[Sportsandrec] kayaks

[Cervenka, Stacy (Brownback)]

Ashley,
	I know that you live in northern Virginia, so I want to highly
recommend Jack's Boathouse. It's in Georgetown, right underneath Key
Bridge. I have gone there several times with both blind and sighted
friends. You will be surprised how easy it is to get a hang of it. You
can rent either single person or two person tandem kayaks. I dug up this
email that I posted on this list back in October about an experience I
had going there with four other blind people. We were able to navigate
on the Potomac River completely independently. There is almost no
current whatsoever and it's not a very wide body of water, so if you
just keep the sun on one side of yourself the whole hour or two you're
out there and then just put it on the other side of you when you're
returning, you should have nor problem. What's more, the boathouse is
right underneath Key Bridge, so when you're returning, you'll have no
problem knowing when you're underneath something and back at the
boathouse. Here is my post from a few months ago:

Pasted Text
It's actually kind of a neat story. Greg was in town and a few of us
decided we wanted to go kayaking; we figured it wouldn't be too hard.
The Potomac River isn't really that wide and it has almost no current
whatsoever. (Unfortunately, the water itself is pretty gross. The fish
are literally mutant and I'm pretty sure that if you jump in it you get
AIDS, but that's another story...) I'd been to Jack's Boathouse in
Georgetown before with some friends and I knew that it was right
underneath Key Bridge. So we figured we could just point our kayaks in
one direction and make sure we kept the sun on our right side so that we
wouldn't get turned around. When we wanted to head back, all we'd have
to do is keep the sun on our left sides and since Jack's is literally
right underneath Key Bridge, we'd easily be able to tell when we were
back at the docks. I know from previous visits that Jack's Boathouse
employs a few Deaf students from Gallaudet University, so I figured
they'd be pretty open-minded about unleashing a bunch of blindies loose
on the river.

I did, however, think that they might be a little concerned and at least
ask us if this was safe. I figured that we'd probably have to explain
our strategy for staying oriented and coming back safely to them and I
even thought they might send an employee out with us for a little while
to make sure we knew what we were doing. I was pleasantly surprised.

Rosy, Marco, Sean Whalen, Greg, and I (all of us who are blind) showed
up at Jack's Boathouse, hoping for the best. We walked up to the desk,
canes tapping along, and said, "We'd like to rent two tandem kayaks and
one single kayak, please." The girl behind the counter was like,
"That'll be twenty bucks a piece" and that was that. We were all like,
"Wow!!! Seriously? It was that easy???"

So, Greg and I shared a kayak, Rosy and Marco shared a kayak, and Sean
had a kayak to himself. Now, it's worth mentioning that three members of
our merry band were totally blind, including Sean, who had his own kayak
and went off by himself for quite a long time. I think I have a pretty
good attitude about blindness, but I gotta say, Sean's got some mad
orientation skills. He actually did better by himself than Rosy and
Marco and Greg and I were doing.

Another funny anecdote...at one point, I lost my paddle. There was a
boat nearby, so I called out, "Hi! Do you happen to see a paddle
floating anywhere nearby? I just lost one and we happen to be blind, so
we can't find it!" (Keep in mind that no one can tell when you're
kayaking that you're blind, unless maybe you have your guide dog pulling
you along or something.)

We never recovered my lost paddle, but about an hour later, we wanted to
get our photos taken, so we heard a boat and we all tried to pull up
alongside of it in our kayaks, so that we could hand the woman our
cameras. Unfortunately, we just could not for the life of us manage to
pull ourselves alongside the boat in a dignified manner. It was kind of
the equivalent of trying to parallel park on a lesser scale. So, we had
to scrap the picture idea. The woman in the boat was the same one who
had seen us before and who we'd asked about our paddle. She just
happened to catch us at our two most buffoonish moments of the entire
afternoon, so in a tone of complete disgust, she asks us, "So, um, do
you guys do this often?"

We were like, "Yeah, obviously not." hahahahahaha! It still cracks me
up!

There was another point where Greg and I were inadvertently heading
straight toward a motor boat. When I finally saw it, we heard the lady
in the boat exclaim, "What are they doing???!!!" Obviously, she didn't
know we couldn't see, so she was like, "Why are these morons playing
chicken with our boat in their little kayaks???" It was pretty
entertaining.

All in all, it was a great time and Jack's Boathouse has
earned my undying love and loyalty, by the way. Their employees were
totally awesome. They could've cared less that we were blind, but they
were super nice and accommodating, at the same time. If you're ever in
DC and you want to have a good time, check out
http://www.jacksboathouse.com/. It really is a blast.

Stacy