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SK102

I won't write much about SK102, since I've documented it many times before in years past. As always, it's my most complicated packing of the year - car camping gear, music gear, and paddling gear.

Friday night was rainy, with some serious little storm cells about. One of these storms hit just as I arrived on Friday. I pulled into the parking lot just in time to see a tent go tumbling by down towards the lake (it turned out to belong to Cat, the event organizer). Later, Cat and I saved a pop-up shelter that was trying similarly trying to escape in the wind by borrowing some stakes and staking it down. There was even a tornado watch in effect, which caused the Friday night paddle to be cancelled. The weather the rest of the weekend was spectacular. Far better than the average SK102 weekend!
SK102: All the boats

I taught the basic class (basic strokes, wet exits) Saturday morning with Frank D. This was the total opposite experience of teaching with Jim Z. Jim is super detail-oriented. There are syllabi for the SK102 classes and Jim won't quit until he's covered every bullet point in the syllabus - and more. Frank is an artist, and leans much more towards winging it. He does, however, have great skills and I think the students learn a lot with both their teaching styles.
Getting ready to teach

Instructors' view, Saturday AM
I lazed about in the afternoon. I beg off of teaching in the afternoon because I go back to work entertaining in the evening. Actually, my demand for special treatment as a performer became a running joke through the weekend. It's a real pain to haul insturments and amplifiers up the hill in the dark after playing, and so before the weekend I asked Cat it I could get roadie assistance. She replied that she and Maxine would be around in the afternoon and would properly fawn over us. I told her she was confusing "roadie" with "groupie". Not to devalue the services that groupies traditionally provide, what I really needed was help with schlepping. Anyway, as a result all weekend there was much exaggerated fawning, gratuitous hugging, and offers to go meet in the storage shed when non one was looking.

Saturday night's dinner was the usual nice spread, though I will note that it lacked M&M's sorted by color (another band demand). After dinner Manuel and I performed music around the campfire as always. A couple of good surprises: we were joined by another instructor, Tom S, who was an enthusiastic and pretty talented singer (he sings in his church choir). Also, it didn't rain! The last couple of years it started raining two songs into our performance, leading to jokes about whether we even knew a third song.
Dubside and Jenny do a rolling demo
Speaking of jokes, my impromptu Greenlandic/music pun (Inaqatsineq-da-Vida) got laughs (Inaqatsineq is the Greenlandic word for one of the basic rolls). Let me say, I appreciate a crowd where a Greenlandic kayaking pun goes over well. The only disappointment was that after all the talking and joking, the promised roadie help didn't materialize and so as usual I was left to schlep all the gear back up the hill in the dark myself. My cart fell over twice on the rough group, sending amps and keyboard tumbling - I hope everything survived. And no groupies visited my tent ... sigh.

Sunday we waited out a brief rain shower then Frank, Suzanne and I went out and did rolling and rescue practice (ah, the joys of an 80 degree water temperature). After a while the two of them went back, as they had other classes to teach, while I continued on and did a six mile paddle on the lake. Then it was the slow process of packing, socializing, and loading, packing, socializing and loading. Saturday is always a really busy day and so Sunday is more when you can kick back and chat. And this year, since it hadn't rained we weren't all in "let's just throw the wet stuff in the car and head home" moods. It was after 2 PM by the time I headed for home, having had another great paddling & music weekend.

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Location: Mineral, VA 23117, USA

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