The Oracle of Apollo
Snippets from the life of Apollo Lee

Returning home from Idaho at Christmas time is usually not much of a challenge. After getting dropped off at the curb on Wednesday, I fully expected to get on my four o’clock flight and be home around 5:30 or 6. With my car parked at San Jose, it would be a relatively painless procedure to snatch my luggage off the baggage claim, jump the long term parking shuttle, and find my car.

There was an unusually long line at the Horizon counter. Then, the woman asked “Are you going to San Jose?” “Yes.” “Flights to San Jose are cancelled today.” “Can you rebook me?” “All flights to San Jose are cancelled. We’re going to have to rebook you.”

Side note: Quote of the day: “Attention in the Terminal. A can of Copenhagen has been left at the security checkpoint. Please come back to security to claim it.”

I rebooked on Delta Airlines, to depart on Thursday in the afternoon. Horizon was good enough to put me up in a hotel nearby—the same hotel I stayed in when I was enlisting in the Army 16½ years ago. Jay came by, picked me up, took me to downtown Boise for Mexican food, and watched a movie with me. Downtown Boise is cute, as opposed to the absolutely stupefying amount of sprawl the area is building lately (Boise has doubled in size over the last 15 years).

My flight from Boise to Salt Lake City was delayed 45 minutes. This landed me on the tarmac in Salt Lake City with just enough time for my luggage to make the connection to San Jose, but for me not to. 12 of us scrambled as the San Jose-bound flight pushed back with a dozen of us trying to make it onto our flight. So, they put me on standby for the 5:00 flight. Nope, that one’s full. Finally, I’m confirmed on the 9:10 flight to San Francisco, otherwise I might not get out of Utah Thursday night.

9:10 turned to 10:30 turned to 11:15 turned to 11:45. Fortunately, I was able to reach Emmett who agreed to pick me up at SFO at 1:30 in the morning, drive me to San Jose to attempt to pick up my luggage, and on home. Fortunately, I was able to get my car at 2, but not my luggage.

If I had talked the Horizon counter person on Wednesday into refunding my return flight, I could have gone downstairs, rented a car for a one-way trip to San Jose, and made it home a day earlier than I did. If I had grabbed a couple of my fellow passengers, we could have split the rental car and the driving. Boise is 665 miles, according to Google maps, from San Jose. So, if I had averaged 20 miles per hour in that rental car, I’d have gotten home at the same time I did. Leaving at 4:30 in the afternoon (Mountain Time) and driving the speed limit would have seen me walking through my door a day earlier than I did. I’m very grumpy now.

<gesture type=”shake” organ=”fist” target=”The air travel industry in the United States” />

After my big spills this afternoon, my phone needed to be replaced. It’s full of sea water and it doesn’t power up. So, off to the T-Mobile store in Sunnyvale with me.

I’ve been toying with the idea of acquiring a Sidekick 3 for some time, but it seems like more of a toy to me than a productive communications tool. Several of my friends have the Sidekick and I’ve always thought that the flip screen was nifty, but sort of unweildy. On top of that, the unit is big and very expensive. So, I decided to keep my options open.

I thought about the big wide fat Blackberry, but that one also costs $350, doesn’t have a camera, and is sort of difficult to stuff in a pocket. Then, I saw it. So sexy. So sleek. So powerful. With the 1.3 megapixel camera and lots of applications, I just had to ask the price. They quoted me a price $50 below the marked price, since I’ve been a customer so long. That cinched the deal. I now carry the Blackberry Pearl.

The browser doesn’t support stylesheets, but this phone is really small, so that’s expected. The built-in bluetooth lets me surf the web from my laptop from anywhere I have signal, like when I go to Grandma’s house in Idaho for Christmas. This little guy is loaded with features. The full keypad makes texting easy, so I can use dodgeball or twitter much more easily than I could when I used the Nokia.

Yay, new technology!

Today, I went kayaking with Ozreiuosn. It was pretty windy and the wind came from quite an unusual direction. No matter how hard I tried, I could not keep my kayak tracking straight though the water. The more I paddled on the right side (which is supposed to turn the craft left), the more it wandered right. I could paddle straight and I would go in almost a complete circle. With each stroke, I became more pissed and more frustrated and more exhausted.

