• Happy Boxing Day! 🎁📦💰

Winter Solstice

SouthernKevlar said:
Wishing a good winter solstice to all, and as the the days become longer may your pleasures grow.

For those up North, remember that your paddling season is getting closer day by day.
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Thanks, and the same to you. But I'm hoping for several more months of good skiing before soft water time rolls around again.

"to every thing, there is a season"
 
SouthernKevlar said:
For those up North, remember that your paddling season is getting closer day by day.
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ppine said:
We bring conifers into the house to make sure the sun comes back.
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While ppine celebrates pagan rituals in the Nevada desert, two days ago I actually paddled New England flat water in December for the first time that I can recall—wearing a down parka in the cold, cat-pawing wind. For all the bad-mouthing I do about cold and snow at my crybaby age, I actually found paddling in the cold to be quite exhilarating. Maybe I've found a winter sport I can still like, so I'm keeping my new canoe on my sedan and hoping the water stays liquid.

Now I have to find the two-piece Kokatat drysuit I bought for sea kayaking 25 years ago . . . . Where the heck is it? . . . Found it hiding in my closet! . . . How unlikely that I actually put something in a logical place. . . . Wonder if it still fits me . . . . on this, the darkest day of the year.

Hello darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence

(Thinking of fellow Lion Art Garfunkel, with whom I once shared a table at V&T in the early 60s.)
 
(Thinking of fellow Lion Art Garfunkel, with whom I once shared a table at V&T in the early 60s.)
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Not that I'm (in any way) a music critic and, meaning no disrespect to Simon et al but my favorite is still David Draiman. Not at all what I expected from Disturbed but, if you've never heard it, give it a listen.

hello darkness disturbed - Yahoo Video Search Results

The search engine that helps you find exactly what you're looking for. Find the most relevant information, video, images, and answers from all across the Web.
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A Disturbingly efficient and entertaining tandem by Gamma and Mason.

"Make Canoeing Great Again" indeed. There's nothing like advanced whitewater training to produce the highest level of single stick boat control. That was an outstanding video in all respects.
 
Glenn MacGrady said:
A Disturbingly efficient and entertaining tandem by Gamma and Mason.

"Make Canoeing Great Again" indeed. There's nothing like advanced whitewater training to produce the highest level of single stick boat control. That was an outstanding video in all respects.
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It's a far cry from paddling aluminum canoes with a block of styrofoam or a truck tire tube in the middle. I occasionally watch kayaking vids and it's scary what some are doing now--mind-boggling (as well as current ice and rock climbing standards).
 
Apart from the obvious meaning of the original lyrics about failure to communicate with one another, even in the age long before cell phones, after viewing the Disturbed version and the many sometimes emotional reaction and analysis videos, I have come to believe that the lyrics could well be as if God is speaking to humanity.
 
it's scary what some are doing now--mind-boggling
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Yes but they're all wearing pfds & helmets now which we never did in our bulletproof years... (buncha sissies :ROFLMAO:)

OK, in all honesty, I'm pretty sure we wore the pfds if we were on the clock guiding or working in rescue boats... I don't recall ever wearing helmets though which, considering some of the snowmelt stuff we ran on the Cheat & New rivers, was, in retrospect, crazy.
 
Mason said:
All the kayakers I knew in the 70s wore helmets and pfds. I switched to canoes after I realized I wasn't bulletproof--got to paddle more forgiving water with the same challenge.
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Yup, proper paddling helmets were non-existent here, so our hockey helmets did dual duty- November to April they were used for hockey, and May to October they were for paddling...
One of the few pieces of sporting gear that actually wore out before we grew out of them
 
From the 80's to present I varied my helmet use by craft: Always a helmet in C1s, kayaks and OC-1s in whitewater but bare-headed in open canoes, rafts, duckies and other whitewater craft where I was not enclosed or strapped in. Always with a PFD in any craft though. Among many motorcycle riders there is an acronym that is used: ATGATT- All The Gear, All The Time. That would describe my current approach to whitewater. On flatwater and slow moving water I always went without head gear, but with a PFD.

Learning to paddle WW in a C1 set my pattern. My poor old ACE helmet still bears the scars of many rocks as I pushed my envelope on the river. It still sits proudly on the shelf, dented, scraped and with chin strap shredded, showing off its wounds and memories.
 
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Glenn MacGrady said:
.....Wonder if it still fits me . . . . on this, the darkest day of the year.

Hello darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence
Click to expand...

Fitting. I celebrated the solstice (a couple days early) by paddling the big local river in thick fog. Darkness and silence. Just me and the ducks. It's a good time of year. Due to my location, this time of year I can almost always paddle and ski the backcountry in the same week for most of the winter.
 
In a couple days we’ll get off our butt’s and gain 9 seconds that day. Yesterday we lost our last second and by mid February you’ll be able to feel and see the change then by late April there will be some open water!
 
-14F both weekend nights at my western Adirondack Lake. I walked out on the ice for the first time this season with only a couple of inches of snow cover on the surface. Most times there is a foot or more of snow on top of water overflow on top of the ice. Overflow will instantly freeze to ski bottoms, making glide impossible. I was tempted to strap on my skis but it was just too d*mn cold. So I loaded up another sled full of firwood and went inside to watch a movie.
 
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Up here at 64° N, we’ve already gained 1 minute and 58 seconds since the Winter Solstice. Still 17 hours and 47 minutes shorter than the daylight we get on the Summer Solstice Solstice.
In my childhood memories, I can still hear my mother’s voice saying, “As the days begin to lengthen, the cold begins to strengthen.”
Fur lined long johns are the way to go, this time of year.
…….B. Birchy
 
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