Monterey Bay Whale Watching, January 27th 2007.

My back continued to be painful for days after the incident at Bodega Rocks. After a week with no improvement I started to worry that this was a serious injury that might impact my kayaking and other quality aspects of life. I talked to my favorite chiropractor/kayaker Mary Ann Furda over the phone. She asked how I was feeling and I told her I felt like a Medieval Prince: My goal every morning was to get out of bed without getting stabbed in the back. It turned out that Mary Ann and I were both going to be in the Half Moon Bay area (neither of us kayaking) so we arranged to meet at a friend’s house (many thanks to Greg Bermann for leaving his house unlocked for us even though he was not home) and she worked on my back. This helped some and after another week I down-graded the severity of the pain from getting stabbed in the back to merely getting zapped in the back with a cattle-prod.

I was scheduled to snow-shoe into a Forest Service Cabin the next weekend. My brother Paul asked if it was a good idea for me to do this considering the condition of my back. I told him; “Don’t worry, I’m bringing my chiropractor with me!” It was just a coincidence that Mary Ann and Fred Cooper were invited to join me and another kayaking buddy Don Fleming on that trip which was arranged months ago. So Mary Ann volunteered to work on my back again that weekend. This helped some more and by the end of the third week I could go for a day or two without even getting cattle-prodded in the back. Mary Ann suggested that we meet one more time so she could take all the credit before my back spontaneously got better by itself.

On the third weekend after the incident, there was a big BASK paddle in Monterey Bay to look for whales. I figured that a whale-watching trip would make a gentile re-introduction to kayaking after 3 weeks of taking it easy. By the time I arrived on the beach Saturday morning I was feeling pretty good. I carried my own kayak to the water and got in with no pain. Once launched into the water I felt like I could move in all the kayak-useful directions except perhaps for rolling up on the right side where the sore spot on my back would press against the coaming. I was easily able to roll up on the other side.

A large group of kayakers (around 70 of us) launched from the beach behind Monterey Bay Kayaks and paddled along Cannery Row. When we passed Point Pinos we kept going out to a buoy a mile or so offshore. There everyone milled about and complained that the initiator of this trip (Jesse Meyer) had promised us some whales but we didn’t see any. Apparently the first few people who launched had seen a whale in the shallow water in front of the beach, but I had missed it! Most of the kayakers turned back to go to Lovers Point for lunch but a small group decided to go out another mile or so where they saw a kettle of birds buzzing over something. Perhaps some whales. Ed Anderson and I missed this group leaving and took off late.

Ed and I had to work hard to catch up and I worked at feeling the torso rotation you are supposed to use in the classic forward stroke. On one stroke I felt a painless CLICK in my back. I wondered if this was a bad thing but when it did not repeat I started thinking that was the sound of things going back into the correct position. I felt great for the rest of the day, and the rest of weekend for that matter. On the way back from whale watching (I saw only one whale spout that I was pretty sure was not just water breaking over a rock) I even caught a little surf ride over a shallow reef in front of the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Perhaps this back injury will work itself out OK.