At mile 1.7, she agreed that we could turn around and head to a dock to see why my skeg wouldn’t drop into the water and help me track straight. We didn’t make it that far. Breezy winds kept messing with me and I kept struggling to maintain control of my craft. And then it happened. With Oz about 200 feet in front of me, I listed port and tried a brace, but not in time. Five seconds later, I’m in the water. {Oakland Estuary water is COLD.}

After struggling to swim through the water wearing a spray skirt, my cycling tights, a paddling jacket, my floppy yellow hat, my shades, a life jacket, my paddle, and water shoes, 100 feet or so to where Oz had corralled my kayak, I got really tired and really pissed. We performed a t rescue and I slid back into my cockpit, took a breather, and broke a corner of my expensive new crown (installed just about 5 months ago) on the front off on my water bottle. Cold, wet, and pissed from my strenuous slog and the 15 minutes that it took us to come together, I said, “Okay, I’m done, let’s head back. This is too much for me to handle today.”

I started paddling gently, sharing my cockpit with the 8 gallons or so of water still in my boat. Five minutes after we started paddling back, my soggy ass is in the water again. This time, it didn’t take us nearly so long to fish Apollo back out of the drink.

I nearly tipped over another time, but Ozreiuosn, who remembered our training from exactly a week ago well stayed abaft of me, so she could come quickly to my side again if I capsized for a third time. We pulled back in, came to dock, I hopped out and waddled back to the shop to towel off and get into my dry clothes. Meanwhile, Oz rinsed both our life jackets, hosed off both our kayaks, and gathered up my stuff.

Lessons:

1. You may think your friend is awesome, but if she isn’t Ozreiuosn, you’re only doing second best to me. Sorry.
2. I’m not a paddler — yet. I’m still a novice. Even though I’m absolutely enthralled with paddling, I’ve done it exactly four times.
3. A wind coming strongly from an unusual direction makes me reevaluate whether or not I’m up to the conditions today.
4. ALWAYS make sure all aspects of the craft are operational, especially the skeg, if there’s a wind.
5. Sometimes you’re doing things right and you still land in the drink. It doesn’t mean you quit.
6. I definitely need to find out why my dental crown cracked so soon, given no impact. And I better not have to pay another $1500.
7. It’s time to buy a paddle tether. I kept hold of my paddle when I went in the water. With a tether, if you have your paddle, you have your boat. If you have your boat, you have your paddle. The swim back to my kayak was frustratingly exhausting.
8. Staying calm saves the day.

Thank you, Ozreiuosn. You were totally my hero today.

After a friend introduced me to the basics of paddling a kayak a couple of months ago, I unexpectedly enjoyed the hell out of the activity and wanted to do it more. So, I looked into a class at various shops in the area. Most of them don’t offer many courses this time of year. Last weekend, I was scheduled for a class called “Beginning Sea Kayak” at Pillar Point Harbor in Half Moon Bay. Unfortunately, my class was cancelled after the other two students backed out.

So, I asked to be placed in today’s class in the Oakland Estuary. At 8 this morning, I got a call informing me that the class wasn’t officially cancelled, but that reschedules and refunds would be offered to anyone who wanted to skip out. It rained quite torrentially yesterday and was forecast to rain all day. Still, I had spent a significant amount of money recently on wet weather gear for this very purpose. I opted to head to Oakland, knowing the weather would probably suck.

My friend, Oz, signed up and arrived about the same time. We went inside, got fitted for wet suits, spray skirts, and PFDs. We snagged a paddle, a paddle float, and a pump. I bought a couple of hats and a pair of gloves, having forgotten mine at home.

The instructor, Mark, was really informative, taught the five of us the correct strokes, safety information, and hints about rescues. We paddled over 2½ miles today, talking about forward strokes, sweeps, draws, braces, and backing strokes. The sun came out, despite a forecast of continuous rain showers. After lunch, Mark demonstrated an Eskimo roll and the two rescues we were learning—the T (or assisted) rescue and the paddle float rescue. Before long, it was time.

Water and I have not been friends for a long time. It’s been 16½ years since I was under water. Today was a time of working up the nerve to get over my longstanding apprehension around water. I was the last one to turn over. I gritted my teeth, prepared myself mentally for the wet exit and paddle float re-entry, and flipped over. It took me some time to realize that I didn’t have to swim and struggle with attempting to hang on to my paddle and the kayak. I was wearing a PFD. All I had to do was float and stop flailing around.

After I got back in my boat, it took me a little time to get all the water out of the cockpit with the crazy little pump. Getting a spray skirt back on with wet gloves is somewhat challenging. After my big plunge, we all headed back for a debriefing and more information about classes offered and a review of tides and currents. It was a great class. Sea kayaks are much more stable than most people think. I can’t wait to get out there again.