outta the park. Connie for being an awesome assistant (I loved having the chance to work with you today! THANK YOU)…Jazzy and Nora for their assistantship (is that really a word?) with background stands and lights. And Erica for making sure everyone stayed alive in the pool…thanks!

…I love my job!

Mike and I gave it a go for some freezing cold white water kayaking yesterday.  Mind you, I’ve never been in a kayak on whitewater before, but it was a chance to try something new.

We worked on the basics for a few minutes and got underway.

Made it about 100 yards and all hell broke loose…everything that could have gone wrong right away did.  I’ll leave the scary details to memory – since there’s NO CHANCE I’ll ever forget it, it doesn’t need to be written down.  We ended up hiking more than kayaking and it took Mike about an hour to find my paddle…and the boat.

In the end, aside from some really heavy emotions coming and going for a few hours, everything turned out fine.  We had a blast, learned some truly critical life lessons and walked away with another great adventure – however brief it might have been.

Always try to live life to the fullest, just don’t overfill the glass before you’re ready!