Paddle Baffin

by Erik Olsen on

A nice paddle piece on paddling Baffin Bay way up there near the
Arctic Circle. Specifically, the wrier heads to southern
Baffin’s Meta Incognita Peninsula,
what he calls “an ecological oasis in an otherwise barren desert of glaciers, boulders, and midnight sun”.

Ah yes, paddling in the midnight sun. Sounds absolutely killer. The group paddles some easy Class Is and IIs, and then
finds itself among a dozen pit-type excavations littered with whale ribs. The ancient whaling village likely belonged
to the Thule, forerunners of today’s Inuit, who were known to have settlements up there around 1200 to 1800 AD.

Anyone interested in a similar paddle might check out this site.

White Stripes Canoe Wedding

by Erik Olsen on

A kinda fun story. White Stripes singer
Jack White
married British model Karen
Elson in a canoe in the Brazilian Amazon. There’s a lburb about it, too, on the
band’s Web site. They were married near the city of
Manaus, where the Amazon, the Solimones and the Black Rivers meet up
(some strange kind of symbolism, I wonder?).

White Stripes manager Ian Montone served as White’s best man, while Stripes drummer Meg White was Elson’s maid of
honor. Elson might be familiar to
some: she was in the band’s video “Blue Orchid.”

The band says “this is the first marriage for both newlyweds,” but alas, this may not be true. In 2003 The Detroit
Free Press discovered a 1996 marriage document between Jack and Meg (filed under their real names, John Anthony Gillis
and Megan Martha White), but they were divorced four years later…so maybe he meant, “first time in the last few years
or so.”

Burning Time

by Erik Olsen on

Check out the Website of
film producer Scott Lindgren whose film Burning Time can be seen (parts of it anyway)
on the site.  Lindgren’s project was mentioned a while back in a
San Francisco Chronicle
article, but his website gives the lowdown on the film, and
there is a short, but (VERY) sweet video teaser there.

 

If you never knew kayaks could fly (let alone be set on fire and paddled), you should check this out. Oh, and
there are some awesome scenes here of kayakers going over falls…scenes the likes of which you have probably never seen
before.

Hard to Find Paddle Books

by Erik Olsen on

While we’re on the subject of paddling, I thought I’d
post about this feature from Sea Kayaker on hard to
find paddling books. I just recently got my hands on Jon Bowermaster’s
Alone Against the Sea and Other True
Adventures, which I plan to review here shortly. But there are several othe gems that paddlephiles might be
interested in at least knowing about, even if they can’t be found on Amazon. A book like
Enchanted Vagabonds (1938) by Dana Lamb is one that
held my interest. The Lambs, Ginger and Dana, left San Diego in 1933 and paddled and sailed their hybrid
kayak/canoe/sailboat to the Panama Canal. A very impressive feat at a time when couples just didn’t do those kinds of
things. Another is Kayaks to the Arctic (1967) by E. B. Nickerson, another couple’s adventure that has the Nickersons
taking three Klepper folding kayaks to Fort Providence in the Canadian Northwest Territories.
The list goes on. Check it out.

Great Hudson River Paddle

by Erik Olsen on

Just a heads up for East Coast paddling fans who might want to participate…well, actually,
it’s too late to sign up, but you can still get in a day
paddle during the fifth annual Great Hudson River Paddle (GHRP
2005). This year’s paddle will be held Friday, July 8 to Sunday, July 17, 2005. This is a killer event. Paddlers from
around the state and country come, and the governor often makes an appearance as well. Participants paddle nearly 150
miles from Albany to New York City, a long haul, but with stops along the way at some of the state’s great
campgrounds.

The idea behind the event is to bring awareness to the wonders of the Hudson, and for folks to celebrate how far the
river has come since the awful days in the 70s and 80s when it was a foul cesspool of industrial pollution. But things
are better now! We promise.