Part II.

The Big Event

Chapter 5.

Kayaking

 

The Water Dimension

 

The idea of what Katy’s Big Event would be had taken many tortured turns.  Beginning before Viannah’s trip in the Grand Canyon, I had wondered what would work with Katy and coming up with ideas hadn’t been as easy.  Katy was a different person with a different approach.  Then there were the externally imposed restrictions like “no hiking” (from Viannah to Katy, a little heavy handed, I thought) and my own internal phobias like “nothing new,” but we did do hiking despite the restrictions and we did do boating despite the phobias.

 

Starting with the idea of a river trip, it appeared that one of the differences here would be water activity.  That’s what the canoeing and kayaking were all about.  The Channel Islands, off in the distance, provided that place for me that was “around the next bend,” someplace that not everyone would visit that not just everyone would even know or care about.  Maybe there would be a “river” there too.

 

It seemed logical, since we were going to an island that we might kayak to it.  I had read the Park Service material, however, and one quote in particular concerned me:

 

Kayakers may also paddle from the mainland across the channel to the islands (due to conditions, most of these cross-channel trips are limited to Anacapa Island).  However even this shortest 12 mile paddle is not for the novice or anyone who is not properly trained, conditioned and equipped.

 

Currents, shifting swells and strong winds can stretch a normal 3-to-4 hour trip to Anacapa Island into a 6-hour struggle.  The strongest currents are often encountered near the island.  The paddle from Oxnard or Ventura also takes the kayaker across some of the busiest shipping lanes in California.  Potentially dense fog and ship speeds of 25 to 35 knots present a special hazard to kayakers while crossing the channel.

 

I realized that we were novices, that we were not properly trained, conditioned, or equipped for a voyage of this magnitude, nor were we going to get that way in these remaining few weeks.  This material went on to cite other dangers and conditions, the need for an experienced expedition leader, first aid and survival training, and even a “Float Plan” filed with the harbor master.  Clearly this was more along the lines of an advanced expedition, something like spending a couple of weeks in the back country of the Grand Canyon rather than a few days on a well-traveled corridor trail and, as such, was out of scope for this project.

 

Katy had seen the possibility first and described it to me.  I tried to explain about time on the water and skill levels and raw strength and isolation and the problems associated with such a large venture.  Essentially, we were new to water sports and this was well over our heads.  Certainly it could have been done, but even if we had started from the beginning three years ago gaining sea-going kayaking experience, we would still be novices compared to the wide channel we would be crossing.

 

Still, we were not absolute novices to the water.  We had been out in canoes and rowboats and small motorboats.  And kayaks.  We knew how to swim.  There were opportunities at our level.  Perhaps we could kayak at Santa Rosa while we were camping there.  But, the Channel Islands Kayak Center brochure put this idea away as well, at least in my mind:

 

Kayaking San Miguel and Santa Rosa Islands should be considered only by the experienced sea kayaker.  The conditions can change on all of the islands very quickly but San Miguel and Santa Rosa can have the severest weather fluctuations.

 

There were circumstances under which expeditioneers like us would read this, know what they were talking about and know that the warning was for other people.  Combined with that knowledge, we would know how to go about conducting the expedition safely and could plan accordingly.  None of this was the case with us, though.  This was not bicycling or hiking or even driving that I would know our capabilities and proceed accordingly in the face of such warnings.  And, even in those cases, I had learned, as at the Grand Canyon, that my own capabilities were not always what I imagined them to be.  Not when pushed to the limit.  Even there, the warnings for novices had applied to me enough that I should have taken them seriously.

 

This plus a vague recollection of stories of people out kayaking getting blown or drifted out to sea and eaten by sharks brought the issue to clarity for me.  Larger scale boating was out of the question also due to the experience issues but more because of the likely expense.  One needed a friend with a boat….  I talked it over with Viann, presenting the options and circumstances and it was decided that what we had planned was just the right content and scope for Katy and me.  We would go on beginner’s level a catered kayaking trip to one of the islands and we’d go camping on the more remote Santa Rosa, but wouldn’t do much in the way of “hazardous” or unsupervised water sports there.

 

Katy was disappointed but agreeable.

 

Training Hike from Work

 

I had wanted to take Katy on the four routes I routinely walked home from work both as the final hiking training and as a setting where we could be doing something together.  John had karate lessons at Jake’s every Wednesday from 4:00 – 4:30 and was about to take his purple belt test.  The need to drive down to Jake's anyway made an opportunity for Katy to be brought to join me at the end of the work day for such hikes.

 

We had been on the hike straight up Foothill Blvd., which hadn’t been exactly what I had expected.  Now we would try one of the longer, less traffic prone ones, the south route up Cherry Canyon, in front of Cerro Negro, and down behind Verdugo Hills Hospital.  This route typically took me two hours.

 

We made rendezvous arrangements by radio and Katy arrived at 4:45 p.m.  I left things in the van that I would ordinarily have carried and we started down the trail from the JPL South Gate.  The horse trail goes between the perimeter fences of JPL and Los Angeles County Fire Camp #2 for the first block then we took the left path along the south perimeter of JPL down into the Arroyo Seco basin. We had been here before on our walk around the dry lake.  This time we followed the trail past the Rose Bowl Rider’s Association arenas and the Hahamongna Watershed Park parking area down into the basin and under-street bridges for Woodbury and the 210 Freeway.  In past walks here I had seen grocery carts or other evidence of homeless occupation in these noisy shelters but not today.  The trail followed the creek across the edge of the freeway support wall across from some tennis courts, then crossed under a bridge at Berkshire and went up to parallel the street briefly before going down to the creek again, now a concrete flood control enclosure.  We saw one white tailed bunny, dozens of lizards and even two horses with riders.  This was the first time I had encountered actual horses on a city horse trails.

 

Taking 50 minutes to do it, Katy recited the two Goosebumps Books she had read that day, the one about the foggy campout and the one about the cursed campout.  This led somehow to a talk about my friend Rob and his broken jaw experience, a bicycling injury that left his mouth wired shut for six weeks.  He had to drink shakes through a straw where a tooth had been removed for the purpose.  Later, in a separate incident, he had donated a kidney to his oldest sister Mary, but it had only lasted several months and had then gone dormant itself.

 

The trail wound amongst houses, “horse properties,” uphill, passing the various cross streets at well marked “Eques Crossings.”  In a few places there were signs telling the distance to various landmarks along the trail.  The signs pointed in the right direction but I didn’t trust the distances, based on my prior experiences.

 

After climbing the steepest part of the trail and crossing Hampstead, we were out in the open area on fire roads.  The sign saying “Brush Clearance Deadline May 1” which had been there for years was still there.  Perhaps this was a perpetual deadline.  Today was June 21.  We followed the summit trail rather than the fire road.  There were warnings about steep trails with loose rock ahead, mostly for horses I thought.  This was one of those warnings I did feel qualified to ignore.  The trail went up through a grove along the stream.  We rested at a bench in the middle where it was relatively quiet.  If one sat there long enough one might see a few animals in the woods, or locals walking their dogs.  Katy was tired and drank some of our water.

 

We took the route back out to the fire road and inspected the rest of the summit trail to our south.  I would have to try that some day when I had the time and energy.  For today it was all “standard,” up to the junction of roads that led down into Glendale to the west and La Canada to the north, and around behind Descanso Gardens to the Verdugo Hills overlook from which there was supposedly no exit.

 

A new sign had been posted at one turn in the road saying it was restricted because of the Glendale Police gun range over the rise.  I had been through here many times and had never heard any guns firing.  Further, most of the road was not exposed to the range except in a secondary ricochet sense, and then not much.  Before, I had seen a similar sign up near the top where there actually was danger if one wandered too close to the perimeter fence.  We went on up with me thinking that we would just go up to the fence and see what was down there today.  Just as we reached the second sign, “Bam! Bam!” there was shooting today!  We kept on going, a little faster than before.

 

Further up the road, I had seen an owl on one of the warning signs early one evening.  It was too early for that today, and probably the wrong season as well.  This was the area burned by the wildfires last December 22.  That gun range had been declared a total loss at $300,000.  Everything including some underbrush was back to normal now but there had been obvious extra erosion and there were still charred scrub trees along the paths.

 

As we passed under the power lines overlooking this part of town, I told Katy that Viannah and I had seen a helicopter land right in the city (for a wedding, we thought) once while hiking past here on her own training.

 

“Cool,” Katy thought aloud.

 

Later I had read in the paper that the city didn’t like this and had used their power to not issue permits for any further such helicopter landings.

 

A single-track trail, overgrown in places, went from the overlook down to the street in upper Montrose.  Katy was tired and we had used more than the promised two hours.  I was tired too.  We called Viann to pick us up and met her where the trail came out at the 2 Freeway underpass about 7 p.m.

 

In the car we talked about grades.  That day Katy had received her final term report card for Seventh Grade, two A’s and the rest C’s.  Viannah, a High School Freshman, had all A’s except for an A- in German and a B in Biology.

 

Motor Boating Lake Casitas

 

We had not been able to contact the Aquatics Center according to the planning calendar by the last weekend of June, so I reached forward in the list and Katy and I went to Lake Casitas for a last unstructured kayaking or canoeing trip June 24.

 

I was beginning to think past the Katy event now.  I thought that I would do a few day-sized trips on my own on the bicycle and that we would do some all-family hikes, like to the wreck of the Dominator, before I started seriously with John, probably after the first of next year.  When I was ready for a “credit card camping” bicycle trip, I might make a three day loop from home to Gorman in the “Grapevine” pass through the mountains, to Lake Casitas where I might meet everybody for an overnight campout and some boating before cycling home on the third day.  I thought that we’d drive along some of that route today to see what some of the hills would be like, but we started around noon by just going up the freeway to Gorman where we would look for a late lunch.

 

It was also Amateur Radio Field Day, but Katy didn’t have much interest in that event and so for this year, neither did I.

 

I had done research in Viannah’s book and in my notes for this book and had compared the level of activity between the two girls.  Something just seemed less fair for Katy, but maybe it was just less focused or maybe it had to do with her response to all of the planning and doing.  The results of the research had been surprising.  At this point, with a couple of months left before the culmination events, we were nearly exactly even in terms of outings.  At this point, Viannah had had twelve training sessions and counting today, Katy had thirteen.  In both cases we had plans for four or five more, but Viannah had broken her foot and we had to rearrange significantly from that point.  Further, the final trip, if we counted both the Kayaking and the Santa Rosa camping weekend, would be about the same as the vacation trip to the Grand Canyon had been for Viannah.

 

I had been surprised by this and talked with Katy about the scope of the project, and what it was for.  I had to be different from other people and invent something rather than just participating in something provided by culture like scouting or soccer.  Such activities might otherwise have had much the same effect.  I told her I didn’t know yet what I was doing with John, but that I wasn’t going to start until after the beginning of the year and that after that mom wanted to go to the top of Mt. Whitney, but I didn’t know if I could get her to do the necessary training (… conditioning).  For fairness and for sightseeing and for preparation, we would probably do 15-20 other peaks in the region.  I talked about the books and writing everything down and what it was all for.  It wasn’t for mass consumption or to make me rich so I could afford to send each kid to college on the proceeds from their book, though that had been among the fantasies when I started with Viannah’s.  There was not enough tragedy, conflict and danger for a best seller.  My paranoias took care of that.  At least I hoped they would.  The reason for writing it all down was so that when they were my age and remembered that they had done this but not much else, they would be able to read or leaf through all or part of the book and remember.  Remember what happened back around the turn of the century … of the millennium.

