[Sportsandrec] kayaks

Wed May 6 18:08:39 UTC 2009

Thanks for sharing.  I'm glad the boat house was very receptive.  I live 
near DC but taking a trip with people down there would be time consuming. 
But I'd love to try that boathouse if I had time.  I was thinking of 
kayaking near a park in the Potomac which is closer to my home.

Ashley

----- Origin
al Message ----- 
From: "Cervenka, Stacy (Brownback)" <Stacy_Cervenka at brownback.senate.gov>
To: "Sports and Recreation for the Blind Discussion List" 
<sportsandrec at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Wednesday, May 06, 2009 8:49 AM
Subject: Re: [Sportsandrec] kayaks

> 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
>
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