Sorry for falling silent

I am still battling exhaustion gathered while on a long road trip that included rough water training with Dale Williams and Tom Noffsinger. For whatever reason, by the time I got home, six days after starting my journey, I was wiped out.

Week long trip down the East Coast

The link to the above photos will hopefully work. The album is unedited so the photos are "raw." I do not normally allow my pictures to go up without processing but in this case I decided it is a genuine reflection of my experience.

It has been hard for me to convince myself that I needed to talk about my week-long foray into the kind of water I am unused to paddling.

While hind-sight is 20-20 I had no illusions going into the trip about my skills, or lack thereof. I was not surprised the first time I flipped, or the 5th time either. My boat performed admirably, but I did not. My take aways are:

Tybee Island is amazing, wonderful, and surrounded by amble big water.

I need a full-on drysuit. My Kokatat paddler's suit held up but I did get some water in at the neoprene neck.

I suck. I need to seek rough water out for mucho practice.

I held my braces too long and was too tense on the first day. By the second day I was throwing down brace-forward stroke-brace and stayed upright  much better. By the third day I did not flip even once. The third day I was more relaxed because I was so exhausted, ha ha. Brian said "you should be tired when you go home," and I was.

Actually, I was so tired I did not make it back out on to the water until the following Sunday.