 

And, I thought we would do something big as a whole family.  I had always wanted to do this, it had been the latest mutation of the Alaska Highway dream, but with Viannah’s calendar being so busy and with her resisting doing things with us more and more as she got older, it was dawning on me that it might never happen.  Then I had an idea, we could take a summer after she was in college and when it worked for everybody else and go then.  It wouldn’t be easy, but if we got on everybody’s calendar now for summer of, say 2005, when she was between Sophomore and Junior years and Katy was about to go to college and John was about to be a Sophomore in High School, yes maybe we could do it then if everybody wanted to enough to keep their summer clear that year.

 

I jotted down some 1240-1300 MHz frequencies where the scanner in my new radio stopped as we drove further north.  Was that apparent Morse Code signal on 1296.325 MHz somebody at Field Day or just a beacon?

 

We got off the freeway and started making an irregular detour to the Jack in the Box.  It was about 1 p.m.  We kept on talking about what we were doing and what it might all amount to in the future and it seemed plausible in the talking, but if people were hard to get for six or eight weeks now (one or two for that matter), what would it be like in five more years?  Impossible, surely.

 

This Jack in the Box was the slowest I’d ever seen.  There was a line that was at least twenty people long.  The register operators were slow, but that didn’t appear to be the whole problem.  Things were slow in the back too, in part (and as usual) due to the drive through window.  After 20 minutes we ordered and found a seat by the window where we started waiting.  Outside we could see the rolling hills of this end of the mountains covered with dry grass and the drive through line right outside too.  It consistently reached back at least three cars from the order speaker to where we were sitting.

 

We ate and talked about other things as other customers waited outside our window.

 

Driving away, I spilled our vanilla shake dessert all over the drivers foot mat.  We used up one of our two towels containing the mess.  Always something.

 

Katy slept through Lockwood Valley and Highway 33 (again) as we descended the steep range into Ojai.  I studied the route for the bike ride; it would be fine if there wasn’t much traffic, and it didn’t seem that there usually was.  I could just carry radios to stay in touch with home (the fantasy was that John would be interested in being on the other end at the house as I pedaled along during the day) and a change of clothes in my baggage, but not a tent, sleeping bag or other camping gear.

 

We came to the lake and paid our $6.50 to go in for the day this time.  It had been over 140 miles, certainly two days worth on a bicycle, at least for me.  Down at the boat dock there was construction under way.  It looked like it might be a new rental counter or bait store or even a restaurant.  There were already facilities like that in place, but clearly there was room for more capacity and a face-lift.

 

I scanned the docks and saw no canoes or kayaks in the rental area.  Two people were leaving the harbor in kayaks just now; I asked at the counter.  All were out, but they were expecting some back within an hour.  We went and waited.  This was a popular place for the famous boat-car.  Some people were on a drive-float in it here at the ramp.  We watched the boats and the kayaks.

 

There were several boats with small motors for rent.  I checked the rate card:  $30 for the first hour, $44 for five hours.  That was similar to what we would spend for two kayaks.

 

“Come on, let’s get a motorboat,” I said.

 

Katy was instantly more than just interested, “Really?”

 

“Sure, I don’t think any of the canoes or kayaks are going to come in anytime soon and it’s not getting any earlier.”

 

We rented the smallest they had, 4 horsepower.  One didn’t need experience for these, at least not here; you just had to carry lifejackets in the boats.  The helper showed us to Boat #4.  He got in and started the engine and showed us the basics of the clutch and forward and reverse.  Another helper kid in a larger boat careened up into the docks, standing as he drove, and sloshed right into the fueling/maintenance area.  ‘We won’t be trying that today,’ I thought.

 

“Cool,” Katy was impressed.

 

We had to be in by closing time at 8, only 3-1/2 hours, but the $44 still seemed reasonable.  What was more of a worry was to get back and retrieve my driver’s license, which was the deposit.

 

I backed out and proceeded slowly out of the docks, then turned left towards the harbor exit area and headed “out to sea.”  I wanted to get a feel for the controls and how much trouble one could get in and then maybe let Katy drive some.  We would go to all the places we might have kayaked, around the island, up some of the creeks, and so forth.

 

This was a lake where it was prohibited to touch the water with your skin because it was a public water supply; there were floating porta-potties in three or four places.  Water splashed in my face.  I guess it could touch me if it didn’t wash back into the reservoir.

 

We got well away from the harbor and out of the dock lanes.  I turned and tried a full-rudder turn clockwise at full throttle.  (Of course, there was no rudder, just a swivel on the engine.)  We did a donut in the water.  “Hey!” Katy wondered what we were doing.

 

“Seeing if I can turn it over.”  It wasn’t going to turn over this way.  We wheeled around and went the other way making the big donut into a bigger figure eight.  Then I stopped and tried reverse.  If we lost the boat at full throttle, I didn’t think it would be too dangerous.  There was a single paddle stowed there, just in case of engine failure.  We also had an anchor with a length of rope.

 

“Can I drive, dad,” Katy wanted to know.

 

I was expecting this, “In a minute after I learn how it works.”

 

We were headed west.  “Dad, can I drive now?”

 

“In a minute.”

 

Another fifty yards, “When can I drive?”

 

“OK,” I gave up and stopped the boat.  We traded places and I showed her how it worked.  We continued west up toward Stanton Canyon.  I had her do some of her own donuts as handling orientation.  We approached the shallows; fishermen dotted the banks nearby.  We would try to stay clear of them and their lines.

 

For the next two hours Katy drove us all over the lake while I sat in the middle and gave general direction, like an Admiral.  We turned back southeast and started a circuit of the main island, looking for deer along the way.  We came to the “floating restroom” (“S.S. Head”) at the entrance to Chismahoo Creek and I had Katy practice approach and docking.  The first several docking attempts didn’t go well, but soon she got the hang of it and seemed a natural at the controls.  We got out for the practice and used … the Heads.

 

We went as far up Chismahoo Creek as we could then dropped anchor to measure the depth.  It turned out to be, perhaps, twenty feet.  The anchor came back up tangled in water grass.  Again, there were several fishermen up in the coves in their boats.  The shoreline and island were all off limits except in the camping and concession area.  Out of the creek, we stopped for another sounding across from Grindstone Canyon.  The rope played all the way out without finding the bottom, maybe 30-40 feet.  We trolled on up and inspected the buoy line and the dam in the distance, then went up the northernmost inlet of Dead Horse Canyon.  The water here was only a few feet deep and we stopped for a rest until another boat showed up.

 

People out here on the water were friendly.  Everyone had time and money invested in being there and nobody wanted to waste it on interpersonal strife.  Well, and it wasn’t crowded like the freeway either.  Pity the freeways and the cars that were always in a hurry.

 

Back out in the lake, we followed the east shore up to Wadleigh Arm and inspected Saddle Dike then headed across the middle, took another fruitless sounding and docked with the northernmost Floating Restroom.

 

We had hardly used an hour yet, that part was sure different from kayaking or canoeing!

 

Katy wanted to keep going; she really enjoyed this driving and was being quite conscientious about what few rules I had dictated.  We started back around the island clockwise this time.  I tried standing in the boat.  Katy veered and knocked me down, “Oops, sorry dad!”.  Ha Ha!  I tried leaning over and watching the patterns in the water as the bow plowed through it.

 

 Soon we were at the south point where the wind was whipping up a bit.  There was mild chop and we were faced right into it.  Another large family of five or six was in another rental boat nearby.  ‘That one must certainly be one of the six-horse rentals,’ I thought.   Katy engaged them in a friendly race.  We were coming up on an inlet, I reminded her about the shoreline going under water and how it might leave rocks and reefs for us to hit.  It wouldn’t be too dangerous to wreck here but it would be awfully inconvenient, and I might have to buy the boat.

 

The race continued around to the southwest side of the island where we stopped for another sounding attempt while the other family went on ahead.  With all those people they were plodding along low in the water, but seemed to be having a good time.  Everybody waved as we passed.

 

Back up at the north end of the island I was pondering what to do with some more of our time when another boat, this one a medium-large motorboat, waved us down.  They had a transmission failure and were dead in the water and were wondering if we would tow them in.  I didn’t know if we could do it and at first offered to just get help back at the dock, but the two women insisted that our boat could tow theirs.  They had a rope.

 

I agreed and soon we were hooked up.  Katy wanted to keep driving.  This being agreeable to everyone (both captains and both admirals); we started back.  Now instead of four or five knots, we were doing one or two.  The pilot of the other boat asked Katy to back down our throttle to a little below full power.  We crossed the lane back to the harbor and docks at Santa Ana Creek slowly, taking about twenty minutes.

 

Katy stood and drove all the way, acting very competent and responsible.  I directed her to give the harbor entrance buoys wide berth, the lady we were towing indicated to cut a little closer.  I think she was worried we would miss them and run over the boundary logs floating ahead.  Up at the ramp and public dock, we swung around wide and brought them up, untied and threw them their rope.  All were happy and thankful.

 

I asked Katy if she wanted to go back out but we were both ready to go in.  The people at the rental counter were very complimentary too, asking how old she was.  “Only thirteen?  What a good job you did out there!” they remarked.

 

It was a long, ninety-minute drive home.  We smelled of lake water that could never be touched by humans.  We didn’t talk much.  Suddenly, Katy said, “I think I would be a good car driver.”

”Maybe so,” I answered but then explained about how the rules of the road were more complicated than the rules of the water, traffic was thicker, speeds and reactions faster.  Tempers shorter….  Still, “Maybe so.”

 

We passed a car that was obviously polluting.

 

“Will you put that in the book dad?”

”I will now….”

 

I had left the big radio at the house on 52.060 FM to see what the range direct to the new HT with 6 meters was.  It was about three miles.  We talked for the last three minutes before arriving back at the house.

 

Viann, shopping for something else at Sport’s Chalet, had bought me the book The Essential Sea Kayaker by David Seidman for Father’s Day.  Already overwhelmed with books and magazines that were supposedly essential reading, I added it to the stack and spent a few weeks figuring how to rotate it in.  Beginning the following Wednesday night I finally managed to read the first chapter.  In a few days I had made it about a third of the way in, up to the chapter “Paddling”.  This was all about how to choose and use sea-going cockpit type kayaks.  I wondered if that was what we would be trained in on the Maiden Voyage.  The book wasn’t going to help much, it was intended as a hands-on guide where you read some and did some and learned as you went.  In the first couple of chapters you had to go out and buy or borrow a kayak to start learning on, and I wasn’t likely to do that.  Still, I continued to read some each evening when I could just so as to be familiar with the terminology and some of the issues if possible.

 

 

Mt. Wilson

 

July 4 was a four-day weekend at JPL in 2000.  I was off from Saturday the 1^st to Tuesday the 4^th.  We decided to get up and hike up the Mt. Wilson toll road early on the 3^rd.  After packing lunches in a daypack the night before, Katy got up reluctantly at 5 a.m.  By six we had used all the money in my wallet to buy sunscreen at Ralph’s and were on the way to the trailhead in Altadena.

