Kayak Reunion

Since coming to America, my kayak, which I was using regularly in Amsterdam, has been in storage. A stall in New York is (like many other things there) way too expensive for me to afford as a student. I finally got the opportunity to get it out its case and put it together on Sunday - I am storing it at a place in Sausalito, on the bay just north of San Francisco across the Golden Gate Bridge. I'd been there before (night kayak with Laurie last year), and although it takes about an hour by bike to get there, its a much better location than in the city.

I thought it would be less of a novelty here than it was in the Netherlands (its collapsable, and looks really sleek when you put it together) but I got a lot of people coming up and asking me about it as I was putting it together. Which took time - over two hours, in fact. "That will be a pleasure well earned!", said one man. "If you had one of those tupperware boats, you'd be in the water already". I had forgotten the pedals (its been two years) so I had to take it half apart again once it was almost together.


It was a pleasure well earned - I went up the bay to the north, past crowds of plump seals with fur which looked like the cheap leopard-skin blankets which we had as kids, sunning themselves in the late afternoon sun. They are fun to watch; they bark and sometimes have a spat: huge animals slapping feebly at each other with dainty flippers.

Just beyond the seals was another colony: of eclectic boat houses. These are nothing like I'd experienced in the Netherlands. This example was like something out of a Grimm Brothers fairytale (and yes, it is floating on the water). Some were way out into the bay, floating by themselves, like the new age pyramid below.