Friday, January 15, 2010.
I lost my first kayak.
Several times.
Let me set the stage for you.
A three hour car ride took us up to the Bay of Islands. There are 144 islands off the north coast of New Zealand. And this is where most tourists go. So here we were, on our two days off, heading with Tony up to collect his wife and two young children from the island they were vacationing on for three weeks.
In order to get to the island, we took a boat for people who were on dolphin tours. Because Tony works for this company we got to go on the tour for free! God is good and we’ll come back to the dolphin and hole in the rock story later. Anyways, we finally get to Moturua island, to the house right on the beach where we are going to spend the night. We dropped our stuff in the rooms, changed quickly in our swimming togs (bathing suits) and jumped in three kayaks and two surfboards to swim/paddle out to a really small island not too far away (meaning I could kayak there no problem). We got there fine and started snorkeling and exploring. The water was wonderful, the view was beyond incredible and so we all jumped in.
I looked over from where we were swimming and saw some of our kayaks escaping. So I swam as fast as I could to grab them and pull them back on the rocky shore. I thought for sure they were now secure (how often have I kayaked in my life?) So I laid out in the sun while the rest of my team went exploring and snorkeling. For some reason, I looked up at one point and saw the little green and blue kayak slowly making its way out into the ocean. I tried to run to it, but had no shoes on ridiculously rocky ground. Needless to say, by the time I got to the point where I could jump in, the kayak was really far out there. So I jumped in another kayak, grabbed a paddle and sped out to the lost green and blue one.
My processing skills weren’t working so well on our day off, so once I got out to the green and blue kayak, I realized that I couldn’t really paddle in sitting in one and holding on to the other. So I yelled back to the shore and Brook jumped in the third kayak and came paddling out to me. We sat there for a few minutes, out in the ocean, trying to figure out what to do. We tried tying the loose kayak to the back of Brook’s but the rubber band snapped real fast. So we pulled the green/blue kayak on top of both of ours and paddled back to the little island together. It took some getting used to and some serious teamwork, but it worked. A hilarious picture of team genius and the rest of our team almost applauded us in. (okay, maybe that was a stretch, but they did think it was a great idea).
Moral of the Story: Two heads are always better than one.
Cool Story of the Day:
While we were on the dolphin tour, we passed through a hole in a rock. It doesn’t sound too exciting, but it really was an awesome sight to see, and you don’t always get to pass through it because of the tide. While we were going by and then passing through, John realized that this hole in the rock was the exact same one from a desktop picture he had had on his laptop for a number of years. God is in the details. And, He’s just cool like that, fulfilling a small dream you didn’t even know you had.
