A Trip to the Pool

I found kayak club #2 on Tuesday. The Edinburgh Kayak Club meets every Tuesday at the Gracemount Leisure Centre during the colder months (Sept --> Apr or May) and at the ponds in Musselburgh during the warmer months. For L3/visit or L1.50/shot, anybody can have a shot at playing in the kayaks. In the pool, sessions are limited to 20 mins and if you're there early enough you can get two shots easily. When the sessions get less crowded, you can get three. In the pond, the turns can be longer. Money goes toward the pool fees as well as club kit, so it's at least going toward the right place.

The bus system is still new to me, so I had a list of the proper busses to catch to get to the GLC. I had only a vague idea of the route, so I figured out the proper bus number and stop just as the proper bus was leaving. Oops. I was fashionably late and clueless when I arrived, but it all worked out at the end. I watched for a bit, and talked to a nice Scottish woman who had brought her grandkids for an evening adventure. Her daughter lived in Florida and hated it, so we had a few laughs about that. I figured out who was doing what and started asking people if they could tell me more about the club, the rivers and such. I talked to a few nice people who said all kinds of trips were going out, and like the uni club, we could borrow kit from the club and club trips would be going out all the time. Also like the uni club, not too many people paddle Canadian. There's one Canadian trip each year, an overnighter, where they borrow additional Canadians from other clubs for their trip. But otherwise, nobody really paddles Canadian.

We talked about kit some, and one girl was talking about dry bags in her kayak, except she didn't call them dry bags. She called them something that sounded like "cow stomach". I don't remember what it was exactly, just that it was a phrase I had never heard, that sounded like cow stomach. It took me a moment or two to realize what she was talking about. And, of course, being from America, I have requests for specific kit already. Somewhere in all of those conversations, Lucas called. He sounded a wee bit jealous as I was surrounded by kayaks and kayakers and he had just gotten home from class. I told him about the club and we figured sooner or later we would have to pick a club.

After all that, I decided to have a go in the pool before heading home. I picked the big pointy boat again, and realized very quickly that rolling it would be next to impossible. But it was fun to putter around and play on the walls for a little while. It was sort of like my attempts to roll a MAX. Tip over, hit the side, hip snap, flop back to the bottom. Repeat ad nauseum. Next time, smaller boat.

Like before, I missed the timely bus and the next one showed up half an hour later. There's only one more per night, so if I decide to partake in the post-pool pub outing, it will have to be a quick partake or I would need to ride my bike to and from the pool session. All worthy options.

This club is a tiny bit more expensive than the uni club, but the group is much more diverse. We wouldn't be the geezers. We wouldn't be the youngsters. And we wouldn't be the only ones not running the hair rivers. Each club has it's perks, but the city club is feeling more appealing at the moment.