Quidditch, Whales & Dolphins

Day 3
1630
86 degrees F
Kauai Marriot Resort, private cabana

I am blogging this from possibly the most perfect spot yet.

I am living a bit of a Carona commercial, at this moment. On the east side of Kauai, the Marriot resort spreads out in a crescent shape nestled behind a pristine beach along the northeast part of Narwiliwili harbor. If you ever take a cruise tour of the Hawaiian islands, your ship will put in less then a mile from where I'm blogging this.

I look up, and I see the bay before me, waters glass-calm, beach in a ribbon in front of me. Around a bend and to the west I can see a tall cruise ship in port, shops and palm trees. Around me there's the hum of vacationers chattering, kids playing. The low surf beating on the flat wet sands of the shore. There's the smells of a beach resort... occasional fruity odors, the sea air, something on the barbecue, somewhere. I can hear birds all around.

It's about an hour and a half from sunset... there are mountains on the far edge of Nar. bay, and the sun is just starting to drop to the tops of them, moving in and out from behind some low clouds. The water gives way to beach, and that gives way to flat golf-green like grass, dotted with palms and tropical fauna. I'm in a canvas covered cabana, laying back on a dark wooden beach recliner as I write this.

I am wearing one of the button downs you can almost always catch me in when I'm in the Midwest, but it's open now,t he sleeves rolled way up. I'm not tan, and I'm a bit chunky of course... but I don't mind. The breeze feels too nice, and I feel very content.

Today I have something in common with Harry Potter; I've found my Quidditch.

As much as I enjoy biking, covering distances of the paved rails-to-trails byways of my beloved Wisconsin on my Schwinn Crosstrainner, I've found an activity that gives me just as much enjoyment, if not more. And one that I am even more naturally adept at.

Outrigging, or more precisely, paddling in an outrigger canoe. It gives you an amazing workout, and normally this would be enough to dissuade me from the activity; I tend not to gravitate towards your higher-end physical activities.

But I am enamored with outrigging, a love at first sight relationship.

Imagine a boat that's about as wide as a rolled up carpet, maybe 25 feet long. Off to the left there are two arms that hold the alma, or the outrigging float; this is here for stability. You sit on the canoe, back up straight, and paddle out. The design is exceptionally sleek and graceful... almost all of your energy being translated into forward motion. The canoe gives a very misleading impression of its weight and mass... the whole thing weighing less then 40 lbs and being easily carried by two people, the second only necessary because of it's length.

You carry it to the beach and attach the alma while the canoe sits on a stand. The model I made my very first trip in today was built for two, though this is rare. Most outrigger canoes are built for one person or even more commonly for teams of six. Charles' friend, fellow scientist and educator at Kauai highschool KB owned the canoe, and was only too happy to let Charles introduce me to this wonderful pastime.

You carry the canoe into the water, about waist-deep. Then you mount it together, taking care to balance it in such a way so that you do not capsize it ( this is called hula, or doing a hula ). Once the two of you are mounted, you being a precise paddling cadance. Because of the sleek and minimal design of the canoe, both paddlers must dig on opposite sides, in perfect rythemn, to avoid a hula. I got my first lesson in paddling well before we got into the water in the bay; actually we were in Charle's front yard, with KB giving the lesson and Charles pipping up frequently. You go about thirteen strokes on one side, the caller saying “hut” or some sort of sound; two more strokes and you switch, back to the thirteen or so strokes, before th switch is made back.

The whole process is an exercise in timing and precision, as well as upper body strength, and I have to say it is the most enjoyable thing I've done in the water then I can remember. I've been surfing, body boarding, snorkeling, jetskiing, waterskiing, tubing, kayaking, speedboating, cliff diving, and river-running... outrigging has them all beaten by far. I'm not sure exactly what it is... but I think the blend of what it takes to not capsize, the upper body strength required, the sleekness and elegance of the design, and the idea that the activity is itself thousands of years old with pretty much an unchanged design all appeal to me very much.

Maybe in another life, it was a large part of what I did.

We left Narwiliwili bay, paddling out past the lighthouse on the point and leaving the beach resort far behind. We stayed close to the rocky coast once we exited the harbor, the sea almost perfect for this activity. When we came in close to the rocks at the point, the water was of course so clear you could see huge rocks and coral on the bottom. It was as good as any aquarium or waterpark I'd ever been to. Paddling out a bit further past the navigation buoy the water was an almost a shocking blue, a sapphire color I'd never seen before, and never associated with the ocean except in a achetypical sense.

