Kayak adventure a real knockout
5th October, 2006
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Everything was going well until I hit her across the head with the paddle. True, there had been that moment when I'd put the life jacket on inside-out, realising that something was amiss when in the midst of my struggle to do up an inside-out zipper, I saw my wife's raised eyebrow all but disappear into her hairline. She was suddenly wondering, I knew, at the wisdom of being the second person in a two-person kayak in which the other was myself.
"It's all about co-ordination," said the kayak expert. "Oh God," I thought, for co-ordination has never been one of my strengths. Then again, I thought, just because you've failed at football, gymnastics, golf, tennis and walking in a straight line without falling over is no reason to presume you'll be no good at kayaking. I'd been in boats before and had at one time crewed on a small fishing boat on which I was required to, among other menial chores, clean the toilets. In his moments of darkened despair for my career prospects, Dad had on occasion predicted I would end up cleaning toilets and I was rather proud, in my own quiet way, that I hadn't let him down. My fondest memory of that time is of the captain, during a tropical downpour somewhere off the coast of Cairns, appearing on deck with a bar of soap and one of those long-handled brushes people use in the shower to scrub their backs. As the skipper scrubbed and lathered away, revelling in his fresh-water shower, I realised to my horror that the brush was the same one with which I had been cleaning the toilets for the past few days. Fearful of being made to walk the plank, I kept this to myself. The kayaking went well for a while and as we paddled along canal estates I amused myself by glaring at the people living in homes I couldn't afford and poking my tongue out at their Doberman and German shepherd guard dogs.
"Can't dogs swim?" said my wife.
We'd been paddling for about 20 minutes without mishap when I realised we were heading for a bridge pylon. The kayak instructor had said that to stop, you stuck your paddle vertically in the water. He failed to point out that if you did this quickly, switching it from one side of the kayak to the other, you could easily belt the co-kayaker sitting behind you on the side of the head. Whack! I didn't think I'd hit her all that hard, yelling at her as we headed towards the pylon to paddle backwards. Rather than paddle backwards, my wife had ceased to paddle at all and instead sat slumped in her seat. She can't have been out of it for more than a few seconds but became quite irate when she came to, guard dogs scurrying to hide beneath outdoor tables, tails between their legs, as a hurricane of abuse roared across the water. What made the situation all the more delicate was the fact that the bruising on her face had just started to fade. This had occurred when she had leaned forward from the back seat of the car to pick something up at the same time I swung around to speak to her. Somehow, my elbow connected with her face. She didn't lose consciousness but her eyes rolled around in her head for several minutes. It's only a small lump," I said when we got to the shore, secretly surprised at how large a lump a hit over the head with a kayak paddle could produce. We drove back to Brisbane and later that evening, she stood with her hands on her hips and looked at me with a rather miffed expression on her face.
"You know how you picked up my car from the service centre?" she said.
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