Eddy Lines by John Lane
With the first frosts of the
year and our scheduling and planning meetings behind, it’s time to look forward. We had a successful, well-attended
scheduling meeting. This means rafting, canoe camping, whitewater hardboat and other trips to plug into your PDA and
plug yourself into! We’ll have new places to go and new faces to help us get there!
I had an email from Dave Agnor following our fall boating council meeting. He has been around long enough to remember a couple decades of COP boating. He didn’t exactly say we were reinventing the wheel with our struggles to set rental prices and policies, develop leaders and schedule trips but it was close. Actually it was a little comforting that the issues haven’t changed all that much.
My hope for the New Year is that we’ll reinvigorate the wheel for COP boating. We are making our first attempts at getting certified instructors to help teach our instructors. Fernando Caro will teach our first CRCA-based sea kayak class and we’ll introduce an expedition type sea kayak class as well. Barbie Demmy and Ann Gerckens will host an array of rafting trips and schools. You’ll see familiar faces in the roles of lead instructors: Larry Krall, Jon Blake, Dan Downes, Eileen Troutman, Sharon Hsu, Dave Seslar, Mark Steinmetz, John Markiel, Jeff Gentry and others will be running over a dozen classes next season. Jeff Haven will be running the Shenandoah again. Keith Finn has a February canoe camping trip going. So the paddle "wheels" keep on turning and churning. Join us on our expeditions to somewhere!
Destination: Boating
Caesar Creek Lake
With 40 miles of shoreline and nearly 3,000 surface acres, Caesar Creek Lake has plenty to explore. This lake is 70 miles from Columbus and just a few miles west of I-71. It sprawls over three different counties. The surrounding bedrock is highly fosilliferous. Besides fishing and rockhounding, one can swim at the beach and visit the pioneer village nearby or hike in the Caesar Creek Gorge. Plenty of camping is available at the park and fast food is only as far away as the freeway.
With an unlimited horsepower designation, the lake is occasionally infested with powerboats and personal watercraft. Hand-powered boaters would do well to go early or late season for the most solitude and quiet. We paddled there on a late October weekend in search of fall color remnants. We enjoyed the chilly air and colorful reflections in the coves. There was a fair amount of motorboats around but not enough to spoil the waterscape. Caesar Creek Lake is large enough to feel the action of wind-borne waves but not so large to get easily lost in. It’s definitely worth a visit.
Check out the lake at the ODNR website. http://www.dnr.state.oh.us/parks/parks/caesarck.htm
Leadership Recognition
Joan Bowman
I have the advantage of knowing Joan
pretty well. We celebrated our tenth anniversary in September and have a nice life together. You’ll rarely see Joan on
any COP boating trips. Other than Red, White and Boom excursions in a raft or sea kayak, she’s content to be by the
water and read by the water but not spend so much time IN the water. The reason I’m putting her in the volunteer
spotlight is that she has been a huge help to me over the years with computing and document construction and advice. I
don’t remember if I even knew how to use a computer when I first became boating chair but I do okay now. She had a
brief stint as board secretary during an acrimonius period and was relieved when that ended.
Joan has been a good soldier over the years. She has put up with my ever-changing schemes and sticking her with odd adventures, including fogbound midnight paddles in the UP. I have documentation that she paddled a duck on the Casselman. Joan and I were cooking for an intermediate school. It was the longest day of her paddling life. She was completely out of adrenaline by the end of an admittedly long day and she cared not whether she surfed, swam or not. That was when Katie Dick was still in diapers and Kevin Gagnon was still standing up in whitewater rivers...a while back. She did submit to one rafting trip on the Lower New but that was only because Mike Wadkowski was guiding. Although she might have found that trip a little bit fun, the prospect of getting smacked in the face with waves has kept her out of inflatables since.
What she does love is reading, feminist science fiction, travel and politics. There is always a pile of books and magazines somewhere. It’s like those birthday candles that don’t blow out. When one stack of reading disappears, another one grows on a different horizontal surface. She has taken me to Toronto and San Francisco and Madison for city tours, something I never would have done on my own, and is smitten with our little corner of the Grandview area. She dreams of writing a feminist utopian sci-fi novel. She is fiercely supportive of her nephews and is a wonderful aunt to them.
There’s a lot more and most of it’s fit to print but at least now you know her a little bit and a little bit more of my back story.
This photo of Joan may be the only time she ever really enjoyed being in a sea kayak. She found out how much steerage rudders can supply and smiled!