To me the ocean had always seemed green, or at best some approximate reflection of sky blue. But here, out beyond the point, looking down I saw the kind of blue that defines the color.

We'd gone a ways out, and the sweat was rolling off my face. I was reminded distantly of boot camp in the Marine Corps; 16 years ago I was there, and one of the countless memories I have is not being able to touch my face. In boot camp, you're trained to never touch your face.. despite itches, sweat, mosquito bites. The reason for this ( for the most part ) is discipline; a Marine must be above all things disciplined, and mastering the urge to touch your face is an insidiously effective way to teach a silly young man mastery over his most basic body movements. As we paddled on and on, I sweat... and I couldn't touch my face, as I had no time. Thirteen strokes, two to switch, and then thirteen more. No time fro wiping my face. I pressed on, til we got to a point where Charles decided we'd sit.

We stopped paddling ( with a “Paddles up” call ) and drifted, our canoe seemingly incapable of not moving forward due to its elegant design. When drifting, it's necessary to lean to the left and brace against the arm of the alma, so as not to huli inadvertently when you don't even have the forward momentum of your strokes to rely on for balance. We drifted on a glass-calm sea, only a very gentle wind washing over us.

I wiped my face with my hand, then dipped my fingers in the cool blue at my sides.

We sat and waited, and the surprise Charles had been planning for soon broke the surface, not very far from us at all. Breaching the calm surface tension of the blue water was the hump of a whale, spouting then breathing in heavily before diving deep. This close, you could hear not only the spout of the exhale, but the long draw of the inhale before the massive creature slid back below the surface. A few others in the pod breached as well, and we watched as they moved across our wide field of vision, silent, and not wiping our faces.

We let the moment simmer for a while, words sometimes don't really do things justice.

I'm sure Charles, while maybe not being use to such things, maybe is less taken with them then I am. I am a Son of Chicago, a proud resident of Madison and a denizen of the Midwest. I have seen unique things in my life, but every now and then I am caught up in something that seems somehow out of the bounds of my experience. This was one of those times.

Later, Charles would tell me of a time when he and a friend of his were out in a pair of one-man outriggers off the northern shore. They saw a pod breeching from pretty much ground zero... this is not so much a religious experience as it is one of complete terror and finger-crossing. Imagine being in a boat even lighter then the one I've described, and suddenly all around you, moving trucks ( or something the size of a moving truck ) flew up out of the water. The noise and shock of this is ample, to say the least... but then imagine it raining these very same moving trucks all around you; having them hit the water and splashing in immediate proximity to you, at any moment one of them possibly breaching under you in a thunder you would never forget, taking you with it 30 feet into the air before dropping you... or much worse breaching a short distance away from you, and landing it's massive bulk on top of you.

The very best you could hope for in this situation would be to clear your outrigger before the bulk landed on you, so as to not find yourself pinned by something very buoyant and potentially very sharp, and a several-tons-weighing mammal that was about to push you a bit underwater.

Christ.

But, of course, this didn't happen with me, and with luck it never will.

Charles and I watched the whales breach from the perfect distance, close enough to know what it must be like to work for National Geographic, but far enough away to not be in impending danger. We floated for a few more minutes in silence, watching a few more breachings, then we headed back. Of course we had no cellphone, and KB might get worried that we'd had some sort of accident, so we didn't want to loiter too long.

And then another magical thing happened. A group of dolphins were attracted by the motion of the outrigger. Soon they were close enough to reach out and touch. At least 30 of them, following the outrigger as it sliced through the water, a bit of a curiosity for them. After a time they became bored, did a bit of leaping, and then left to tag the whales.

Rough afternoon, eh?

We made the trip back to the bay in easy time... at this point my arms starting to hum and vibrate with unaccustomed use and strain, but I felt as good as I have in a very long time.

We came back in, slowly, and I gave up my seat on the outrigger so that KB could take it out with Charles, and I could relax at the Marriot, and write a bit from my blog, sitting here in the sun, and having an unaccountable desire for a Carona. I don't drink beer, and I do on occasion wipe my face, but at the moment, when I'm not typing, I still feel the stirrings of very deep things inside of myself; memories of boot camp, the discovery ( rediscovery? ) of an activity very dear to me, and the satiation of spirit that Hawaii seems to bring on.

All of these things stir deep inside of me, like whales in clear sapphire blue depths, perhaps waiting for the right moment to breach.

oh yea, and... day 3 pics