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 The
duckies are a lot of fun. They are very stable and if you have a
little bit of kayaking experience you can get them to do some pretty fun
things. I don't have that much experience but I kept it right side
up much of the time.
I did flip in one of the rapids. It was not one of the bigger rapids and I had really finished the rapid and had kind of eased up a little when a wave came up out of nowhere, at least it seemed that way!, and flipped me. I went down and stayed down. The water streamed down over my face and body, pulling me into the cold. I thought, "I’m not coming up." That thought lasted a split second and then I relaxed and thought "It may be a while, but I’ll come up." And I did, right under the inverted duckie. No air pocket there. Cold. I’m trying to push the duckie away so I can come up but I have no place to push from. It’ll move eventually. And it did. It may not read long but it seemed a while as it happened. I wasn’t panicked (after the initial few seconds), but I was definitely a bit concerned. I got a few breaths. The paddle had been pulled from my hand or perhaps in the surprise of the flipping I had let it go, but I was paddleless. I flipped the duckie right side up and climbed back aboard. I paddled a little with my hands but that was pretty ineffective. Garret had retrieved my paddle and threw it to me. Whenever I have a bad experience like that, my first instinct, my first need is to talk about it. Before, when Angie and I were on the same boat and in the same state, she might get nervous, but she is the first one to whom I want to go and so I did. She asked if it was a good swim and I said "it wasn’t". I explained it to her and then I could go on. But I was tired from the affair. Fortunately, we had only a few more rapids to go. So I toughed it out.
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