The following message appeared in my email box from Scott Gross. I used to work with Scott at Time Arts Inc. years ago, and he has been on the kayak mailing list for a while now. Longer than I thought, because he seems to have "my style" down pat and did an excellent, if a little biting, job of emulating a kayak story.
Mike Higgins wrote:
As we neared the lip of the falls I saw Marty on the shore waving frantically. I could see her lips moving but because of the roar of the falls, it was deafening, I couldn't begin to understand what she was saying. I waved the radiophone [2] at her so that she might understand, find a phone booth and call me, but it must not have registered with her. As I put the radiophone away, the top of my Kevlar tackle box broke again. I thought I had fixed that for good last time it happened[3]. Maybe my blend of flour and water wasn't quite right. This was the 8,348 time it had broken. Paul was still behind me in my old canoe[4]. His mouth was stretched into a grim rictus of fear as we neared the falls and he had stopped paddling completely. His face was so white, I thought the moon had come out early[5]. I was really proud of him and how well he had taken to my madness.I observed several penguins flying overhead[6]. I assume that they were looking for small insects trapped in the mist thrown up by the falls crashing on the rocks below. I dragged my hands through the tide pools that I spotted among the rocks. The current was picking up very quickly now. I got out my disposable camera which I had just reloaded this morning[7]. I was now able to fit over 716 frames of film in each little cardboard camera. A good web site can't have too many pictures that take forever to download [8].
Suddenly there was cloud of mist around me. At first I thought it was a waterspout or a tornado, as there was a loud roar accompanying it [9]. I looked up and saw a US Park Service helicopter with several people waving frantically at me. I waved back. A good kyacker always should be socialable and friendly [10] as it says on page 4 of the Kyacking Guide For People With Arrested Development Going Through A Second Childhood Who Have Nothing Better To Do Than To Paddle Around In Strange Bodies Of Water For 20% Of Their Lives And Then Dedicate Another 40% Writing About It[11]. I checked my little book with the tide tables [12] and it showed that, while the current here does get to over 40 miles an hour, there are no posted speed limits after you cross the demarcation/warning line about 2 miles back. I couldn't imagine why they were above me. I tried to wave them off as the falls were now only about 20 meters [13] away. They responded by throwing down a rope which had a big knot in the end and almost banged a hole in the side of my kyack[14]. If it hadn't been my Kevlar kyack[15] with the stainless steel deflection panels, they might have sunk me right there. I made a note in my laptop[16] to report them to both the FAA and International Kyackers Association.
I pushed the rope away from me and was surprised to see Paul make a leaping grab at it. He just managed to snag the knot at the end of it and was pulled up into the helicopter like those old folks at the end of that Cocoon movie[17]. I was really upset that he had abandoned my old canoe like that. If he had been a real friend of mine, instead of just family[18], that probably would not have happened.
I was now only a few meters from the lip now and could look down and see the observation tower and throngs of press people and photographers. I wondered why they were out in such force, but not for long. I grabbed my camera and prepared for the drop wondering if Marty had remembered to pick up the vegatables at the supermarket this afternoon. I was getting hungry and would be ravenous by dinnertime[19].
(to be concluded[20])
[1] Scott simulates part 3 of a 4 part story. This is the way the email version of the kayak stories go out, in little pieces. Some people (who didn't actually read this "story") were fooled into thinking they had missed the first two parts of a story and asked me to send them the missing parts.
[2] My series of stories about getting a VHF Marine radio makes Scott think I mention it in every story.
[3] I like describing my equipment and how I solve problems with constructing, repairing, or modifying it for use.
[4] I like to bring family and friends into the stories, often using my increasing supply of "old" equipment.
[5] Good try Scott, I would have said "Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw the full moon rising early. But then I turned around I saw it was Paul's face white with fear".
[6] Great touch, the flightless birds flying. I like including amateur naturalist observations in my stories. But you should be aware that everything I learned about being an amateur naturalist I learned from Marty. Before I met her, I used to think that those white birds on the shore were all gulls, and I thought that hummingbirds didn't know the words.
[7] I wrote a series of these stories about digitally scanning photographs, digital cameras, waterproof cameras, and disposable cameras. I decided to use waterproof disposable cameras and re-fill the waterproof boxes with fresh cameras every time they run out of film.
[8] I have a lot of photographs in my WEB site. I even have pictures in the WEB page that are not indexed in any of the stories. Tens of megabytes of images that nobody will ever have time to download.
[9] I like to tell stories in the order that things happened to me, first my observations and confusion, then my hypotheses about what I was seeing, and finally what is really going on becomes clear. Scott picked up on this and emulated the style perfectly.
[10] I recently published a story in which I paddled past a couple people in really rough water, and was unable to take my hands off the paddles and wave at them. Scott picked up on this and turned it into this really biting comment. Arrested Development indeed.
[11] Marty didn't help much when she agreed with Scott after this remark, and told me "Boy, he has you here".
[12] I like to keep informed about the conditions of the water I'm going to be paddling in. I do have a Tide Log (not that it would do much good on Niagara Falls), and I watch the weather reports on the WEB.
[13] I try to use the metric system. I am embarrassed to live in a backwards country that still measures wind speed in knots. Although the US weather service collects all its data in the metric system, it converts everything to miles, feet, and knots before publishing it for public consumption. If I received wind speed in knots, wave height in feet, I report it that way in my stories and not bother to convert original data into other formats.
[14] Scott used to kid m no end about my bad spelling. He must have spelled kayak bad on purpose in this whole document just to try and get my goat again.
[15] Like many kayakers (climbers, hikers, etc.) I admit I am a gadget freak, and kevlar is a high tech material that any gadget freak would be proud to brag about in his journal.
[16] I don't bring my laptop on kayak trips, although I have been accused of it several times. I don't have a waterproof laptop, and I'm not ready to trust my laptop to a drysack yet.
[17] Like most of us, I grew up in the USofA and I've used references to scenes from movies in my journal before.
[18] Family is important to me, I would do anything for my brothers and sisters. But I wouldn't blame them for not following me off the edge of a fall, or even out into the ocean.
[19] Scott is not the first person to claim that I write excruciating detail into my kayak stories. You don't know the half of it. My memory is good and I could write more, but I spent all my writing time deciding what to leave out.
[20] In the e-mail versions of the kayak stories, I try to break them into separate messages at the exciting part. Of course the last message before THE END always says "to be concluded" instead of "to be continued". Several friends have commended that the nice thing about this system is knowing if you get the first message that SOMEBODY survived to send it, and the last story will be forthcoming.