Poll: How many years have you been paddling?

[Glenn MacGrady]

Three years ago we had a poll re how old we are. This question is different. It is: How many years has is been since you started paddling with some regularity to today?

In my case, I started paddling at age 8 when my uncles bought a Grumman for our family summer camp in Maine, where I spent every summer until age 17. So, since I'm now 74, I claim to have been paddling for 66 years. There was a big gap, however, from about age 17 until age 30 when I was in universities, starting jobs, getting married, having a first child, during which I don't recall paddling at all. However, it's been pretty continuous since then. So, we can ignore gaps.

 

[recped]

Ignore gaps? Even lengthy ones? In that case I've been paddling for 65 years. If you want to exclude the gap then it's been 35 years. Not sure which selection to make to maintain the integrity of your survey.

When I was born we had a Peterborough w/c, I was born in late June so my first paddling was probably in July of 1954. I stopped paddling at about age 12 or 13 and then restarted at age 30, since then there has been only one year where I did not get out for at least one multi day trip.

Following up on Glenn's "clarification" I selected 31-40 years.

I'm currently doing a "thing" where I paddle x number of days per year that match my age, I started this at age 60, failed to reach my quota two times since and I need another 23 days to make it this year (it will be tight but doable).

 

[BWCA66]

This year marked 54 straight years of at least 1 overnight trip in the BWCA.

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

I expect most people have had gaps. I do not have any rule to propose as to how to handle them. Use your own judgment. This is not a test. I encourage comments to explain such things, since the real purpose of my several polls is simply for us to get to know each other and each other's histories a little better, and to stimulate some interesting anecdotes.

Actually, I did take a trip down the Ochlocknee River in north Florida in 1972 when I was 28, so my gap is already shortening. That was my first Florida canoe trip -- a paddling paradise of lakes, rivers, swamps, glades and oceans -- so I'll further claim I've been paddling Florida, on and off, for 47 years. I'm thinking of buying my daughter and granddaughter in Tallahassee a small, light tandem canoe to bring to her in October. There's a Colden Starfire for sale here in CT, but it's set up as a solo; and Dave Curtis has a nice used three-seat Eaglet on his Hemlock site.

 

[Canotrouge]

Paddling steady for the last 25-30 years, paddled on and of before.... I think there isn't a summer with out paddling since I'm up here, 23 years, some of which(10-14 years) where I was making a living paddling/teaching/instructing... I paddle all kind of stuff, solo, tandem, voyager, sea kayaks, tripping and white water canoes, racing marathon canoes, outrigger canoes.... But now it's only open canoes, either solo or tandem, tripping or whitewater, doing trips up to 17 days so far and day trips. Hunting and fishing from them.... Some trips are only a few km's away from shore and others are only accessible by float planes. I'm lucky to be surrounded by water up here, the Yukon river less than a km from my door, just down the street with pretty good park and play spots or embark on a 2+k km journey!!

 

[Guest]

Starting my count when I was an active paddler in the bow of Dad’s Grumman, not counting earlier trips where I was largely a passenger, 55 years.

No large gaps, although for a time in my early 20’s I did much more backpacking and only paddled a few times a year.

 

[Will Derness]

Well I count 58 years if I were to start with my first canoe trip at age 14. In pursuit of the 50 miler merit badge, my first experience in a canoe was a multiday overnighter on the Upper Potomac. Something about waking up on the river on day 2 with several days of paddling and camping ahead of me captured me for life.

Other canoe trips followed that first one but were widely separated by time. No one else in family had an interest in this, so my opportunities were limited until I became an adult and I would rent a canoe for weekend use. My really active paddling didn't start until,about 1982 when I bought my first canoe, and OT Tripper. In the late 80s I started to solo canoe and the Tripper became my solo boat as it was my only canoe. I gradually worked on paddling more difficult rivers and became pretty comfortable in Class III water. Paddling that long canoe forced me to develop decent river reading skills as, quick, last minute turns were not easy -- early positioning of the canoe above the rapid had a lot of influence on my success at running the big stuff.

