bethany

Tin foil hats are also welcome. Ask Bethany.

Mars was Very close that night. Precautions were necessary.

Does anyone know the physiological reason why it seems it is only after you are up that the ice cream headache hits?

It does not seem to be a function of time as I can chest scull with my head underwater till i need air and no problem until I'm back up, then blam...ouch..ouch. I really noticed this big time today. Enough so I think I'm done with practice until pool sessions.

I *think* when you are in extremely cold water your blood vessels constrict and slow you down as a survival mechanism (remember how with hypothermia no one is dead until they are WARM and dead) and then suddenly go back to normal again when you are suddenly out of the cold, like having cold ice cream suddenly in your mouth and then gone. So I think it's the suddenly gone part, the sudden loosening of the constricted blood that actually hurts, kind of like when it hurts to have the blood rush into a limb you've been sitting on. I don't really think you want to learn to roll up in slow motion while your face adapts, so probably other than avoiding unnecessary rolling in the cold the only helpful thing is probably covering as much of the exposed area so it's not having as extreme a change...

--b

I tarp mine all the way around, having lost one foam seat to squirrels. . . .

okay, this is bad lighting, but here's Lyra for your rolling lesson:

--b

Not to be harsh, but learning to roll would be so much easier if you can breathe while doing it

(not very realistic though)

Yes, also if you were starting face up and ending face down.

--b

Here's some advice for those of you who want to learn to roll your boat: Watch a four month old. Seriously, I should make a video. I'm sitting here watching Lyra who has learned to roll from back to front. It's Exactly what you should do while rolling a kayak. She whips her hips over, curls her back up and then at the very end snaps her head up and has her hands in front of her in ready-to-rock position. I practically expect to see water dripping off her!

--b

Yeah, an antihistamine would also help if you were all congested in humidity on hot days -- post nasal drip on hot days is sometimes makes me queasy, and I'm not at all prone to motion sickness normally.

--b

Thanks, everyone!

Sleep, ha haha. She's three weeks old now, so it has to get a teeny bit better right? My inlaws are in Kittery so I'm angling for the grandparent visit/babysitting while I kayak eventually. Meanwhile, I had a c-section and somehow a 9.2 lb baby so it will take me a little while to recover.

xo --b

I bring my boat up to Lake Wentworth in the summer sometimes to visit my dad's cabin. It's MUCH much quieter than Winni. There is a way through to Wentworth from Winni in downtown Wolfeboro, but I forget how it goes exactly. There's a pleasant beaver swamp on one end of Wentworth, with herons and turtles and deer around and the Nature Conservancy owns Stamp Act Island, which had bald eagles nesting on it the last couple of years. The lake usually has a number of loons as well.

A short drive over to Newfound Lake might be nicer as well.

--b

Yah, I'm with Rick on this. I might have a bit of an urban mindset, but in my experience most officer types don't take Preventative actions on behalf of people, so in my imagination calling and saying something MIGHT happen probably wouldn't get much for results. Though of course, it probably wouldn't hurt either.

I think it sounds like you did the best you could. I've shouted to people in kayaks off of Coolidge Point while working as a ranger before and generally my experience was being told to mind my own business or to f* off too. Not much you can do then.

I bet if you got ice in there at any point it could bend it, too!

I've got one here somewhere... I'll look for if you don't get Ed's for some reason.

The movie The Islander, which is at the Kendall right now is based on Vinalhaven, btw.

--b+

H -- that Chinook is an excellent camping pack mule and should help you out tremendously! It's been on a number of trips, and has carried extra gear for others including large amounts of water down beyond the foot pegs.

--b

Wow, that's cool.

Oh man, I wonder what they scrub you with if you swim in the Harlem River area there, blech!!

--b

I second the motion for YOGA. If you are flexible, you won't hurt yourself as easily trying various rolls.

--b+

Yup you can. I always have to be careful how I word what we did, because I'm forever telling people "My brother married me" as a result. lol

--b

She's the one who wrote Swimming to Antartica, right?

PS: I saw an excellent kayaking t-shirt idea in Vieques that we should make a version of for NSPN that had some paddlers and said Free Range Humans on it.

I've been asked by a number of people about kayaking while pregnant recently (and been yelled at for doing that, hiking and more), so here are my (polite) thoughts in case it helps anyone. . .

