Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Day 16 - Wind blown kayak

Breakfast - glass of water
Lunch - bottle of water, container of rice and beans and the smell of a chocolate angel food cake. Mmmmm.
Dinner - glass of water, piece of striped bass
snacks - glasses of water, handful of beans here and there.

When I got home from work around 7:30 I had the great idea to jump in the kayak for a quick fishing excursion but as I started paddling to my spot the wind picked up quite a bit.
I was being pushed sideways and so instead of fighting it, I let it take me along as I cast my fishing rod.  Little did I think about how I was going to get back home!  After about 10 minutes I called it quits - then the real adventure began.  I could NOT paddle against this wind.  I was going as fast as I could paddle and I was literally going backwards.  I was in real trouble here.  Luckily I wasn't in any serious danger - just more of an inconvenience.  Worst case scenario I would just get blown across the river until I hit land on the other side - then I could call Debbie to pick me up in the truck.  So that was the backup plan.  Instead, I paddled on - furiously!  I had to hug the river bank to get as much shelter from the wind that I could. That worked for a while but when it came time to cross back over to my side I just kept going backwards.  I had to find little breaks in the wind in order to make any progress going across.  It took me about an hour to go about 100 yards!  Crazy.  And every time I got tired and had to rest - yup, you guessed it - I was blown back and my progress was all lost.
My kayak totally sucks in the wind.  It's a great fishing kayak because it's wide and stable and doesn't tip over at all (even when standing on it).  But these good properties also make it like a barge to paddle around - not very sleek.  Let's put it that way. 
Well, I made it back to catch the last of American Idol (country week - yuck) but instead of watching and relaxing I had to clean up that bluefish that I caught yesterday.  I made quick work of it and then cooked up the striped bass fillet that I had taken out of the freezer in the morning.  I took half of the bluefish and put it in the brine for smoking and the other half I will cook for breakfast tomorrow.  Yum - bluefish and rice and beans for breakfast. 
I am looking forward to sushi lunch tomorrow.  I need that because I don't have time to make lunch and it's a long day of work followed by my digital photography class - ending at 9 pm!  It's my first time back to the sushi restaurant after giving them that nice striped bass so I'll let you know how that goes.  I gave up my sushi lunch last week but not this week.  I have been really good with my challenge lately and I deserve it.  I also didn't use any Old Bay and this week's reward of flour, breadcrumbs and oil is not very exciting.  I am going to have to re-think these rewards if I ever do this again.  I think that big old chocolate brick would be a great week 2 reward because I could ration that and have just that little taste of chocolate every now and then.  I think I may invoke the special reward in exchange for this week's reward so I'm not going to use any of the flour, oil or crumbs if I don't have to.

That's all for tonight - not too exciting.  I'm in the process of putting together my daily body photo compilation to date as well as my weight and blood pressure graphs so they will be posted in the upcoming days.

Regarding tonight's kayaking trip. . .
"Good judgment comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgment."

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