Archive for the ‘outrigger’ Category
Last year I set a HUGE goal for myself: to train for the qualifying race to win a spot on the U.S. paracanoe team heading to the 2013 World Sprints. It’s a particularly ambitious goal because I’m switching from the 6-man long distance ocean canoeing that I’ve been doing for several years to paddling a [...]
This post feels a bit like a PSA rather than a typical pilgrimsteps post. But I wanted to share my experience with PPIs just in case it might be of help to some of you…. Last year I struggled to paddle because of severe back pain that was due to some problems with my prosthesis. [...]
The photo above was snapped about 10 miles into the race, when my sunscreen melted into my eyes and I couldn’t see a thing, and didn’t want to stop paddling to clear my vision. And this was as I was yelling to the team to get our second wind, because we had some boats to [...]
I’ve noticed that my friends don’t like to talk much about my “paddling” habit. I think it’s because you can’t really talk about outrigger canoeing without saying something that sounds more than a little bit dirty (note: I don’t row or kayak. I paddle. There is a difference…). Adopting this new sport has meant learning [...]
Two upcoming events that might be of interest to my followers in SoCal: 1) The Past Tense seminar at the Huntington Library with Peter Stallybrass. Always a delight to listen to (such as in this podcast of his plenary at the Past’s Digital Presence conference), Stallybrass will be speaking on “What is a Book? And [...]
This has been a week of hard work and travel. It’s the end of the semester crunch, I’ve been in the last stages of training for the opening of my outrigger season, and have layered on to that some significant obligations to friends and family. Oh, and also…I’ve found a house for the kids and [...]
For my friends who are under snow this weekend, here’s a view of cherry blossoms at the Huntington’s Japanese garden last Saturday. The weather has been so sublime here this weekend, that I’ve spent a good deal of my time out on the water. How about you, what are you up to this weekend?
Quite some time ago, I wrote about my shoulders on my blog, and about the various scars/scar tissue that I’ve struggled with over the years. My left shoulder, especially, gives me a lot of discomfort due to the old scars and the memories that it seems to hold in the muscle fibers. Occasionally when I’m [...]
About four hours in to each of my long outrigger races, the shakes begin. I’m cold, but bundling up for warmth does almost nothing to reduce the jitters. It’s that point where my body says ‘no more.’ It wants me to stop. And it takes everything to keep going… When I was traveling around Boston [...]
Today I woke up at an all-too-early hour to join a before-work outrigger practice on my one-person canoe (she was more than a little dusty when I pulled her out of her berth, having sat unused for the past few weeks). It was still dark when I was assembling the connecting pieces between the main [...]
It’s that time of year again, when all of my thoughts are focused on the U.S. Outrigger Champs race. The picture above is from last year, where I am sitting in seat 5 (just in front of the steersperson) on the last leg of the race to Descanso Beach. I’ll ride the Catalina Flyer over [...]
Just a few days ago, I joined up with gowalla.com. I’m feeling a lot like I did a few years ago when I first joined twitter–the possibilities of this new platform aren’t yet apparent to me. But I have friends who really enjoy geo-tagged games (so I’m convinced I just might, too), and I have [...]
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