Coming soon:

This should be fun. I will be on the water with Bryan and Todd and that will be a learning experience. A bonus is that the screening will be at the Back Eddy.

The Osprey web site will be updated as this week progresses but for now, the on-water events are free but require pre-registration.

Cheers -

Hugh

Quick Note:

Our schedule for 2009 is now on the site calendar. We will be adding dates as we confirm some additional events.

Included this year:

• Greek Isles - We are heading back in '09!
• New tours and instructional courses
• ACA Assessments - test your ability!
• Cuttyhunk Crossing has returned...in August we head to the islands!

Another new bit of tech we will be rolling out in the next while is a Google Calendar with all of our offerings but more on that later.

New faces will be joining our staff this year and many familiar faces will be returning so swing by for a visit, renew acquaintances and meet the new folks.

-Hugh

Baby Steps

Luke stands with feet slightly wider than his shoulders looking at me. I move to the door and sit on my heels holding out my arms. A smile splits his face from ear to ear and a sparkle enters his eyes as he takes his first 3 steps.

I lift him while hooting and hollering and turn to show him triumphant to his father. Luke doesn't giggle or move at all. I look down to find him smiling to himself. He looks up at me and gives me his public smile.

What does this have to do with kayaking? Nothing other than most everything we do is learned in baby steps and he is now 3 steps closer to kayaking.

Luke continues to refuse to walk for his father by falling down in gales of laughter. Now I am in on the joke too.

Brace

Water laps at the sides of my face, threatening to wash over my cheeks. As I lose myself in the grey expanse of the ceiling, muted sounds flow through the pool. Muscles in my waist feel stretched as they make the turn to my legs which cant my boat away from me. In my hands is the paddle I don’t really need, one end by my hips the other angling off over my shoulder. The blade slides easily back and forth across the surface of the water with minimal direction. I bob as more muted sounds make their way through the water to my ears. Someone is having fun splashing around. My eyes close. I am relaxed, enjoying a private moment of balance.

Lessons Learned

I was reminded at our last pool session of the most important part of teaching, and that is to pay attention to what we are teaching or I should say who.

When I go into a class as the coach I prepare myself with a syllabus and a few key points that I believe would be beneficial to my students. I always make it a point to listen to the needs of my students but sometimes I get caught up in my agenda.

This past session a young man really drove home the point that the syllabus is in the students not in my lesson plan and that all I need to do is draw it out of my students. I had a plan of clever games and exercises for him to do, when it came to the class his needs were really just to be comfortable in the pool surrounded by a bunch of crazy adults messing about in small boats. For a young boy he was probably fairly intimidated just by the fact that he was the only kid. My plan was to try and teach him kayaking what he needed to learn and what we ended up doing was learning how to be comfortable learning how to just be in a boat and how to relax to the point where learning can take place while being the only kid in the pool.

In retrospect the whole lesson might have been more valuable to me than him.

Thank you Andrew you are a great teacher.

Chlorine

As I pick up the book and examine the cover, memory of the first read flows through me. The excitement of the story unfolding, fresh and new…spending hours immersed in the writing, the images engendered…a sense of completion at the end washed away with a cold shower of reality pouring back. There is no re-capturing that feeling no matter how much the book is loved or how often it is a companion.

I stand in the pool watching the students and feel envy. They are overcoming fears, perfecting motions and experiencing a new chapter of their story. There is always more to learn or to master and life continually plays out but there is a sadness in knowing that I would have to move on to something different to regain that “first time” rush. I feel envy and am a little jealous.