Karate Camping Weekend

Otherwise known as “How Amber Flipped Our Canoe. Twice”.

So we finally had a second annual something at karate and it was the camping trip on the banks of Indian River on one of the karate students amazing property.  This is usually a great time of just hanging out and chatting, the kids get to canoe and kayak in a river that only gets about waist deep anywhere nearby and the adults get to do pretty much the same thing.  This year I elected not to camp since I dislike camping quite a bit, but Amber and I went for the Friday evening and I returned for the Saturday morning with coffees for everyone and to do some visiting.

The “highlight” of the trip happened on the Friday evening though.  We were waiting for folks to get settled and the fire to get started up for cooking sausages and such and I decided it would be a great idea to go for a little paddle on the river.  I have done quite a bit of canoeing in my life as my dad is an avid paddler and while most of my enjoyable time in a canoe has been spent going down rivers with rapids that range up to runnable class 4 rapids.

I’ve done enough paddling on lakes and slow rivers for fishing and whatnot that I am comfortable in pretty much and situation, though I wouldn’t go down big rapids without someone like my dad.

Ahead of the camping trip I asked Amber multiple times if she had been canoeing before and the obvious dismissal with which she said yes had made me certain that she was steady in a canoe and ready for what the very mild section of Indian River had to offer.

We got a canoe finally free from some of the kids there and I hopped down to the stern and sat, knees on the bottom, butt on the seat a bit, and ready to stabilize the boat since it’s always a bit wobbly getting in and out of a canoe.  Serena pushed us off with a bit of help from Amber.   “What are you doing?” I exclaimed as Amber sat so high in the seat I thought she was riding a horse and within five seconds we had flipped.  I was in shock and quickly dug our camera out of my pocket and handed it to Jill on the shore hoping it would still work, It wasn’t even wet inside thankfully.

Empty the water

The camera taken care of, I righted the canoe with some help from Amber to drain the water, and hopped from the river back into the boat.  Amber attempted to get in again and again over we went.  I was laughing, and I was trying to yell over the din of hilarity that was going on from the shore as I explained that she just tripled the number of times I can remember actually flipping a canoe, and the one other time was in huge white water.

The third time turned out to be the charm and we finally got going, my humiliation had subsided and I could lay the blame completely on Amber for the incident.  We went up the river and got up three tiny little V’s of fast water before turning and coming back down.  This is one incident where Amber’s over confidence came back to bite her and all in all it was hilarious for everyone concerned.

Her version of the story can be found here on her blog, it’s a bit different from mine, ha ha!

Finally on our way, soaked to the bone.