So if 1982 is my starting point for serious paddling I've got 37 years in, but I voted 58 years because of pride

 

[alsg]

I think I must be unique. I had paddled as a teen on my family's lake house in NH and at a summer camp in Maine. Then nothing for decades. Then I saw a strip canoe on a woodworking site and decided it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen and that I had to build one. After the build was finished I started paddling and now I am addicted! But its only about 5 years.

 

[stripperguy]

I've been paddling since I was....uhmm, before I can remember!. A short gap in my teens, built the first stripper at age 21, no gaps since then.
Some of my earliest memories are paddling ADK waters with my father and uncles, some of my fondest memories are paddling with MDB, my kids, and nieces and nephews.

 

[ppine]

Since 1961. I got tangled up in horses and mules for awhile, and later rafts and drift boats, but have always loved canoes.
In 1968 I put together the senior class canoe trip at my high school. We had 48 guys in canoes going up the C&O Canal in Maryland to a campsite at one of the locks. We had around 50 girls meet us for the night and make a big dinner. This was the 60s so they went home at midnight but came back for breakfast. We paddled down the Potomac River back to the livery. That was 50 years ago and people still talk about it.

 

[Steve in Idaho]

Yeah I had a gap. Started paddling at about age 17, then after age 18, I didn't actively paddle until about 47. Now 62. You do the math. I had an even bigger leave from sailing, as I had my lessons at age 14, but never managed to get on another sailboat until about age 53.

 

[Robin]

I started in 1955 at a friends camp in Cobden, Ontario and spent a lot of time in a canoe each summer there thru my late teens. My wife and I bought a new Grumman in 1971 and we have always had canoes since.
I have the bow and stern sections of the first canoe I paddled in 55', the middle rotted out.
Me and my two brothers (I'm in the bow)

 

[scoutergriz]

well, I'm 59 now, so I's say 57 years without a gap (my first paddle was 30" and had a tether) Even the year of my heart attack I rode princess on a few trips, and again when I broke my back.
My first paddle was passed to my daughter when she was 2 to splash around with, and now it's hanging in the basement waiting for the next generation to come along!

 

[Guest]

I am now staking my claim to a tale my father never told me; that I was conceived on Lake Champlain, in Grandpa Hamilton’s Chestnut Pleasure model, a moniker my unbetrothed parents took a bit too literally that day.

Glenn , how do I change my vote in the poll?

It’s my only hope of besting my sons “earliest starting age” as an active paddler.

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

I am now staking my claim to a tale my father never told me; that I was conceived on Lake Champlain, in Grandpa Hamilton’s Chestnut Pleasure model, a moniker my unbetrothed parents took a bit too literally that day.

Glenn , how do I change my vote in the poll?

It’s my only hope of besting my sons “earliest starting age” as an active paddler.

While I'm heartened, MIke, that you consider conception the beginning of human life, I think highly sexual biology will defeat your claim to have been a paddling zygote.

As you may recall from your hushed schoolyard discussions of the birds and bees, fertilization is not likely to have occurred until sometime after L'affaire Chestnut. That little sperm guy has a long trip upstream. First he has to traverse the broad reaches of that thing the administration here probably won't let me say. Then, he has to navigate the narrow gorge between the Scylla and Charybdis of the cervix. Then, it's a long upstream push on the narrow Fallopian Stream. Finally, there is the stumbling search in the dark to find a loose and easy Easter egg to . . . uh . . . well, you know.

So, it all depends on that little fellow's method of propulsion. If he was motoring with a double blade or high stroke rate huts, he may have found his eggstacy before the Chestnut Pleasure ground it's hull on Champlain's shores. However, having observed some McCrea genetic traditions, I think the little guy was probably just lollygagging along without any sensible float plan . . . just leisurely taking in the Fallopian landscape . . . marveling at some pulsating capillaries . . . eddying out behind convenient phagocytes . . . wondering how to DIY a cell membrane coozie.

