lawlberg
Booth Babe
Tonight I find myself re-evaluating my decisions, priorities, relationships and passions.
I'll start with some background
- I'm a pretty experienced whitewater kayaker - I've been doing it for 7 years now, and I paddle some pretty gnarly stuff (class IV-V big water, steep creeks and 10-20 foot waterfalls) whenever I have the opportunity. There are obvious risks here, but like motorcycling, it's about balancing the level of risk and reward through preparation, skills and your group. I'm aware of the risks, people die in whitewater, and when your time is up, the river can take even the most experienced paddler.
Growing up and paddling in the southeast, I became close with the whitewater community down there. It's very tight knit, and the word family doesn't even begin to describe it.
Today, the family shrank a little. While practicing for a race at the Great Falls of the Potomac - a yearly race going over some very technical and dangerous whitewater - a friend of mine and well loved member of the community died. She was 23. She was a great paddler, knew the risks and paddled anyway doing what she loved. Today just wasn't her day. Other kayakers on the river spent hours searching and attempting to rescue her, but unfortunately the river had made up her mind.
I've gone through tons of edits here, trying to collect my thoughts and make them at least intelligible if not useful.
There are some known risks we all measure and accept - sure, we do what we can to mitigate them (ATGATT and skills training on the bike; PFD, helmet, ropes, buddies, and scouting the rapids when I'm in my boat) but we're constantly weighing risk vs. reward. But that risk I've always looked at always is a personal risk. What am I risking if something were to happen to me? how would my family cope if I were to crash my bike, or land wrong at the bottom of a waterfall and paralyze myself? The risk of something happening to me.
Today opened my eyes to the risk of something happening to someone I'm close with. We're each accepting the same personal risks, maybe we have different factors in each of our risk/reward calculations, like kids or an addiction to adrenaline, but in the end, we weigh these pros and cons and decide that the risk is worth it. I'm finding it easier to accept my own risk than to think about my friends risks. I accept that these things can happen to me, I don't want to accept that these things can happen to my paddling buddies, to my friends who ride, it just makes the equation that much more difficult to figure out.
Anyway - thanks for listening guys - you have no idea how much it helps to work my thoughts out and get them down on paper. I'm sure I'll be doing a lot more thinking over the next few days and I hope I haven't been too much of a debbi downer tonight.
I'll start with some background
- I'm a pretty experienced whitewater kayaker - I've been doing it for 7 years now, and I paddle some pretty gnarly stuff (class IV-V big water, steep creeks and 10-20 foot waterfalls) whenever I have the opportunity. There are obvious risks here, but like motorcycling, it's about balancing the level of risk and reward through preparation, skills and your group. I'm aware of the risks, people die in whitewater, and when your time is up, the river can take even the most experienced paddler.
Growing up and paddling in the southeast, I became close with the whitewater community down there. It's very tight knit, and the word family doesn't even begin to describe it.
Today, the family shrank a little. While practicing for a race at the Great Falls of the Potomac - a yearly race going over some very technical and dangerous whitewater - a friend of mine and well loved member of the community died. She was 23. She was a great paddler, knew the risks and paddled anyway doing what she loved. Today just wasn't her day. Other kayakers on the river spent hours searching and attempting to rescue her, but unfortunately the river had made up her mind.
I've gone through tons of edits here, trying to collect my thoughts and make them at least intelligible if not useful.
There are some known risks we all measure and accept - sure, we do what we can to mitigate them (ATGATT and skills training on the bike; PFD, helmet, ropes, buddies, and scouting the rapids when I'm in my boat) but we're constantly weighing risk vs. reward. But that risk I've always looked at always is a personal risk. What am I risking if something were to happen to me? how would my family cope if I were to crash my bike, or land wrong at the bottom of a waterfall and paralyze myself? The risk of something happening to me.
Today opened my eyes to the risk of something happening to someone I'm close with. We're each accepting the same personal risks, maybe we have different factors in each of our risk/reward calculations, like kids or an addiction to adrenaline, but in the end, we weigh these pros and cons and decide that the risk is worth it. I'm finding it easier to accept my own risk than to think about my friends risks. I accept that these things can happen to me, I don't want to accept that these things can happen to my paddling buddies, to my friends who ride, it just makes the equation that much more difficult to figure out.
Anyway - thanks for listening guys - you have no idea how much it helps to work my thoughts out and get them down on paper. I'm sure I'll be doing a lot more thinking over the next few days and I hope I haven't been too much of a debbi downer tonight.
