Turning into Don Cornelius

Friggen Awesome. I hope anyone who reads this also clicks on that to see the full glory that was the thing that always pissed us off as kids because it signaled the end of Saturday morning cartoons as it typically aired at 12 or so on Saturdays before college football came on.

Ah, but I digress (whats new?), back to Don. My Boat "The Soul Train" I first considered to be long and unwieldy. And, It's true to a minor extent. The Contour of the Animas's hull certainly does not contribute to it tracking straight, however, that curve will also make it easier for me to roll so.... what evs. A few weeks back Justin and I went out and got her in some class II borderline III water for the first time. More importantly he spent a lot of time working my total lack of technique. I have been back out alone 3 times since on relatively flat water to practice. But I really hadn't felt any huge break through until today when stuff finally started to click. The effective pulling force of my strokes has probably gone up %50 and the work load on my arms has been cut in half. I was twisting and dancing with the water. I had my shuffle in my head and I was making my own little music videos. Good paddling is smooth and looks effortless. JUST LIKE DON CORNELIOUS! Spooner likens it to calligraphy, it's a great analogy really. Now the ultimate thing would be if Don Cornelious was highly trained in Calligraphy...
Today The Bent Creek section of the French Broad was running about 2400 or so and the water is REALLY starting to clear up. You can see about three feet into it. Which is rare for a flow rate this high. There is a river wide ledge that is about a foot and a half tall. The geologic feature makes two small standing waves that are each about 20 feet wide and are separated by a 10 foot wide flume of fast smooth water that rolls but does not crest. As I spawned upstream I noticed that my improvement in technique was really shooting Soul Train up the river with not much effort at all. I then Eddied out below the aforementioned ledge and started poking the bow of the boat into the froth. The wave was kind and I slipped in to some tentative surfing. I probably spent 10 minutes just sliding about on both sides of this baby rapid and had surprisingly little trouble crossing the flume as it too was kind of surfable, or could at least be *treated* that way. The afternoon sun shone into the submerged rock ledge and you could see large particles of sand and tiny pebbles spinning wildly in the hydraulic of the rapid. I could see how the presence of my bow was altering the flow in these undercut regions by the dancing of the pebbles. I was rapidly getting comfortable with the surfing so It was ok to watch the sand dance and just feel the boat move and respond with a lean or a quick push or pull of the paddle to stay in the sweet spot. Then I moved into the flume and calmly attained the next calm water 50 yards upstream, a few weeks ago I probably could not have done this at all, and If I had it would have taken a lot of frantic thrashing arm draining strokes. A feeling of pleased surprise washed over me as a Micheal Franti Song came on the Shuffle.
A Little further upriver a larger set of riverwide rocks that are bigger and less uniform create a wider variety and size of surfable waves. I just whip over there and start sticking my nose into all of them moving at will from eddy to eddy including tiny ones that I would not have caught even a week ago. I spend a full 30 minutes playing around on these waves and then head back down stream as I need to get a little 30 minute jog in on the trails before dark. As I return to the easier ledge wave I giggle at how much easier it now is. I paddled straight into it and started surfing with much more understanding of what was going on and what to do. The same held for the other even smaller waves that put me on edge a week ago. Smooth, easy, stylish. That is How Don Does it. And the more I learn the more I know that it isn't Soul Train that is hard to handle. Rather, it was and is operator ignorance. But man does it feel good to keep learning the subtle little things that make the boat do what I want faster and more artfully.