Like most exercise, if you already regularly paddle, in General it's okay to keep paddling while pregnant. However...the first trimester is all about fatigue for many people (particularly us "advanced" maternal types -- I'm 37 and have found this really exhausting). You then get lots of weird torso pains around the edges of your stomach due to forming new round ligaments there. Your lung capacity is way down and you're pumping way more blood around your body. Obviously if you're having a nauseating pregnancy, boating won't be your first choice anyway. If you're not, you may be too tired at first, and then have this somewhat unwieldy stomach once you're feeling better and have spent a few months not getting enough exercise. I found this week that the stomach might actually be a good aid for torso rotation -- the instinct being to turn at the hips and move this big front load around. However, my back was acting weird from carrying around the extra weight and it took a couple of painful minutes to adjust to paddling. The bigger your stomach, the more your center of balance changes, but I have so far found this to be fairly easy to adapt to, and I wonder if other kayakers might also find that easier to adapt to.

I think one of the biggest challenges here is keeping your tempertature regulated. Dressing for the cold water in NE is diffiicult to change shape for as it gets expensive, lol. It also often makes you a bit hot while above the water and you can't get your body temp up too high. If you're cooling off in the water occasionally, blowing rolls could be painful while pregnant and rescues are a little more challenging as you don't want to be bellyflopping anywhere to get back in, nor do you want anyone potentially spearing your torso with their boat obvsiously. You'll get tired WAY before you're used to and you'll need to eat often and drink a Ton of water and pee. You also weigh more suddenly which is a change in your boat and fit, and frankly, a neoprene spray skirt isn't going on anyone easily after about halfway thru a pregnancy. So you could paddle, yeah, but not in cold, rough or vaguely threatening situations....which kind of limits your options ocean-wise here in the NE.

Personally, I recommend my technique -- get pregnant in the fall and keep your paddling to mellow short jaunts in calm tropical places.

--b+

I was paddling in the bio bay in Vieques just this week. You need to do that with a guided trip (it's a reserve) at night in fat sit on top boats, but don't miss it -- it's one of the nicest bioluminescent bays around and it's unlikely to survive the light pollution of building on the island for long. Island Adventures is the only one doing that at the moment, though you'll find others listed. The only kayak outfitter I"m aware of on Vieques is Blue Caribe, and it wasn't clear to me if they are in business at the moment, but either of those outfitters might give guidance and know other places to call.

The south side of the island is warmer water of the Caribbean and the north is the Atlantic. I'd beware the western side where the two different temperature oceans meet and many weather patterns spiral toward PR from there. The northeastern coast is also to be avoided (names involving Diablo are easy to pick out on a map) and this is also the southern point of the Bermuda triangle.

There are a number of surfing beaches in Vieques, and looking up surfing info there may also give you some indication of the waves in the various areas. We met a couple who had been cruising for two years who had left their sailboat in Ponce, PR and travelled out to Vieques as they said that sailling east in that area was quite a challenge...don't know if that's helpful.

Call us if we can help with anything else. . .

--b

We built wooden racks that are sort of like wide chair shapes, if you imagine the arm rests made of webbing. There is one for each kayak and they lie at a slight angle upside down cradeled in the webbing. They are outside and mainly in the shade. This has been fine in summer with some occasional slug removal necessary, and fine in winter except for the time squirrels ate my seat. We now wrap tarps around them and bungie them if we know we won't be using the boats for long periods just to avoid ice in the skegs and squirrels in the cockpit.

--b+

This does not qualify as warm in March, but since you caused me to remember about it, I thought I'd share it for a future paddle for you.

The Roanoke River in NC has this cool water trail with platforms in the swamp and stuff partly built in conjunction with the Nature Conservancy. I saw a presentation of this at a conference on eco-tourism efforts in Maine -- it was an example of a cool successful project. Check it out:

http://www.roanokeriverpartners.org/

--b+

I can't even list the number of people I've seen on mountain summits in winter in cotton clothes and sneakers, their jeans frozen on the bottom, who have frequently brought their kids dressed that way with them. If I'm coming down and they're coming up I generally tell them it is freezing on top and getting darker and they might want to consider turning around. I've also given people water in the summer before who went hiking with none.

I've instinctively shouted to people from land while working as a ranger in Manchester-by-the-Sea a few times "Where's your PFD?!" (it makes me feel like a nag, but it's out of my mouth generally before I've thought about it) and had people pat the front of their boat where it was bungied -- to which I could only shake my head sadly and go back to giving bandaids to the people who walked through the woods in flip flops. I've even been yelled at because a woman had a tick on her blanket there.

I know I've done a few stupid things early on in various adventures that left me unprepared for reality, and I learned from them and can only hope I'm witnessing others do likewise! It would be easier to believe if they weren't so belligerant in response so often though...I'd love to hear tips on successful ways people have said/done something in these situations.

--b+

I used to see them around the state fish pier in Gloucester in the winter.

I successfully walked down part of the bow of my chinook and back while on the water once...which really doesn't serve any purpose, but you can't do it, can you? lol