 

I parked at the same place I had with Viannah, on Bowstring about a block from the gate that allowed hikers but not cars onto the old toll road.  We got out with our packs and headed through the gate and down the road to the bridge at the low point.  Other people were already out biking and jogging with their dogs.  This was going to be much easier than it had been with Viannah.  Her hike up Mt. Wilson had been the “ascent from the bottom of the Grand Canyon” prototype, which we had done in full pack.  That day had been much longer on the road than expected and I had nearly collapsed in the tub from exhaustion back home later that night.

 

Today, Katy was more of a trooper, we weren’t carrying much at all, and I was in somewhat better shape than I had been in three years earlier.

 

We took our first big rest at Henninger Flats campground around eight, took pictures at the campground information board, used the flush toilets, and continued up the road.  The next couple of miles were spent in fog.  As before, there were fewer other users of the road now that we were above the campground.  That seemed to be the turning point for round trip day hikers and morning joggers.

 

We talked to Viann on the radio at most rest stops.  I learned that the batteries in my new radio didn’t have the capacity I thought they did.  One was shot at Henning Flats, so I switched to the triple AA pack and kept the other regular battery in reserve for rest of the day.

 

I made conversation.  What about each of the summer school classes Katy was taking, I asked.  She told me about Comedy Club, where nobody was very funny; Computer, which was basically typing; and painting.  Yes, she had friends in these classes; she named several girls.  I asked about boys.  Yes, there were boys; the boys were all small and “dumb.”  They didn’t even register on her radar (she probably looked right over their heads, I thought, glancing over to gauge this possibility).  This was that awkward age where girls could be nearly grown and most boys had barely started maturing, yet, socially, they were still in the same classes together.

 

I had had this great idea to get everybody their ham license this summer before school began which would mean losing control of our schedules again.  All I wanted was for each of the kids to pass a 35 question multiple-choice test and get a Technician License and for Viann to finish her long-time goal of upgrading to General.  When they had all done that, I would quit hassling anybody about ham licenses, I promised.  Katy and I talked about this and my idea for how to carry out the plan, to get the appropriate license manuals and read from them to everybody at dinner each night.  I thought we might be able to finish before school started, then we could all go down to a Volunteer Examiner testing session together and get consecutive call signs.  Maybe.

 

Katy nodded at all this attentively, not very interested.

 

It might work, I thought.  I had read “Christmas Carol” during the last Christmas season to enthusiastic audiences.  That had gone on for a week’s worth of evenings.

 

As our elevation increased we climbed in and out of the cloud tops, finally emerging into sunlight above the overcast.  We heard a plane coming and looked around.  He was flying above the clouds but well below our level.  We scrambled for the camera to try for a picture but none of the shots turned out very well.  Trying to take good pictures of things fast with a cheap camera reminded me of my first camera.  I told Katy about it.  I had bought it through the mail for $1.00 and the film wasn’t much more.  It was hand loaded black and white "120" film.  This reminded me of the first pictures with that camera, during the summer of 1968, my only full summer living in the Pleasant Grove area of Dallas.  One of those pictures was of a tarantula in the road at church camp.  It thought we still had that photo somewhere.

 

I told Katy all about the three big events of that summer when I had been about her age.  One month I had gone to church camp, perhaps the only time I had gone to church camp and one of the first times I had been away from home on my own.  About the only thing I could remember about that trip was it had been the first time I had ever worn the same clothes on two different days, and that it had been on Lake Texoma.

 

Another month, we drove to Borger where I joined my maternal grandfather Pennington on a train trip to Ft. Wayne, Indiana.  The train left Amarillo in the middle of the night and late the following day we arrived in Chicago where I gawked at the high-rise “urban renewal” tenements, the elevated railway, and the rush hour.  I’d never seen much of a rush hour before.  We had an evening layover in the main station there then caught another train towards New York, which stopped in Ft. Wayne about 2:30 in the morning.  People from my cousin’s family had come to pick us up.  We spent about ten days there.  I couldn’t remember how we had returned.  Did my parents drive up and get us?  Did we go back on the train?  I kind of thought we had, but couldn’t recall any scenes from the return trip.

 

While there Uncle Johnny Hoppe had taken us with his family on a sub-vacation where we drove through Ohio and to Dearborn, Michigan where we saw parts of the Ford plant and a museum that had many of the original buildings from Thomas Edison’s lab earlier in the century.  Granddad had worked with the Ford Company some and was interested in the cars.  Everybody was interested in Thomas Edison.

 

Finally, the last month of the summer before sixth grade, the family had gone on vacation, probably to South Padre Island at the lower tip of Texas, but I didn’t recall anything more about that either.  It had been a long time and I hadn’t … reviewed.

 

“You know, dad, Viannah was right,” Katy commented.

 

“How’s that.”

”You can pick nearly any subject and talk about it for a long time.”

 

“Hmmmm.”

 

Further up the road, I picked another subject and gave Katy the rundown on all four of my grandparents.  It was fairly vague information in anybody’s generation, something about one’s great grandparents, but it was important to me to try to keep the knowledge going.

 

Dad’s dad, Arthur B. Duncan, had been the town drunk.  His father and namesake had been a county judge in Floyd County.  It wasn’t the official story, but I thought he was an alcoholic largely because he lived most of his married life with his wife’s sister in the next room.  He was also a chain smoker and died of a massive heart attack in 1962 at age 62 after a long history of heart attacks and strokes.  Dad’s mother was Lethel, the next-to-youngest daughter of John Courtney.  Lethel was pronounced like “Ethyl,” not “lethal!”  Her younger sister, Johnia, was the last child and was so named because when she was born they were still trying for another boy to name John, after his father.  I thought she might have been born posthumously.  She was called “Da” because of something I had said as a toddler and grandma was called “Biggon” for, I thought, similar reason.  I hadn’t known granddad long enough or well enough for such a pet name to be adopted.  The three of them had shared the Abstract and Title Company in Canyon, Texas and had spent their careers in real estate, with highly mixed results.  Granddad, for example, had been to South Padre Island on fishing trips and had never seen any land that he thought was so useless and worthless.  This land was now a multi-million dollar high-end resort.  We Duncan’s could hardly afford to even vacation there anymore.

 

We found out after they were all gone that the house had been, all that time, in Da’s name.

 

Mother’s dad had been a bookkeeper, free lancing on his excellent reputation in Borger, Texas for much of his career.  He had been involved, as one example, with a company that recycled oil products far before recycling was popular.  Unfortunately, the company did poorly due to bad (possibly criminal) management.  Granddad had to get out of it.  He had worked in car companies and banks and was well trusted and respected everywhere he went.  Mother’s mom had had multiple sclerosis starting during World War II and had died from complications in 1960.  They didn’t know what MS was back then and had done many, damaging exploratory surgeries on her.  This had doubtless shortened her life even further.  Dealing with the illness was complicated by gas rationing, a feature of the war years.  When I was a teenager, my mother and her sister and their families had taken granddad back to Temple, Texas, the site of Scott and White Hospital where she had received some treatment.  They had even found a boarding house where he had stayed while there, and he was able to renew acquaintance with the aged proprietors, two elderly ladies by then.

 

Mother’s dad had died in 1978 at age 78 just before I graduated from college.  I left a day early for spring break to go up for the funeral, skipping a music school performance that I hadn’t felt prepared to do anyway.  Dad’s mom had died from smoking related illness the next year in 1979 shortly after Viann and I had visited them as newlyweds on the way to Pensacola, Florida.  (No, the Amarillo area had not been the most direct route from Dallas to Pensacola.)  Da had died in 1984, also from a cancerous condition probably exacerbated by a life of chain smoking.  One of the last things that Da and Biggon had said to me had been an explanation about how their mother, Grandmother Courtney, had given them permission to smoke as teenagers in order to ward off their allergies.  As if this was something on which I needed to give absolution.

 

This was pretty much what had impressed me enough to remember in the family heritage.

 

Katy continued to listen to all this.  Talked out, we continued in silence for a time.

 

On up the road on the east face of the ridge, we came to a sign with directions and distances.  It said:

 

<- 1-3/4 Mount Wilson

Altadena  7-1/4 ->

^ 6 Sierra Madre (Mt. Wilson Trail)

^ 5-1/2 Chantry Flat (Winter Creed Trail)

 

The two up arrows were pointing down a smaller trail to what seemed like the northeast.  My curiosity for the unknown was somewhat diminished from what it had been in the past.  We sat down for our modest lunch under the sign.  Katy got stung by a red ant.  We pressed a damp towel that had just been freed from cooling-drinks-duty on it and thought it would be OK.  We didn’t have much in the way of first aid gear with us, not even the little compact backpackers kit.  Katy was now much larger than I had been at age four when I was stung by a big red ant and had suffered under a baking soda and vinegar compress for an hour.  I could still remember that.  Another story….

 

Two other people walked by.  They said they had been fifteen minutes behind us since leaving Henninger Flats Campground.  Did I know how much further it was?  “Not far,” I replied, indicating the sign and giving them some hints as to what was ahead from my prior memory of the route.

 

Someone on a mountain bike passed us on the way up.  Later as we continued up he met us as he was coming back down.  We met another hiker coming down from the top.  She seemed quite fresh compared to us.  Not long after, she passed us returning to the top.

 

We made our way through recent road blocking landslides on towards the top.  Many sites were familiar now.  Here was a place where Viannah and I had stopped and rested, laying flat on a concrete slab for half an hour.  There was the place where Viannah had kicked rocks down the steep hillside.  From another spot we had seen something falling out of the sky, spiraling down like a streamer.  Months later a friend had checked the weather balloon databases and we had decided that it had not been the remnants of one of those that disappeared in the woods to the east.

 

We reached the hardened roadway; eventually it would become paved for the last half-mile or so to the top.  We had passed a secondary radio site that apparently had all-season service access.

 

We were tired and stopped in an alcove beside the road.  I called Viann and found her on the way to the grocery store.  By the original plan we wouldn’t have been arriving up here for two or three more hours.  She was planning to come pick us up after going to the store and unloading at home.  We were nearly to the top now.  I suggested that she come get us right away, since it would take her 30-45 minutes to get up here, and that we’d all go to the store when we got down.  She was by herself and so altered course to return home and pick up Viannah and John, then started up the hill on a quarter tank of gas.  We consulted about this and I thought it would be plenty for the 50-60 mile round trip.  I set the “VFO” position in my radio to listen in reverse on our repeater channel with tone squelch activated.  This way I would be able to hear her when she called nearing us at the top, but wouldn’t suffer opened squelch from all the intermodulation products from the powerful transmitters that had blanked our receivers on the last trip.

 

We had been picking up trash along the trail and as we reached the three switchbacks just before the top, the trash density increased dramatically.  We rummaged around beside and on the road and carried double handfuls up to a dumpster at the top, not making much difference in the local litter situation.  It seemed that a favorite pastime must be to come up here with a six-pack and throw it over the side.

 

It was Monday; the observatory grounds at the top were not open.  It was possible for a hiker to squeeze through the turnstile so as to use the trail out to the east, but public viewing of the telescopes and other facilities was only on weekends, that is Saturday and Sunday, not long weekend days, like Monday July the 3^rd.  Slightly disappointed, we turned after a rest and walked around the summit loop, inspecting all the radio sites.  Most were quite elaborate and many quite crowded.  Some towers had structures on them that even I didn’t recognize as being related to radio or tower construction.  Always ready to hypothecate, I tried to speculate from my knowledge of antennas as to what they might be.  Snow guards?

 

Aside from a little haze, we had good views of Pasadena and Altadena below.  Years ago, this was a hang glider departure spot.  We had been here one day when such a person was about to launch off for Victory Park ten miles horizontal and a mile vertical below.  What trips those must have been!

 

As we came around the loop, the call from Viann came.  They were parked in front of the observatory entrance wondering where we were.  We would be right there.  In three minutes we came around the loop clockwise, an unexpected arrival direction.  It was a big reunion.  The girls commiserated about the similarities of their adventures with dad.  John acted goofy.  Viann drove us down the winding mountain road.  I was tired, but nothing like I had been last time.  This not carrying a sixty-pound pack with a whole bag of Oreos in the bottom was a great improvement!  For leaving about the same time in the morning, we had been picked up about five hours earlier today, at about 1 p.m.

 

By two we were back at the car in Altadena, we talked on 1294.5 MHz FM, a new band on our new radios, as we drove tandem back to the house.  As soon as we were in the car, Katy returned to her book, “Rinkitink in Oz.”  She leaned back in the seat, starting Chapter 18.  “He’s not even in Oz yet,” she murmured.  Back at the house, it was straight back to Donkey Kong on the Nintendo.  I was done with my shower and that officially concluded our final training hike by four.

 

Viann and I went to the store and prepared for an evening visit from my old AMSAT comrade, Paul Williamson, KB5MU.  He was doing a long-weekend tour of the southern end of the state on his new Honda motorcycle.  Right on schedule he checked in on the repeater, and I moved the car out of the garage so there would be a stable place to park the 500-pound bike.

 

California Aquatics

 

When she was in Seventh Grade herself, right after the Grand Canyon trip, Viannah had been to a presentation at school about California Aquatics, an organization in Long Beach that promoted water sports for youths.  She was invited to join for four years for $35.  After doing so, we had good intentions as always and had always said we would follow up on this membership to actually make use of it sometime.  Doing water sports with Katy seemed like the ideal opportunity to finally do so, if we could find Viannah’s membership materials and if they were still valid, and if California Aquatics was still in business.

 

After about three weeks of telephone tag, we determined that they were in fact still in business, obtained a new membership card for Viannah and got directions to the site.  A couple of weeks later, we found the old card.  Now there were two.  On the morning of July 15, we loaded up the whole family and set out for Long Beach.

 

The fifty-mile trip down the 710 Freeway was reminiscent of the drive down to the church’s beach party in August 1997 except at the end where we toured portions of the Long Beach waterfront on streets that were blocked for the busy summer season or marked “one way” in directions we didn’t need to go.  The place was hard to find, just a rental shack on an inside beach with no clear markings from the street.  Then we had to find a place to park.

 

By the time we got there it was after 11 and we learned, after doing our turn standing in line, that the special student training program we were trying to attend was from 9 to 1 and that we had missed the introductory parts.  Further, guests were limited to one other person, not the rest of their family of five, as was our case.  They knew which telephone operator had probably led us astray like this but were happy to get us out on the water anyway, given that we were all here ready to go.  We arranged a deal where we would rent two tandem kayaks at half price.  I put up $20 and we picked up our life jackets.  Viannah and Katy got one kayak, John and I got one, and Viann stayed on the beach with a lawn chair to watch our stuff and read her book.

 

They told us that if we went up the canal far enough we might see jellyfish near the top of the water.  They also said there was a shopping center that could be reached by boat somewhere up there too.  I left everything behind but my wallet, which I put in my pocket in a zip lock bag.  Kayaking can be quite similar to swimming under some conditions.  Quite similar.

 

We started out to the north, the girls staying 50 to 100 yards away from us.  Although they had given us large, stable boats, fearing for our safety, paddling was easy anyway; it was down wind.  We raced to a bridge and paddled under.  Currents were light and in-land, also our direction.  We passed boats docked along the side and were passed by boats out in the harbor area.  Still seeing no jellyfish, we kept going and went under another bridge.  The waterway opened into a large area.  To our left was a buoy.  We paddled up and read.  It was the rules for a skiing and speed boating area a few hundred yards wide and maybe half a mile long.  Watercraft of all types and sizes came and went around us.

 

We had been told about the open area, the jellyfish were supposed to be beyond it.  We kept going and passed under a third bridge.  Now the shores were more industrial on one side, more residential on the other.  One side seemed to be a dike.  No one saw any jellyfish.  It was the wrong time of day and no one would stay quiet and still in their boat long enough for them to come up.  Just as well, jellyfish were featured like mascots on light-post signs all over town.

 

We drifted around and rested, then it was time to turn back.  This faced us into the wind and up current toward the third bridge.  This was going to be work.  No one could stop rowing for long without halting and washing backwards.  A large party boat with the call letters of some local radio station was cruising up and down with a party, apparently consisting of tipsy radio listeners, aboard.  We stayed clear.  The pilot handled the large craft skillfully in the relatively small channel.  Our crossing of the wide area was out in the open and more challenging.  John, still not an efficient paddler, was sometimes helpful, sometimes unhelpful, and sometimes harmful.  I got irritated and splashed him with my oar.  This escalated briefly before I put a stop to it.  The girls were still racing, but only when they bothered to glance over at us and it looked like we might be gaining.  Long stretches of paddling could be tedious, particularly since neither of us knew anything of proper form.

 

We studied the lights and markers under the second bridge and weaved in and out among the supports.  There was no swell and the tide was not high.  Under the bridge we were protected from the wind, but we were still going up the light current.

 

Just beyond this there was a channel to the left leading up to some docks and two or three story buildings.  It didn’t look like a mall, but I didn’t know what a mall looked like from the water side.  John and I paddled in and Katy and Viannah followed at a distance.  To our right we saw what appeared to be condos or apartment buildings with inlets and docks for boats.  About a block from the end there was a footbridge over to the left side.  On the left we saw the back of a large complex of concrete buildings.  There were steps down to water side docking areas.  Near the end there were a few people near a boat tied up.  We pulled up alongside the dock, pulled our boats out of the water and looked around.

 

At the end, we could see that the condos were a gated community, gated, that is, from the street side.

 

We had no indication where to go.  Viannah asked one of the bystanders for directions to Starbuck’s.  She answered that it was nearby.  We started up the steps.  There were no signs or storefronts anywhere.  First we came to a fancy sit-down restaurant.  This was not Starbucks.  We went around to the auto parking side and found an eight-screen movie theater.  That was better.  The sidewalks were hot on our bare feet.  We hopped between shady places, John squealing as he went.  Something like a block’s worth further, we found a Jamba Juice place.  I went in and got lunch, some kind of a shake.  The girls got cookies; they wanted to go to Starbucks next door.

 

Starbucks shared a corridor with a bookstore.  There we were in line with bare feet and bathing suites, me with my wallet in a zip lock, behind more ‘normal’ Starbucks clients (if there was such a thing), professional looking types dressed more "appropriately."  We fussed with our order; I paid and we sat down for a while to watch the world go by.

 

Soon we returned through the mall to the dock.  Our boats were intact and untouched.  Worst case. I thought we could have walked back if they had been missing, though that wouldn’t be easy or much fun.  Probably worse would be paying for one or both of the boats.  Although we were liable and took the risk, it didn’t seem all that risky in the middle of the day at a middle class mall.

 

We re-floated and climbed back in.  Back out of the inlet, I tried to hug the east bank, up against many docked boats, to stay out of some of the mild breeze.  One was for sale.  We speculated about the possibilities.  A condo (or maybe it was a time-share) was for sale too.  The sign was out on our side.  The girls raced ahead out in the middle of the channel, not lacking for power.  In the heat at the end, they beached back at California Aquatics five or more minutes ahead of us.  We plodded ahead as sailboats to our left gained on us on the way out of the harbor.

 

Viann was set up down the beach from the rental booth.  She had a chair, blanket, and the picnic lunch.  We rested, did more sunscreen, and ate crackers, cheese and peanut butter.  Later we played in the water.  John chased the birds.  The street just behind us was closed to non-resident traffic.  Bicycles and families with strollers moved lazily back and forth.

 

After a while we decided to pick up and return to the car.  Along the street (one reason it was hard to find to start with) was a roller-hockey rink with a full-up intramural game under way.  We changed partly into less sandy clothes and put on shoes.

 

Back in the car, we drove around to the mall we had just visited and got out to show Viann where we had been.  Katy wanted to go in the candy store; we all went in and got a few trifles.  Viannah wanted to go to a movie, Titan AE (which John had already seen with a friend), but no matter how hard we studied the eight marquees, it just wasn’t there.  Nothing else was showing that I wanted to pay for everybody to go to and sit through.  We got in the van and headed back north instead.

 

This hadn’t been quite what we had expected from California Aquatics, but they made it as good as they could have.  It would have been nice if Viann could have come along with us in a boat but she was happy to stay with the stuff and read for the hour and a half or so that we were gone.  I thought of taking the radio but didn’t want more stuff to deal with out on the water.  It was just as well.  The day was calm and relaxed, excepting the upwind return.

 

In that spirit we left Long Beach to the west rather than the north, crossing the suspension bridge over the harbor and into San Pedro, looking at the big ships docked and moving about the berthing areas.  Then I drove us up the San Diego Freeway to LAX where we went to the south side radar site, parked and watched jets take off and land for a while.  One big cargo plane landed, turned onto the taxiway right next to us, then turned back to their loading facility.  The pilots waved at John and I sitting on top of our van.  Viannah laid inside listening to her CD player.  I kept fumbling with the radio looking for juicy air traffic control frequencies.

 

There was still time left.  I thought I would try to find the Cliff House for dinner.  Cliff House was a restaurant on a hillside in Playa del Rey where I had gone for the last dinner before returning to Houston when I had flown out to interview at JPL in January 1987.  We drove around the west end of the airport, watching more big planes depart out over the water.  Some turned back to head for U. S. destinations.  Some kept going west, overseas!  Though I had a typically structured plan to go to the Cliff House every year in January as a commemorative, I had only been three or four times since 1987.  One time recently I had brought Katy, it might have been after her John’s Hopkins advanced aptitude test at Hamilton High School, I didn’t quite remember.  Viannah and Katy had both been picked out as a result of 6^th grade standardized testing to go take 9^th grade level tests on this program and had done well on them but not well enough to go to anything further, not anything further that didn’t cost anyway.  I had gone with them and we had gone out to eat afterwards and to talk about test taking and the future of how to get into and out of college and so forth.  I didn’t really believe in the ultra-competitive testing scene that this was an entrance to, but I did understand that to get along in this culture, one had to be able to perform well on standardized tests.

 

So we ate at the Cliff House, not a great restaurant and not a bargain either, but just a fairly rare place of ongoing memories.

 

As we left the Cliff House, it was finally starting to get late.  I wanted to show Viann the big whale painted on industrial site walls somewhere north of here and we drove off that direction rather than making a beeline for the freeway.  The joke was to drive by one such building and point saying, “whales!” reminiscent of when she was a little girl and would point to the “wells” along the sides of the road going into Tomball, calling them “whales.”

 

We wandered around trying to find the whales for an hour, getting into sticky traffic and other annoying driving circumstances.  Finally, even I tired of this pursuit (which only I knew about) and gave up.  We did make a beeline for the freeway and in about fifteen minutes were driving up the 405 in the general direction of La Canada.  One last stop, we pulled off at the parking area for the new Getty Museum location to see if it could be used on Saturday, since it was shared with a Jewish Temple.  There were people parked there at Temple, but it wasn’t clear whether we could park there for the museum at a time like that.

 

In lieu of Titan AE, we stopped into West Coast Video and rented Father of the Bride, which I found quite difficult to watch that evening.

 

Test Campout – Not

 

The test campout ended up being penciled in for July 22, but there was no easy way to attempt it.  Viann worked both days that weekend and we ended up with a family date at the Owens’s that Friday evening.  This meant that there wasn’t an overnight left anywhere on the calendar unless we did it in our own back yard and did the test hiking on nearby streets.  This backup plan was thus promoted to “real plan” status.

 

Maiden Voyage

 

“Add to that a positive attitude and a desire to experience nature and we shall have a wonderful adventure,” highlighted instructions from “Outdoor And Aquatics Recreation Specialists” (OAARS) mailing.

 

The telephone tag with OAARS was finally productive.  I decided to use my experience and take the advice to go through Maiden Voyage training for a day rather than trying to do an island boating trip without it.  I also finally learned that we had to pay in advance to be listed on the calendar and sent a check at the end of June.  By the last week in July, the preparatory material and directions finally arrived.  Looking over the clothing list, it appeared that we needed more “paddling wear.”  It was also time for me to go shopping for that seasickness medicine that Ralph Wallio had recommended.  What was it again?  I took out the calendar on which I’d written it down a couple of years ago:  Merazine.

 

Thursday July 27 was my mother’s birthday.  We had mailed gifts and related items off earlier in the week.  That evening, Katy and I went to Marshall’s and got some water-resistant (non-cotton) clothing for paddling.  Next door, Sav-On had various motion sickness remedies, including Merazine.  I read the directions carefully to see if I thought they applied to this case.  Perhaps not tomorrow, but certainly next weekend when we had an 80 minute boat ride to the kayaking location.  We had “water socks” for the trip to Family Camp on Catalina that we could use for paddling shoes.  These rubber shoes fit tightly and were made of polyester and rubber.  They didn’t hold water, but protected feet from rough concrete and rocks.

 

Call time on Saturday the 29^th was 8:00 a.m.  We didn’t want to be late.  We all loaded into the van and left at about six.  We were at the Island Packers boat launch at Ventura harbor before 7:30.  People were arriving and boarding Island Packer’s boats for the day.  We were early; I hunted around on the radio for a local sounding repeater and found one.  I realized I didn’t have my wallet.  The prior night I had been packing up our stuff at midnight waiting for Viann to come home from work and hadn’t been able to find the Merazine I had bought.  After a heated discussion, I had gone back to the store the next morning at 5 a.m. to buy some more but by then had changed into my paddling clothes, leaving my wallet in the pants that stayed at the house.  Being without my wallet now, 70 miles from home was unsettling and, to my memory, unprecedented.

 

At a quarter to eight, we began to realize that this wasn’t where we were supposed to be.  No OAARS in sight no kayaks either, at least none that weren’t going to sea.  Across the harbor there was a public boat ramp.  We somehow determined that that was where we were supposed to be.  I started up the van and we drove around to the other side, coming to a dead end at U.S. Army property.  That wasn’t it.  Doubling back, past mobile homes and a fancy hotel, we re-read the directions.  Tricky, these roads around the harbor.  Finally, we found where we were supposed to be at 8:06.  And we had arrived half an hour early.

 

It was a gray morning with a breeze, not too chilly but not balmy either.  I got out and walked over to what appeared to be our class at a picnic table beside a trailer loaded with kayaks.  The instructor and proprietor was Warren Glaser, a talkative and friendly man, mid sized, middle age, and a little overweight with knee problems so that he used a cane when walking on shore.  He was applying sunscreen to the top of his head.  There were about five others, a man and his son Ben, a woman with the last name Fishman (potentially a grand-daughter of the local news anchor I thought, but probably not) and her boyfriend, both in their twenties, and an older lady.  Katy still hadn’t arrived from the car.  She was brushing her voluminous hair.

 

Warren started into the lesson.  We went around and introduced ourselves and told a little about how well we could swim and what we thought we might get from this course.  I wasn’t a strong swimmer, but thought I could make it across the harbor.  I’d been in trouble in the surf once.  I hoped to allay some of my fear of boats and water and possibly find a new recreational outlet.

 

We shouldn’t use common sense, he said.  Common sense comes from experience and we didn’t have any!  Katy finally showed up, Viann right behind her.  Viann asked when she should come back to pick us up.  Mid-afternoon.

 

Viann and the others were off to their own beach adventure of the day.  Katy and I and the group stood around the table and listened to Warren’s stories and instructions for an hour.  He was a retired P.E. teacher and had a lot to say.  We learned about Personal Floatation Devices (PFD’s) in all their various forms and ratings.  Some had whistles on them.  He showed us the contents of his expedition leader pack including a snakebite kit.  We discussed low impact camping and making do with what little you could take on a kayak.  The difference between sit-on-top and cockpit sea-going kayaks was mentioned.  All of the OAARS expeditions were sit-on-top styles.  So much for the sea-going kayak book.

 

It was important to be familiar with the sea, a great lady, and not to challenge her moods or try to make our place in it something it was not.  The sea was dying; we were doing terrible things to it.  This assertion led to various side stories about fish populations and pollution concentrations and so on.  Looking out at all the water, I couldn’t help but wonder if the whole sea was dying or was it just getting flayed around the edges where people, that is, industry dumped so much.  Whatever I thought, Warren thought the whole world was in trouble.  Perhaps he was right.

 

With experience we could learn the moods and signs of the sea.  Sometimes it was unwise to go out.

 

People were about to get noticeably tired of standing around listening.  Finally the time came to start getting in the boats.  This led to another round of warnings and training instructions.  Several types of boats were available and we should try out as many types as possible this morning by swapping around.  Many of the boats were unloaded and sitting on or near the boat ramp.  We went to the boat trailer and passed out oars (never to be referred to as paddles!) to everyone.  There were several different types of these too, from the simplest and crudest to lightweight fiberglass racing models.  We were shown how to handle our oars.

 

Assisting each other, we all launched off from the boat ramp.  This first time it would be water entry.  We waded out to calf deep and sat down on the boat, rotating up into rowing position.  Everyone showed their inexperience by flailing around with the oars.

 

Now we sat in the water near the boat ramp and listened to some more direction.  First we would learn to get in and out by various means.  We practiced going over to the ramp-side dock and getting out and in there.  Once this was done, we all paddled across the harbor, practicing our stroke, across to the Park Service dock adjacent to Island Packers.

 

Here the water was calm and there was no traffic.  We sat sideways in our boats and found the points of primary and secondary stability.  One person fell in.  We then stood up in our boats to see that it could be done.  Somebody else fell in.  After that, it was time for the rest of us to get into water over our heads and re-mount the boats as instructed so that we would know how to do this.  Everyone jumped or slid into the water while Warren watched to see what kind of swimmers we were and how we handled the slightly chilly sea.  I used the opportunity to push my boat’s secondary stability and see where its real limits were.

 

My all-non-cotton outfit did not hold water.  I dried as quickly as I would have without the clothes, and it was still a wind block.  Modern materials were nice.

 

Other kayakers passed by out in the harbor going in or out.  Some looked at us curiously.  We practiced maneuvering, turning 720 degrees (two circles) in each direction.  The particular boat I was in was one of the hardest types to turn; I was behind everybody else on this.  I liked that about the boat though, it meant it held a course and went forward with less resistance than some of the others.

 

Finally, we learned a stroke to push ourselves sideways away from a dock or edge.  This was inefficient and could be used only for specific dockside situations.

 

Warren rounded the group up and we went up the harbor, past the bait barge and along the rocky shoreline.  Despite mild swells, he paddled right up to the rocks, obviously knowing how close he could safely get.  The rest of us hung off a little and fought a little more wind.  This would happen several more times as we gained experience.  Katy didn’t stay very close to me; she went her own pace with whoever ended up there.  I tended to be towards the back, mainly due to the operational experimenting I was doing.

 

We rounded a little point and came up on a beach.  Warren had us all beach our boats while he sat off in the surf to give more direction.  There he sat out in the nine-inch breakers giving more lecture and instruction.  Due to the surf noise, we could only hear about half of the words but everybody stood there acting attentive and most got the gist of what was being said.

 

He said, “Now, if you beached your kayak for a while, what would you do?”  A couple of us pulled out boats another twenty feet above the waterline.  Yes, that was what we would want to do, so an incoming tide wouldn’t wash our boats out to sea.  “That’s enough,” he shouted.  I was being too enthusiastic and would have to drag the boat all the way back down to the water well before any change of tide today.

 

Breakers were usually 2/3 as high as the depth of the water at that point.  What did this mean about this beach?  What did this mean about where we could generally go?  There were other signs of the sea that we could learn to watch.  The condition of the top of the water could tell you about rocks or reefs or other environments that might be of interest in paddling about in a shallow draft boat like this.

 

What about kayaking in the surf?  You could do it, but you had to be prepared to get dumped every time until you learned how to handle it.  The main rule?  Once you decide on a course of action, go for it no matter what.

 

Rules like this were a good idea, but they all had exceptions.  Intelligence (when it was intelligence) was sometimes better than rules.

 

It was time to go back to the boat dock for lunch.  Those of us on shore drug our boats back in to waist depth and re-mounted.  This was old hat by now.

 

Back at the launch, we all traded boats and tried the different models while Warren sat lunch out.  One of them that looked like the top of a submarine would spin around with nearly no provocation.  I preferred the “Swing” or the “Freedom” which didn’t turn easily but which cut easily through the water.  My ambition was to go places, like bicycle touring, not to dance and play like BMX or mountain biking.

 

As the caterer and provisionary for the day, OAARS provided lunch.  Warren had gone to the store at five that morning to fill out his stock with fresh cold cuts, condiments, and sides.  Everything was carefully chosen to be non-cholesterol, non-preservatives.  Katy made up a plate and, leaving it in the grass to go back for something else, fed her entire first sandwich to the gulls.  Everybody else, warned by experience, carefully guarded their food from the birds.

 

Over lunch we heard stories of other expeditions put on by OAARS.  Sometimes they would hook the kayak trailer up to the truck and go to Baja Mexico for a few days playing around the rocks and caves down there.  They would go kayak camping, a rather sparse sport in which one might use one’s hat for shade, as a bowl, as a cup, as a fan, and as a pillow at night.  If I had been twenty years younger, I might have found this fascinating.  Twenty years ago I could not have afforded $400 (or the 1980 equivalent) for two people for two outings like this, however.

 

We ate our sandwiches, potato salad, fruits, and Grey Poupon without any more wildlife incidents then returned to the launch for more lecture.

 

Warren took a volunteer, the teenage boy Ben, to demonstrate wedging.  By sliding the oar quickly back and forth on or near the top of the water, one could develop real support that might make the difference between staying upright or not in rough waves.  Olympic rowing teams had drawn such techniques to a fine art.  There was also slapping.  Warren tipped Ben’s boat until it was nearly ready to fall over, then Ben was supposed to slap the water on the other side for support and to re-right himself.  He fell in three times trying to do this before succeeding.  One was supposed to keep erect and use one’s hips to rock the boat around rather than leaning in the waves.  This had been an illustration in the sea-going kayaking book.

 

We were eager to get back in the water and try this ourselves.  Having tried all the boats before lunch, each trainee settled on one for the rest of the afternoon.  I made a beeline for one of the Swings.  Because of his knee condition, Warren needed a Swing or Freedom.  He got a Freedom, but later in the afternoon had to trade with the person in the other Swing when it got too cramped.

 

We were going on a mini-expedition, out to the water break that protected the harbor.  This took about twenty minutes at a fairly conservative pace.  Seas were fairly calm in the harbor, but there was traffic.  In the break’s lee, behind “Bird Rock” all the water borne trash from the area collected.  We went out and parked in kelp.  Kelp was great to kayak in as long as you were careful not to get your oar tangled.  It was awful to swim in according to Warren, though, if you went diving and floated still, you could hear it creak and pop as it grew, it would grow so fast.

 

The group moved around loosely in a 100-yard square area in the kelp beds behind the breakwater.  The Harbor Patrol was stopping a jet ski up the shoreline from us.  Nobody was supposed to be going that fast in this area.  Warren’s son was one of the security guards out here, but I had the impression that he worked on land units.  He had visited us at lunch and there had been some stories about his past kayaking expeditions out to and around the islands.

 

We learned a lot of maneuvering and not a little traffic courtesy trying to pick up or get in range to pick up items of trash.  It was hopeless; the growing piles on each kayak would make no noticeable difference to the trashy inlet.

 

Warren motioned for us to all come off some.  It was time for a decision.  Since the only leader with us was Warren, we all had to go the same way; he was willing to go either.  We could either go back the way we came in the calm or we could go around the seaward side of the breakwater and get into some waves, which, for us, would be pretty challenging.  In his usual serious-warning style, he said that if we went around the hard way two or three of us would get knocked over and be forced to remount in the waves.

 

The vote was taken.  I didn’t feel up to it but voted to go around the hard way anyway on the principle that we had paid to be trained and should have this opportunity too.  The vote was about half and half.  Warren didn’t feel up to it either and he had all the responsibility for everybody.  We started back the way we came.  What would we have done with all the trash on our kayaks anyway?

 

Warren hugged the rocks on the way back.  I tried following as much as I could.  I also tried keeping Katy in sight.  She had her own approach to things.  Sometimes she was up with the leaders; sometimes she was so far out that she had to be called back in.

 

There was one more lesson when we got back to the boat ramp:  rescues.  First we emptied our collected trash into a public trashcan then went back to the boats to learn how to rescue each other.  Katy and I paired up.  The idea was that boats take on some water and, after you got flipped anyway, might want to empty some of the water out while still at sea before getting back in.  Also, the rescuer would help recover the boat and oar if they were lost.  Losing the boat or oar would be pretty easy in rough conditions and either one would blow away faster than a good swimmer could swim.  You could end up needing a rescue.

 

The rescuer would come in from downwind so that the boat being recovered would be blocked from blowing away further.  In order to get things going, I jumped in first and started treading water.  Katy came in from upwind; the boat blew away.  Luckily for us, the dock was there and the wind wasn’t very high.  Instructions were shouted out from the shore.  I was swimming for the boat and barely gaining on it.  Katy was not in a position to help quickly.  I stopped the boat and held it for her to get into position.  She was then supposed to lift the bow up over the middle of her boat upside down while I went to the stern and pushed it into the water to help the other end up.  Then we were supposed to work the mid section of my boat over the mid section of the rescuing boat and let it drain for a while.  Then, the rescuer was supposed to flip the rescued boat over and hold things while the other kayaker climbed back on and got back underway.

 

Our first attempt had been a disaster.  It was Katy’s turn.  Mistakes were made on that rescue too.  We were going to keep going until both of us got it right.  This meant two more tries for me and one more try for Katy, five rescues total between us.  The water was cold and I was not in good shape.  I was getting tired.  We brought the kayaks in and pulled them up on the boat ramp.  I was the last one out.

 

It was time for the final hour of lecture.  We discussed safety, body core temperature, how long a person could survive in 50-degree water.  There was a story of a tidal wave, I thought associated with an earthquake in the channel; that came into the harbor 23 feet high.  One of the cutters rode the big wave into the harbor carrying a terrified captain and crew.  Sometimes when there were tsunami warnings, people would come take their boats out of the harbor to avoid having them damaged against their moorings.

 

It might not be obvious that a big wave was coming, but if you looked out of the harbor between the breakwaters and didn’t see the buoy out there, it was because there was a wave in between.  You might have a few minutes to do something.

 

This got Warren to thinking about the recent movie release The Perfect Storm.  I had wanted to see it in the theater but hadn’t been able to make the time or find anybody else who wanted to go.  Now, I was planning to rent it and watch on our 19-inch TV.  Warren had really liked the movie; it was apparently quite accurate.  “They never should have gone out in those conditions….” He went on and on about the seafaring mistakes that had been made.  The Perfect Storm was based on a true story.

 

In the same sense that the recruiters at my job interview at Raytheon last year had moaned when an actual employee stood up and told the prospects about all the overtime and late nights and weekends around deadlines, this line of talk didn’t seem too conducive to recruiting for us seagoing novices.  Still, people loved the sea and it was important for them to be realistic and pragmatic.

 

There were handouts including a 50-page book of article copies and lists and several loose flyers.  We each got a certificate for $50 off on the purchase of a kayak at certain local stores within the next two or three weeks.  If I’d lived near any water, I might have been tempted.

 

The day was winding down; it was time to load the oars and boats back on the trailer.  Everybody pitched in and helped, as it had said we should on the directions.  “This is not a ‘catered’ activity in that sense,” the material had warned.  With all the class members helping and a ladder, it was quick work.  The Fishman couple was planning to be with us next week for the East Santa Cruz exploration, “Waves and Caves” and the weekend after that when a group kayaked out into the ocean to watch fireworks back in town at night.  This was discussed and arrangements were made.

 

Viann was nowhere to be seen.  I didn’t know what time it was.  I didn’t have a radio with me.  I had turned it down when Viannah offered it before they drove away first thing in the morning.  Sure, the new radios were water resistant, but I had no idea what we were up against here and I didn’t think it would float.  For once, it just wasn’t worth fooling with but now, as a result, we might have to wait here an hour or even two since the class had finished early.

 

I sat down on the grass and started reviewing all the hand out material.  Much of it was elaboration on what we had learned today.  Much of it would scare off a novice with discussions of danger and things that could go wrong.  I reminded myself that the people who did this all the time would be bored with routine information and, like aviators, would be very interested in the exceptional and injurious or fatal circumstances that occurred at times.

 

Warren wanted to take a load back to the house and asked if I would watch what was left, not that we would have to stay here if we wanted to leave before he got back, but just to keep an eye on things while we were here.  “Oh, we got out early, your ride is not here yet.”

 

“Yes.”

 

He drove off, leaving the trailer and kayaks behind.  I kept reading.  Katy lay down on the grass and started to nap.  I was tired, but not able to doze off for some reason.  I was about a third of the way through the book when Viann drove up.  Even if I had had my driver’s license and wallet with me, I would not have felt like driving.  It had been a long day treading cold water, or paddling around.  Kayaking was a lot like bicycling but it exercised different muscles, everything from the waste up rather than the legs.  Later I would come to think it ideal to have a bicycle and a kayak.  For workout I’d ride the bike down to the water, get in the kayak, paddle around for a while, then back to the bike and home.

 

Right now, sitting in the front seat of the van, it would have been nice to be able to sleep, but I still couldn’t.  I talked about how fun kayaking could be and what had happened that day and how I wish everybody could have come along.

 

We decided to go to Wendy’s on the edge of Simi Valley, about half way home.  Without my wallet, I had only my emergency money in my backpack, $20 if it was all there.  Viann had a little too.  The five of us managed to eat for less than $26.  Another family in the place had two little girls, maybe three and five.  For us, that had been only ten years ago.

 

I had started the day with a Slim-Fast Cappuccino.  The actual coffee and caffeine in it had helped me get started early in the morning but for all this physical work it had not been enough.  I decided to call off my current weight loss regime from now through the end of the trip.  I would need energy for all the outings of the coming weeks.  My lowest measured weight had been 194, but I was really somewhere around 198.

 

Waves and Caves

 

One week later it was Saturday August 5.  We were up even earlier.  The boat was to leave at 7 a.m. and today it was just Katy and I.  We were on the road by 5:45.  We listened to news radio on the way out.  The price of oil was rising.  There were lots of people on the road early on a Saturday morning, many of them going to work.

 

The “wrong place” we had gone last week was the right place today.  We pulled up and parked at 6:58.  The OAARS trailer with kayaks was in place.  Some kayaks were on the ground; some were on nearby permanent racks.

 

Warren came up the ramp murmuring something about “Captain Grouch.”  He was making arrangements to load our gear and us.  The Fishman couple was there already, in their appropriate gear, as were several other people who looked like they would be part of our party.  Our vessel would be the Vanguard and they weren’t quite ready for us.

 

We chose kayaks and oars and helped unload others in preparation for the voyage.  We had our daypack and another bag with our dry clothes in it.  Our boat fare was taken care of by the fee to OAARS.

 

There were many people preparing for today’s trip, including another kayaking outfitter.  All of theirs were the same type of kayak, those big, stable, hard to move models that were so popular.  We had choice with OAARS.

 

Warren gathered us up for preliminary instructions.  Only one person of our party hadn’t yet arrived.  We walked over to the Channel Islands Park building with the big scale model of the islands in the breezeway.  Unfortunately, the breezeway was locked for the night; the building wasn’t open yet for this morning; we could only look through the bars.

 

Warren had two people coming with us as assistant guides.  If all went well, they would just accompany us for free, but also without pay.  If people got in trouble, they would be there for us.  They were experienced locals.

 

The weather today was very nice, but there was an increasing wind forecast for the island that was of concern to Warren. 

 

Rain or inclement weather does not cancel an event, unsafe sea conditions will…

 

Activities and itinerary are totally dependent on sea conditions.  If we are forced to cancel the trip or curtail our activities due to sea/weather conditions you will bee [sic] issued a refund in case of total cancellation or an OAARS certificate valid for another activity of equal value.

 

Warren talked more conservatively than we had experienced.  We would just have to see what developed.

 

We were given slips of paper, “Boarding Passes” for Vanguard and instructed not to get on until our kayaks were loaded and we were ready to stay on, as that led to confusion.  We started bringing our kayaks down the ramp to Vanguard where we would lift them up to deck hands and they would stow them below.  This went on for a while interleaved with the other outfitters loading their boats.  Some of them were lashed by their bowlines to a structure up on deck near the stern.

 

About a quarter to eight it was time to board and get underway.  I took my Merazine and we got our two bags and climbed the stairs, finding a place mid-deck on the starboard side to sit.  The trip out was supposed to be about 80 minutes.  There was a snack bar up in the cabin where just about everything was one dollar.  I had a one-use outdoor camera and the GPS receiver in my gear.

 

The Vanguard pulled out of its slip and headed out of the harbor.  It was a gray morning with broken skies and patches of fog.  When the sun shone through it was stark and breezy.  It wasn’t long before we couldn’t see land in any direction.  Our course headed us into the largest swell I had ever been in.  It seemed to be coming at us from ahead and a little to our starboard side.  An occasional wave was as high as our boat and the skipper would throttle back and turn so as to minimize its impact.  The deck hands, all feeling fine, would sometimes dance around as if they were on big boards surfing.

 

I was feeling fine too and knew that I would have been quite sick by now normally.  A lady next to me was using the “ginger snap and fresh air remedy.”  The fresh air didn’t hurt me either; I did feel a little queasy at times but not violently or uncontrollably so, even when another passenger got sick and retched in the trashcan, I was watching right beside it and it didn’t bother me at all.  This was great!  The retching passenger spent the rest of the trip sitting on our side, comforted by his not-so-affected companion.  A round of applause broke out on the port stern.  A girl who had sworn she wouldn’t had thrown up over the back.

 

We continued in and out of the fog, sometimes seeing the mainland or some of an island, sometimes seeing nothing but the surrounding sea.  Occasionally we would pass a lobster pot.  What would it be like, I wondered, to be on a ship like this for weeks or months, or even a day… without even the lobster pots for reference?  And, these seas were quite mild compared to what could be encountered on the open ocean, or even here on a different day.

 

What would it be like to tend lobster pots for a living or hobby?

 

Katy had gone up to the bow where the pitching motion and the spray were more … exhilarating.  At her urging, I joined her for a few minutes, but then decided not to risk getting either wetter or sicker just for this.

 

A large number of the fellow passengers, maybe 25-30, were going to be camping on the island this weekend.  It was a catered affair where all the food, water, camping equipment, and even a guitar, were being provided by an outfitter, or perhaps by some subset of the group who was running the operation.  We continued in and out of the fog.  I stared off into the distance at the different wave patterns on the water and tried to explain 14 GHz radar to Katy.  Those radar waves were about 2 centimeters in size and would reflect best off of ocean waves of about the same size.  Those ocean features, in turn, indicated certain wind speeds.  Doing this from a satellite in space (was it QuickScat that my friends at JPL had done?), one could learn much about the weather in a global, systematic way.  Katy listened.

 

Half way to the island we heard a loud thump in the back.  A couple of people, including Warren, were motioning to the hands that something had happened.  One of the kayaks lashed to the structure at the stern had fallen off.  The skipper came on the intercom while he cut the power and started circling back mumbling something about having found “a new way to stow kayaks, there.”  It was one of the other group’s kayaks (we could tell because, in addition to all being the same style, they were all yellow).  We came alongside and the hands fished it out of the water.  We then got back underway while the hands spent fifteen minutes re-securing that and the other small boats.

 

Somewhere out here was the site of the Alaska Air crash from last January.  The Vanguard had undoubtedly been involved in the salvage operation.  A jack bolt in the rudder control had failed somehow while the plane was trying to make it back to LAX for an emergency landing.  They dove straight into 600 feet of water.  No mention of this tragedy was made.

 

At ten past ten Vanguard arrived at the pier at East Santa Cruz and, in what was apparently Island Packer’s standard form, backed up to the pier while we unloaded.  Lone day hikers went first followed by the two kayak outfitters followed by the campers.  Someone brought a cart with big bicycle wheels up the pier and large loads of camping stuff were carried off towards what appeared to be a house off in the adjacent cove.  The cove also had a beachfront and there were other small boats on the beach and larger boats moored in the nearby anchorage.  People from a prior load were milling about along the shore.

 

All the passengers of the Vanguard were required to attend the Ranger Talk at the kiosk just off the pier.  While loads of gear went past, Katy and I changed into our kayaking outfits, putting our other stuff back in the bag.  I wasn’t sure what to do with our luggage.  Would we carry it around on the kayaks?

 

Most of the Ranger Talk had to do with being on the island and hiking.  The house up in the cove was the Ranger Station and beyond that was the campground.  Loads of water (some of them made up in advance as lemonade) and camping gear kept passing in people’s hands or on their backs or on the cart as the talk continued.  There was a road up the ridge behind us, it was the only way out of the cove by land and led to other scenic places on the island.  Most of the island was not Park Service property but was owned by the Nature Conservancy.  Day hikers would not be able to reach the boundaries, but if anyone was going far they should check with the rangers.  We should also be aware that although they were equipped and trained to handle injuries and other emergencies, injuries should be avoided.  An airlift back to the mainland was time consuming and expensive.  This reminded me of the Grand Canyon, which was probably even worse in that respect.

 

And we were warned about the rats with the Hunta Virus.

 

I finished changing about the time the talk was over.  Katy was down at the waterfront looking at rocks.  Not much of the talk seemed to apply to us since we were in Warren’s charge out on the water for most of the day.  We piled our luggage on top of a kayak and carried it over the rocks down to the beachfront another hundred yards further from which we would be launching.  Warren warned us that we wouldn’t be coming back here.  The luggage configuration we ended up with was that I had the daypack lashed down behind me on my kayak and Katy sent the bag with all our clothes back to the boat with some hands who were returning.  The Vanguard then moved off to a mooring about 200 yards off.

 

This piece of shoreline ran west-northwest to east-southeast.  We would only be going about three miles in the kayaks, but would be exploring many interesting places along this section.  A bag of helmets was tossed out on the beach.  Everybody going into caves had to be wearing a helmet.  We all picked helmets that would fit on our heads.  Mine was an ugly purple one, “#8.”  Katy got a purple “Bell” helmet marked “LJ.”  Bell made bicycle helmets.  These were surplus rock climbing ones.

 

Katy was in the blue “Dawn Treader,” I was in the white “Swing,” one of my favorites from the prior week.  I wore my helmet all day; Katy wore hers only in caves.  “The girl with all the hair,” we were starting to call her.

 

We all launched our kayaks and gathered in a lee near the pier.  It was time for those who hadn’t had training last week to jump in the water and remount so Warren could see how they did and what he could expect from them.  “Basic Training.”  Most of them did fine.

 

I was happy not to be upsetting or jumping out of my boat today, I didn’t feel the need to demonstrate I could stand up on it or any of the other learning exercises we had done last week.  Katy, on the other hand, had not been happy with our rescue attempts, even though we had made five tries at it.  She insisted on doing another.  I agreed, only if I could be the rescuer.  We went through the procedure without hitch.  The water here was a little colder than up in Oxnard Harbor, according to the rescued.

 

We would head northwest first towards a feature known informally as “Marge Simpson Rock.”  Nobody was supposed to tell so we would find out who would see it last.  We paddled in close with the rocks on our left.  The swell was moderate here in the protection of the island, but there still was some.  There would be concern about the wakes from container ships.

 

The little line of kayaks wound along, Warren in front and his two assistants bringing up the rear.  Katy was near Warren, I was toward the back where I could watch and photograph more easily.  The other outfitter was back at the pier stringing their kayaks off the boat.  They were doing more for their customers; I supposed they had less training.

 

Marge Simpson came into view, but I didn’t see it.  Most everybody else did.  I finally had to sidle up to Katy unassumingly and ask.  Ah, it was a void in the rocks, not a rock pattern itself.  I tried getting a picture but the one-size-fits-all aspect ratio of the camera didn’t do much for a feature like that.  Marge oversaw an opening in the rocks, we continued through a cave.  We could have gone around.                                   

 

This put us in a new cove, formed by vertical cliffs into the water with caves cut out at the waterline.  One was called “Condominiums.”   Warren wouldn’t go into it himself.  The last time he had done that, he had wiped out in a swell and he and his equipment had come out all three openings.  He described what we would find inside and how to proceed and said that any of us were welcome to try it.  Katy was about second in line, “Come on dad!”  Everybody looked at me.  How could I turn that down, that’s what we were here for.  I paddled forward, next to last in line.

 

Katy went in and emerged through another opening in about a minute.  The line moved forward.  My turn came.  I followed the kayak in front of me into a room that seemed small for a cave but was large enough to contain a small house.  To the left was a narrow passage between the inside wall and a rock.  This was the way into another small chamber, then back out.  I followed through, not too closely.  There was no swell.  There was no trouble.  Katy went through again.

 

This was the westward extent of our journey; we turned to go back the way we had come.  We went up in a shallow cave with a few easy rock obstacles and studied the painted ceiling.

 

Passing Marge Simpson, we crossed the anchorage on the outside of the boats, making a nice cruise-like stroke downwind and far from shore for about twenty minutes.  A cargo ship passed a few miles to the north on the way down to Long Beach.

 

It was a new perspective for me, sitting out in the water, able to move about on it.  I was accustomed to being on land looking at those rocks and formations out in the water and thinking them totally inaccessible, but the kayaks were small, maneuverable and seemed nearly indestructible and they allowed us to move about on the surface of the water in bicycle-like fashion.  Yes, I thought, falling off the kayak and having to swim would be a lot like having a malfunction on the bicycle and having to walk.  “A lot like,” yes, but requiring more physical stamina, depending on how far or how long you had to swim.  It was like being out in a field and we could move about, with a little intelligence about how to play conditions, pretty much at will.

 

At least it seemed that way in today’s mild sea conditions.

 

We were headed across Scorpion Anchorage for a rock at the east-southeast end.  It was as close to being at sea as we would get in kayaks.  The wind was a little higher than the guides liked, but this wasn’t bad.  Could we paddle like this for three or four hours?  ‘Maybe with training and preparation,’ I thought.  We would be pretty wasted by the end.  I would be pretty wasted today, just as it was.

 

As we approached the rock formation, it became clear that we were facing into a vast cave in one of the rocks and that the cave was where we were headed.  Warren sat there near the open maw and faced back at us with that stern, “this is probably dangerous” look on his face.  We gathered around.  This cave went through to an exit near the back of the rock.  We would all go over and look at the exit first to see if the tide was low enough to make it through then Warren would go back around and try to get through.  If he made it, some of the rest of us could try if we cared to.

 

Near the exit, we idled above an underwater rock field, more of the prominences surrounding us.  The swell was accentuated in here; we bobbed three or four feet up and down above the well-illuminated rocks below.  I would never look at a dry-land outcropping the same way again.  Beyond to the southeast, a couple more boats were anchored.  This was a popular destination.  There were no signs of life on or around those boats.

 

Having warned us severely enough he thought, Warren paddled back towards the cave opening with resolve while the two assistants stayed back with us.  At that moment, the wake from the container ship arrived in the form of 6-8 foot swells.  Now we were really rocking!  No one was in danger but the two assistants seemed concerned that if Warren started through the cave with that behind him he’d get in trouble and rule the rest of us out for going through.

 

Concern or not, it was too late, the third big wave came by and Warren was just rounding the rock as if to go in.  What a hoot!  I didn’t know if my medicine was helping for the small boat or not, but I could get used to this being out in the waves.  So long as I didn’t feel like I would wipe out on one of those sharp rocks below, I wasn’t even worried.  Every once while I would make a slight correction to keep from drifting away, station-keeping the channel, as it were.  Katy was doing the same sort of thing in another spot nearer to the exit, as were most of the others.  While waiting we spotted a lone Garibaldi, an orange form making his way in and out of the rocks below.

