We went forward, we went backwards, we even made a few circles, but we figured it was a perfect evening to go against the flow. Roughly 8 or so of us arrived at Sylvan Lake this evening, including two new paddlers: Stuart and Carol. Not related to each other, they both just decided this was a perfect day to see if the reports about Fred were true. And both paddled the whole way (approximately 7 miles) in shorter plastic boats, proving their toughness. No comments about Fred, though…
Things started pretty much the usual way, but then they took a turn. Literally. Mike, Tadd, and I were leading the pack, when Mike says “lets run our usual route backwards, and head towards the bridge first”. So off we went, with the rest of the pack following back a bit. As we cut around Bishop Island, Mike suggested we might want to circle the island and come up behind the rest of the gang so we weren’t so far apart. So Mike, Tadd, and I amped it up and encircled the island. What we didn’t realize is that the rest of the gang was close enough to see us start turning around the island, so they turned as well and headed away from the bridge to a different part of the lake. Coming back around, Mike and I were surprised not to see any paddlers ahead of us moving towards the bridge, but we caught sight of them heading around the island to the right. At that point we gave up on our reverse paddle plans, caught up to the pack, and joined them going into the southeast basin. After a short social break (unfortunately our lone greenland paddler didn’t want to demo rolling in the cooler air, so no entertainment this time), we returned to our regularly scheduled route. Almost. Instead of making a counter-clockwise turn around Twin Island and finishing under the bridge, we went under the bridge first and circled that basin (and thus the island) clockwise. You have to shake things up once in a while…
Returning to port, Tadd pulled out all the stops with an excellent presentation of his mother’s home-made cookies and banana bread, all served on the wing spoiler of my car. Dining doesn’t get much finer than that. Many thanks to Tadd’s mom for a superb post-paddle treat!
Steve
