Did that get your attention? Did you think I had a big hairy cow looking creature in the backyard? No...it's what us slightly older wanna be outdoorsy types call a kayak. It's also sorta my new obsession. I won $1000 on the Super Bowl & decided to actually spend some of it frivolously...to hell with the recession! So I got a new Perception Carolina 12' kayak. Go look at my pics to see for yourself. I love it like it was my own child. I hold it & stroke it's shiny orange hull & dream of shooting class 5 rapids & paddling to Fiji. But mostly I've just been going up & down Wolfbranch Creek behind our house. Fat....guy ...in a ...little boat... Last Sunday I went to the Wekiva River which is about 15 miles from our house. I drove to the normal spot where I used to put in our old Tandem sit-on-top kayak but it was closed for renovations. So I went to the end of the road to another put-in I have used but they were out of business. Look... I have my new kayak & I am staring at the Wekiva River. To hell with the No Trespassing signs! I'm a rebel dammit! So I backed my truck up into some trees so as to be out of site of the toofless rednecks in their broken down mobile homes. I apologize to anyone who may resemble that remark. You know who you are. That song from Deliverance was running thru my head. But no one was around so I launched. Oh what extascy! My shiny little sit-in kayak is so nimble & fast. You are so low in the water that you feel like a fish. And no...it wasn't because I'm fat you smartasses. I paddled swiftly downstream like Daniel Day Lewis in "Last of the Mohicans" except with less hair & about 12 pack abs. I knew that as far downstream I went I would eventually have to paddle back so I planned accordingly. The river was angry that day my friends. Actually it was very calm & nice but I wanted to use that George Costanza line. From where I started to where I finally turned around I saw...nada. No houses, no boats, no people, no nuttin'. Absolute untouched woodsy wilderness. Now normally this is a kayakers dream, a beautiful river all to myself. I was all relaxed & reveling in my back to nature spiritual woodsy state of mind. That's when I saw the gigantic stalking gators...
Oh my God. I saw at least 20 gators in this beautiful approximately 2-3 mile stretch of river. The smaller 4-5 footers would stay on their logs sunning themselves & just look at me. But the big boys would crash into the water sounding like a Volkswagen dropped off a building. Very intimidating! And when they dropped into the water your mind starts going...where is he? Is he under water coming my way? Is he going to come up under my kayak & I'm going to have a death match with a 10' gator armed only with my paddle & a flip flop? I got a stiff neck from looking over my shoulder. I was so relaxed I got a tension headache. I think I peed a little when 1 big gator actually tracked my boat down river for a few minutes which seemed like a few hours. He was only about 40' away. I decided that I had seen enough nature for 1 day so I turned around & paddled for my life back upstream...occasionally glancing back to see if I was in imminent danger of being eaten. But after awhile with no gator jumparoo I relaxed & actually enjoyed my paddle back. Until my encounter with the aforementioned toofless rednecks...
When I got back near where I put in I hear him holler "Hey boy, is this your truck?" After being drained from all the near death gator stuff I just wasn't up to lying so I said "yes." "This here's private proppity" he says with a sneer. OK dude I think, I'm not here to steal your pit bull or your 78 Camaro. So I pull up & load up my stuff whilst listening to Darryl & his other brother Darryl lecture me about trespassing. No problem I say as I pull away hoping that they would never breed. So that was my excellent first adventure in my new yak. All in all the gators were much nicer than the rednecks...
Yikes!
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