Afternoon, friends. I'm Rick and I'll be taking you out today.Good looking group. Which is good, I don't like to be the best looking. The '69 Woodstock beard usually takes care of that, eh!So we're going to see Southwest Harbor, Maine from the water today. We're going to go over the basics first, kids. Everybody got a life jacket, right? Katie got you all jackets, right? Katie bar the door, she's a good kid. Nice catch for you young fisherman there. Ha! