wairoa

so at roll training last monday, molly and i were asking colm about the possible trip he had suggested the week before, but we had heard nothing about, and he said someone has to organize it or it wouldn't happen, so molly agreed to.

and speaking of roll training, it's getting a little depressing because several beginners can now roll, and i have been to almost all the practices and still cannot. well, each time the instructors tell me i have rolled on my own when i think they are helping guide my paddle, but i'm not so sure. and sometimes i can flip myself back over by bracing the paddle against the bottom of the pool, which is sort of satisfying but it's a really bad habit because there is no pool floor in the river when you actually need to be able to roll.

anyways, so the original weekend trip plan was go leave friday night or saturday morning, and do the kaituna river (which has a 7m water fall) and all us beginners would raft that, and then kayak the wairoa on sunday. the wairoa is dam controlled and i guess they release it sundays during the summer and occasionally in spring and fall, and this sunday was the last release until next spring. however first molly could not find a raft guide who could do the kaituna on saturday, and then it turns out the self-bailing raft is broken anyway making that impossible. and there was a big graduation party on friday night, so the plan turned into, leave saturday afternoon, sleep at james's house in tauranga that night, and then just do wairoa on sunday.

molly's biggest job was to make the car list, where everyone emails her when they can leave, whether they have a car (with or without roof racks to carry boats) and whether they have boats, etc, and she makes a list of who is riding with who and with which gear. friday night she imed me and said after 5 hours and 2 mental breakdowns and a lot of help from the execs, she had produced a car list (but it didn't get sent out till saturday morning). i was very impressed with her nonetheless.

i was in the car with "speedy" aka ben, who kendall rode with to the last trip. he's called speedy because apparently he takes forever getting ready (not because of his kayaking speed or lack thereof). also with us was alex, who is keri (the president)'s little brother who is also a beginner, and courtney from ih was supposed to, but she ended up making other plans when she didn't hear from molly for so long.

speedy and alex picked me up outside ih at 5, and then we went to the gear shed where all the club kayaks and gear are kept, in the suburbs, and after having some difficulties with the combination lock on the door, i got my pick of gear: boat, spray deck, life jacket, helmet, and paddle. i got the same boat i had the second day at aniwhenua, which was easier to stay upright in but harder to paddle. and after a bit of searching i found one of the good spray decks (made out of wetsuit material, rather than canvasy sort of material that most of the club decks are, so it keeps the water out better and fits tighter) which was exciting. alex didn't have to get any gear because keri wasn't going so he got to use all her good stuff. i closed the door to the shed while the guys were tying the boats to the roof racks, only i couldn't find the lock so assumed one of them had it, but it turns out it was hanging on in the wall. luckily speedy remembered as we were driving away and we went back and locked up.

james (the club vp)'s parents live in tauranga, which is a little over 2 hours east (and a little south) of auckland, and since he has a flat in the city now his parents are always thrilled to have the club come stay there. speedy couldn't remember where to turn off the main road so we stopped at a gas station and he went in to ask if they knew where james rae's house was (which i thought was hilarious, but it turns out james used to work there so it's slightly more likely that they would actually know). they didn't, but speedy found the address in the phone book (it's called snodgrass road ha ha) and we arrived around the same time as several other cars. we went in and just hung out in the living room for awhile, and james's mom made some sort of fruit crumble with whipped cream which was amazing.

after awhile they were like ok lets go get settled outside, and molly was like 'what, outside?! i thought we were sleeping at james's house!' (all night it was an ongoing joke whenever molly did not know something that was going on because she planned the trip and all) and i was a bit concerned as well, but it turns out they have this whole little separate cottage in the garden, with a whole bunch of mattresses which we put on the floor.

i told everyone that my sleeping bag was actually intended for children, and was told that that would be a problem if i got cold and wanted the hood part up, so then i proceeded to demonstrate (standing up) that i could in fact still get the hood on (with a lot of struggling). that somehow turned into colm and me having hopping races over all the mattresses all bundled up like cocoons in our sleeping bags. that turned into sleeping bag darts and sleeping bag ping pong, which turned into regular ping pong which was a little cut throat so i retired. the last van of people arrived at some point and james brought out a guitar from his house which was passed around between the various musical people in the group. and i was looking at people's pictures from graduation and the party the night before and their graduation robes have like, fur trimmed hoods, which colm explained is because traditionally they sit in a hall with a big fireplace at the front, and the more important you are the closer to the front you sit (like professors and stuff), so the lowly undergrads are so from the fire that they need the fur for warmth. also no one seemed to have a good reason why they graduate in may after finishing school in december of the previous year. they also told me about "tall poppy syndrome" which i guess is a real issue in nz (i had actually heard something about it before) where if you're good at something people are really mean to you and "cut you down" except i guess it's ok to be really good at rugby and possibly other sports. it sounds like a more extreme version of high school!)

gradually people were getting sleepy (i thought it was relatively early, like midnight maybe, but i was told today it was probably around 2 we went to bed) and we went to the little bathroom area of the cottage (the "door" to the toilet part is actually just the door to the outside pulled open, with a nice window in it ha ha) and i turned on the laundry sink to wash my face which proceeded to spray all over me and i was laughed at by speedy who happened to be the only one there. everyone settled down and went to sleep pretty quickly.

the next morning someone's alarm went off and we all gradually woke up sometime between 8 and 9. we slowly got ready and there were some english muffins in the house (but no big home cooked breakfast has speedy had hinted we might get). we started moving out around 9:30 and there were jokes made about making it to the river by 10 to see it fill up (apparently that never happens with aucc). sure enough, we stopped at a bakery on the way and took quite awhile sorting out who was leaving whose car where and which boats and which people they were carrying. that was all especially confusing because there were 3 groups of people, the pros (aka instructors) doing the grade 4, the seconders (second years, that is) doing the grade 3, and us beginners doing the graded 2, all of which had different get in and get out spots.

we all congregated at the top of the grade 4 section first, where there was bridge over a large rocky waterfall with a sign that said 'people die jumping off this bridge. don't do it'. we watched one kayaker go thru the rocky waterfall successfully (not an aucc person, there were lots of other people there too. and some rafters as well). we all got dressed for the river there, and i managed to mooch some polypro leggings, a second top, and a paddling jacket from other people. a lot of people had wet suits, or full-on dry tops (which are sort of windbreaker material but completely waterproof, and have like really tight rubber gaskety parts around the wrists neck and waist, so you actually stay dry. the jacket i got was similar but with just velcro to tighten instead of gaskets). kayaking is a lot easier when it's warm out and you just sun dry when you get wet in the river.

then the grade 2 and 3 people left and i was crowded in the back of toni's van with probably about 8 kayaks and kelly and ivan (as well as 4 people in the front seat). luckily the different get in/out spots were just up and down the road from each other (which is always deceiving because it seems much longer on the river). kelly, who is a seconder, was telling me how for the grade 2, you actually have to walk (carrying your kayak) all the way from the get out up to the get in.

sure enough, it was kind of a long walk, with lots of scrabbling over rocks and thru brush, although it would not have been bad at all without a heavy boat cutting into your shoulder the whole time. it was just me, alex, gina, who is a friend of toni's (instructor) who plays canoe polo but had never been on a river before, and this guy named jeff who said this was the second time he's paddled in 3 years, although i think he must have done more in the past, after watching him, and then 2 instructors, isaac (who looks like he is from hanson) and ivan (who is norwegian and whose real name is oyvind but he just says ivan because no one can say it right). they showed us the infamous bog rock, which i have heard from several people how this girl last year got trapped in the hole after the rock and spend 90 seconds underwater. they stressed to go to the right of it. after all the horror stories it was actually pretty unimpressive looking, the rock itself isn't even above water.

eventually we made it to the get in, where we did just that. my fancy deck was really hard to get onto my boat, it took 3 of us to stretch it far enough, but it was like, perfectly water tight after that. we paddled upriver a little ways, to the "play wave" which is basically a wave at the end of some rapids, which all the pros like to paddle up to over and over and do tricks in. we hung out just below that waiting for the grade 3 and 4-ers to get to us. we practiced eddying in and out back and forth across the river, beginning in the slowly moving flat water and gradually moving up into faster moving and rougher water closer to the wave. they tried to teach us to 'fairy glide' which is where you go across facing upstream the whole time, which i was not very good at. i flipped i think 3 times, but was t-rescued without any trauma each time. i'm not gonna lie, the difficulty of putting my deck on was a big factor in my reluctance to bail and swim (and also i guess i've gotten way better at holding my breath under water. i never get water up my nose anymore, and can wait quite awhile for someone to get to me now). the only difficulty was ivan's boat was new and really slippery, so a couple times he would go to t-rescue me and would have to guide my hand to the handle so i could grab on to flip up. it all worked out though, and although the water was cold as long as i kept paddling i stayed warm.

after what felt like forever the instructors began to arrive and we watched them play in the wave for awhile, during which time i got cold just sitting there. i was really excited because the dry-jacket had a zipper pouch to put a museli bar in like the instructors always do, so i ate that. molly was with ross in the duo again, like last trip. i really need to get in on that. she gets to go thru all the scary/fun stuff and he knows how to roll so you're totally safe. however, apparently every time they flip (including going thru the wave) molly freaks out and bails, even as ross is rolling back up. he was actually upright before she hit the water the time i saw. ha ha.

so after awhile we moved on down the river, with plenty of instructors for us beginners. at the first rapid i was following speedy, and told him to be ready to t-rescue me, and sure enough i flipped, and it took awhile for me to float downriver (upside down) to him so he could t-rescue me, but i made it. as it turns out i had gone by bog rock (on the right side) upside down, which i was actually really relieved to find out because i was dreading it after the 90 seconds under water story. after that, i made it thru the rest of the rapids successfully, until the grade 2 get out (there was more grade 3 after).

alex and fiona, who is from ireland and i guess had a bad swim at the beginning got out there, and just after that spot was another rapids with a significant drop, but there were 4 instructors with me and they said the rapid was only a 2 and just to follow the lead and they would be right there. after a bit of indecision i decided i'd rather paddle more and carry my boat less, so i went ahead, and made it thru the steep part fine (which was actually really fun), until i found myself stuck in a bush on the side of the river (still right side up though!). it would not have been a big deal at all except for the fact that i still on the side of the rapids, so in order to get out of the bush i had to eddy out into rapids bigger than the ones i wasn't very good at at the beginning. i stayed in my little protected bush area for a bit and speedy was just on the downstream side of me and was cheering me on so after determining there was no alternative i went for it, flipped as expected, and t-rescued off speedy. we paddled a little further on flat water, and isaac and i got out under the road bridge. then we climbed up the side of the bank (with our boats on our shoulders again), crossed under the bridge bent over dragging our boats, climbed over a barbed wire fence, and walked a ways down the road to the parking lot/get out where everyone else would be arriving. i am SO glad i had water shoes, one of my best $8 purchases ever.

now it had been on and off raining all day, which obviously didn't matter in the river, but while standing around waiting for the others (who had their car keys which we needed to get all our dry clothes) to get off the river we got pretty cold. we watched them go over a 'rock garden' which is rapids with a ton of rocks everywhere, it's actually looks kinda similar to skiing moguls. it looked pretty cool (/very hard) and everyone made it safely. i guess nick swam over the big waterfall before, and was a little beat up, and gina, who toni had taken thru the grade 3 at the end, had a bleeding hand, but i guess toni somehow got "worked" worse than gina did (which is weird because toni is REALLY good). they also said on the top part they had seen one (commercial) raft flip and they had had to rescue a bunch of the rafters, and then later they found a raft floating upside down with no sign of people, so they had hauled it out and left it on the bank for them. it was funny because kelly's sister laura was visiting (and stayed with us the night before) and was on one of those rafts, but when we got out she was safe and dry and waiting for us.

after getting dry clothes on and having some food (my pjb!) everyone gradually headed out. unfortunately speedy had had the music on in his car, which drained the battery enough so it wouldn't start, but toni came and gave us a jump with her van. i got to sit in front and be dj on the way home, and speedy had some mix cds of all nz artists, one of which had a bunch of bic runga songs including the 'good morning baby' song from my p2p trip that i have been on a mission to find, so i was real excited about that. right after we left alex's parents called and said traffic on the main road back was going about 10 km/h (same as the last sunday when we were coming back from rotorua), so we took a different route and ended up ahead of kelly, who left 30-40 min before us but took the main road. we dropped alex at home on the north shore, and keri came out and said hi (she had hurt her back and had a lot of homework to do so she couldn't come) and then speedy brought me back (he said he'd take my boat back to the gear shed some day when it wasn't raining, which i was very grateful for). although it was only 7:15 when we got back, it felt like 10. now it actually is 11:30 so i am going to bed!