So, long story short, you likely were not zygotified until 10:37 pm that night.

The good news it that that makes you the leading candidate to win my highly anticipated upcoming poll, entitled: "How old were you when you first got schnockered on alcohol?"

 

[Big Al]

I tend to go all in on my hobbies
80s dirt bikes turned into motocross racing
90s caving turned into cave rescue
00s jeeps turned into running a jeep club
10s rec kayak, turned white water kayak, turned canoeing
20s ?????????

 

[scoutergriz]

well, Mike if that counts, add another year to mine too.... I'm told that I was conceived on a canoe trip in Algonquin! My dad was a part-time warden for the old Lands and Forests, and celebrated the end of summer with a trip with my mom while grandma babysat my two older brothers.
nine months later there I was....

 

[Odyssey]

I arrived late to the canoe tripping party, and I don't know where the time has gone. That might've been 34 years ago give or take a few, around about age 30ish. Sorry I can't be more accurate, I've never been fussy with numbers, I'm much more into touchy feely things like sentimentality. Although I can't quite put a finger on the exact year I first tripped I can however conjure up memories (not always an easy thing with me and my fading memory). So many faces from that trip and subsequent ones well up from out of the mists of time, and smile on me as tho' it were only yesterday. I remember an October sun, an August rain; the adrenaline rush of the first put-in, the mellowed melancholy of the last take-out; some blazing fires and campsite parties, some sombre embers and late night whispers. And then there were cold soaking rains, the morning snows on the sagging kitchen tarp, unexpected beaver dam swims...and then there was the soulless squelching stinking thigh deep loonshit. More than once there was that. It's good to remember the bad with the good.
For the purpose of this poll I could guesstimate a round number but that wouldn't mean much to me, because like I say I'm more into the impressions those trips have made on me, not so much cold hard facts and stats and arithmetic thinking.
Not dissing this poll, just explaining poorly how I live richly, as do you all. That is one thing we trippers all share. Not any duration, not a location, not our vocation, but the enduring mark tripping has left upon us all. But there I go sounding stupid touchy feely, sorry. Let's just say 30 something years and hopefully counting. There have been gap years but living slow busy lives permits us to fill in those gaps with sentimental things, like planning, wishing and remembering.

 

[lowangle al]

While I'm heartened, MIke, that you consider conception the beginning of human life, I think highly sexual biology will defeat your claim to have been a paddling zygote.

As you may recall from your hushed schoolyard discussions of the birds and bees, fertilization is not likely to have occurred until sometime after L'affaire Chestnut. That little sperm guy has a long trip upstream. First he has to traverse the broad reaches of that thing the administration here probably won't let me say. Then, he has to navigate the narrow gorge between the Scylla and Charybdis of the cervix. Then, it's a long upstream push on the narrow Fallopian Stream. Finally, there is the stumbling search in the dark to find a loose and easy Easter egg to . . . uh . . . well, you know.

So, it all depends on that little fellow's method of propulsion. If he was motoring with a double blade or high stroke rate huts, he may have found his eggstacy before the Chestnut Pleasure ground it's hull on Champlain's shores. However, having observed some McCrea genetic traditions, I think the little guy was probably just lollygagging along without any sensible float plan . . . just leisurely taking in the Fallopian landscape . . . marveling at some pulsating capillaries . . . eddying out behind convenient phagocytes . . . wondering how to DIY a cell membrane coozie.

So, long story short, you likely were not zygotified until 10:37 pm that night.

The good news it that that makes you the leading candidate to win my highly anticipated upcoming poll, entitled: "How old were you when you first got schnockered on alcohol?"

This might be the most well written post I ever read. Informative too, thanks Glen.

 

[ppine]

The attraction of this forum summed up in one thread.