Just finished my third week of school and I’m already getting sick of studying again. At least now I can finish all my work during the week so I can be free on the weekend. And this weekend I got to go kayaking again early on Saturday in the freezing cold. We paddled a run that had a lot of flat water, but a beautiful short canyon gorge. It was a descent class four run, but since it was so short we actually hiked back up the creek to paddle a few drops again. It wasn’t really the best trip in the cold, but I was grateful to just be outside and on the water. Then we packed back into our cars, picked up some dinner in a small rural town, and headed to Mount Hutt again for the evening. A friend of ours rented a lodge close to the base of the ski resort for his twenty first birthday. It was nothing fancy, but we had a great time celebrating and played a ton of foosball. We woke early to check out some other possible rivers to run, but once again there was not enough rain water to boat anything close. So we headed back to Christchurch and exchanged our creek boats for playboats. Checked the surf levels and drove straight to the beach.
This was the second time I’ve ever been in the ocean in a kayak and it was definitely different than my first experience. We arrived and quickly geared up to avoid the pain of putting on wet cold kayaking gear. I ran to the beach and crammed into a tiny and uncomfortable playboat. We struggled to make it past all the initial waves that sent us back to land, but then tried surfing the bigger waves coming. I think they were about 6 feet high the further out we got and they kicked my ass. They were no smooth curling waves, but crashing white piles of destruction. Well, they were fun to surf, but when you got worked it was tough to hang on. We didn’t surf for too long and headed back home for a good dinner with my roommates. So that was the excitement for this last week and it felt good to get out of the city again.