 

The swells calmed back down to the “background noise” levels of the sea as it had been today so far and Warren came on through.  It was tight in there but we could make it.  He and the assistants talked about the swell and what it had been like.  All the clients headed up towards the cave entrance.

 

The opening was large enough to bring a boat as large as Vanguard into.  One could put a small office building in here, I thought, although it was hard to judge scale in this new environment.  As the line of small boats entered, it got narrower and lower, however, and soon it was quite dark.  There were underwater openings ten or twenty feet below and sunlight streamed up in green, yellow-green, and indigo tints from the rocks below.  This made a beautiful effect in the dark cavern above, the sort of thing that Disney would strive for in one of their more scenic amusement park rides.

 

The passageway got more and more narrow, it was necessary to reach out and push off the walls as the churning sea jostled me around.  There didn’t seem to be any danger of hitting the ceiling, even though it was getting closer, unless one of those wake waves came in.  I inched forward.  The passage became so narrow that I had to bring the oar in lengthwise and just push along.

 

The passage ahead was brighter then turned to the right a bit, and opened back out into the sunlight.  The rest of the group was waiting out in the passage where we had waited before.  The two assistants came through after me.

 

We gathered in the little channel and then moved back towards an outcropping on the island itself.  Here was a cave called “Flatliner.”  The stories were that people would go in and get very scared.  It was no more than a crack in the rock, barely wider than a kayak at the entrance.  Supposedly it went back over 200 feet, but on the inside it got so dark that you couldn’t see, and when you felt the walls they were covered with crabs.  Inside, it opened up to where you couldn’t touch either side, but it was still too narrow to turn a boat around, so you’d have to back out.

 

If a swell came along, you’d just have to duck.

 

Katy wanted to go in first.  I wanted to wait and see how somebody else did.  She wanted to go in first with me right behind her.  Warren sat at the outside, flippers and other equipment ready for a rescue if somebody inside got into trouble.  Katy started in; I followed her closely.  After only a few dozen feet it got too dark to see.  Katy didn’t want to keep going, I urged her on.  She went a little further then stopped.  She wanted me to go in first and she would follow me as far as I went.  To do this we would have to back out and start over.  We backed out but that became the end of our turn.  Other participants in groups of two or three went in.  The Fishmans had a flashlight, that would have helped, I thought.  When the last group came out it was time to move on, we didn’t get another chance.

 

We started back towards the pier, visiting caves and other sites as we went.  One cave contained a barge wreck.  Warren said that it was in a different position on the bottom every time he visited.  No one could explain it, but that was what was observed.

 

Before going to that wreck, we stopped to stretch our legs in a little cove only ten or fifteen yards wide with a tiny beach.  As we came around I noticed a head in the water behind us.  It was a seal!  “Katy look!”  He was gone.  But we kept surreptitiously looking and eventually Katy and some of the others saw him.  The little inlet by our little cove was twenty to thirty feet deep.  As we floated around we saw him swimming around on the bottom, then he was gone.

 

Sometimes sea lions and seals would come right up to you.  Warren said that one had jumped into a boat with him once.  That scared them both and they had both jumped right out!

 

We pulled our boats up on the beach and looked around.  We took some pictures of each other.  Somebody took a picture of both of us.  One couple started up the draw.  Wandering around, I came on one of them half dressed and immediately backed off.  She must have been trying to use the restroom from a wet suite.  She and her companion took the branch further up onto the hill.  They were gone for a long time.

 

The sea lion popped his head up again.  More people saw him.  He didn’t seem concerned, just curious.  Katy started making structures in the sand.  The assistant guides stayed out in the boats.  After ten or fifteen minutes, it was time to move on, Warren called for everybody.  As we refloated, we took turns going in and looking at the wrecked barge.  Katy spotted an anemone in the clear water below.  She knew what an anemone was from our first CD-ROM, Undersea Adventure, a gift at John’s 4-1/2th birthday party.

 

Next up the coast was a high cave with birds nesting in it and a narrow, tricky exit.  You’d go in heading west then go through a large room with the nest and the birds flying around, turn right and continue through a narrowing passage, coming back out to the north.  Katy went around three times, I went through twice, trying to take pictures inside, another futile exercise.

 

Warren had said he wasn’t that good at identifying the birds.  Still, I asked him what these were.  He gave a quick answer but I forgot immediately what it was.

 

Now it was time to return to the pier area and the boat.  We hadn’t had lunch and it was getting on towards 2 p.m.  Much of the water line from here back to there was exposed and in the wind.  Warren led the way, hugging the rock cliffs closer than I dared.  It was like bicycling against the wind.  You could stop and rest briefly but quickly you’d stop and start losing ground.  As we plowed forward, I studied the techniques of getting in close and started inching up myself.  We reached the beach area and I found myself parallel to the light surf.  Light or not, a few foot-sized breakers nearly turned me over so I edged back out into more open water.

 

Warren was forging ahead with a vengeance now.  He had warned us he would lead us on a minimum energy path back to the boat that wouldn’t look sensible.  He went under the pier and kept going another two hundred yards, well beyond the mooring points.  Most of the group followed, very loosely.  Some were still quite a distance behind me.  Katy was keeping up with Warren.  He turned sharply to the right and went to sea in the direction of the Vanguard, roughly repeating the downwind open paddle we had done here before.  It was a good half-mile back, but downwind from here, now that we were paddling out in the open.

 

Starting with Warren, our little string of kayaks started arriving at the home vessel.  He went on first; the hands came out and started pulling up his kayak.  He was going to set out our lunch.  A couple of our companions came on next.  With the instincts of a skipper, I encouraged Katy to go on next.  She was reluctant, not having been called up by the hands.  Nobody else was moving so I went next.  It was a little awkward getting on the ladder from the kayak.  Once I was off with my pack, they took the boat out bow first and I was done.  I scrambled around to get the camera and get a last picture of Katy being retrieved out of the water.

 

I went straight for the next Merazine pill, Vanguard was bobbing around in the breeze, then we went to the heads to change back into our dry clothes.  Our dry clothes had gotten wet in the bag.  Since I had had no upsets, my daypack had done better on the back of my kayak than that, to everyone's surprise.  It had been silly to take it, it didn’t have anything useful in it, just the GPS, the radio, some note paper, and other stuff.  The risk of losing it all or having to dry it all out was much worse than the likelihood that any of that equipment might have helped in any way.  I needed a better grasp on the realities of these outings.

 

By the time we were dressed, lunch was called.  I went in and made a big sandwich, the menu similar to last week’s but enhanced with Jell-O and cookies and fudge and grapes and fruits and numerous other goodies in addition to the staple sandwich and chip materials.  I ate this big lunch on a rocking boat and enjoyed it all without the slightest uneasy feeling.  I kind of enjoyed getting sea legs and learning other shipboard techniques without getting sea-stomach.

 

Another concession boat was anchored about 50 yards closer to shore with one hand on board for watch.  His hat blew off into the water and crew from our boat started hooting and hollering for him to swim for it.  After several minutes, he flagged down a passing tandem kayaker, not from our group, and asked them to retrieve it.  They had a good deal of trouble tacking around to get right on it, but eventually got hold of it and brought it back to even more hoots and jeers.

 

Warren was impressed with Katy.  He had had a daughter of whom Katy reminded him.  One minute she was charging into any kind of challenge, the next she was doing her hair.  That was Katy all right.  He said she was a great kid and would be fine.  I agreed and just hoped I could help her find her way and deal with herself.

 

I went up to the top deck to get a GPS position for the mooring and tried the radio.  I could hit a Santa Barbara repeater but not Catalina.  I turned it off and stowed it.  That was the radio operation for the day.

 

At 2:40 p.m. the anchor was pulled and Vanguard backed over to the pier to pick up the day hikers and others returning that same day.  At 3:02 we were on the way back to Oxnard, this time nearly with the direction of the swell.  We sat by the cabin again on the starboard side, but this time facing the Anacapa Islands and the horizon to the south.  The boat would ride up on the waves taking several seconds to get on top, and then the motor would race ahead as we surfed down the shallow face of the wave and started up the next trough.  “Following seas” indeed!  I watched the foam patterns in our wake.  They would go a certain distance then dissolve into the dark blue of the water.  Katy lay down on our luggage and went to sleep in the gangway.  I was sitting next to two ladies from our group; one of them was Jan.  The other struck up a conversation.

 

Based on when she had been in college she was about my age.  One thing she had done had been to go out to Catalina and study the constituency of the seawater, salinity, chemicals, etc.  She hadn’t kept up with it in recent years but knew that mercury levels had increased and fish populations were in jeopardy.  She also claimed that sea salinity always increased.  This had never occurred to me and we discussed a thought experiment that seemed to prove the point.  Salinity would increase until all the land was dissolved into the sea.  Of course, with plate tectonics making new mountains faster than erosion, this would never happen.

 

I wondered if you could tell what era you were in by measuring salinity, kind of an "era gauge" for a time machine?  She thought so.

 

Pondering this, I took out my map of the channel and the GPS.  This led to the inevitable discussion about what all that equipment was and my former career in GPS including all of the many applications of the signals such as ionospheric calibration, seafloor geodesy, atmospheric occultation, and so forth.

 

Much of this talking was just to keep me awake.  I didn’t need to be awake but I didn’t know how or where to sleep in this situation.  When I started to get giddy with old shoptalk and branch off into subjects I didn’t know anything about, I slowed it down and finally quit jabbering.  Katy snoozed away in the middle of the gangway.

 

Soon we were back in the harbor easing into the dock.  We helped unload kayaks and carried them up to the trailer.  We walked to the car to put our stuff in.  Katy worked on her hair for minutes then we went back to the kayak trailer in time to help put the last two or three kayaks away or on that fixed storage rack in the far corner of the parking lot.  At 5:40 p.m., we had said our last goodbyes to our comrades and were on the way home.

 

We stopped at the first Jack in the Box on the freeway where I brought in my trip journal and made notes about the day, talking the details over with Katy.  Having eaten three good meals today, I was in much better shape than I had been the Saturday before, but I was still quite exhausted and found it necessary to talk nonstop about whatever came to mind in order to keep myself awake as we headed home up the 101 to the 23 to the 118 and across to the 210 and back to the house at the 2.  Topics included bone loss by astronauts in space to the one G trip to Mars.  In order to stay alert, I calculated in my head the time it would take to make a trip like that.  Accelerate for one day at one G, decelerate for another day; such a trip would take a couple of days.

 

Of course, no rocket we had would do one G for more than several minutes.  Trips like that to Mars were a long way away, although they represented what seemed the only good way to go.

 

I couldn’t reach the Catalina repeater from anywhere along the route.  All the monitoring I’d set up back home for this had been worthless.  If we were going to try to talk on this route, I would have to come up with something else.  Any modern person would just get a cell phone.

 

We arrived home at 7:50.  The Sailor Moon doll set had arrived from Japan.  Katy carefully opened the boxes and showed all the dolls around.

 

As with prior sea-going trips, the room moved around as the sea legs wore off, but the sensation was a pleasant one, not the unpleasant one coupled with nausea that I remembered from past trips.  Given such adjustment to the motion sickness, I could wish for more of life on the sea.

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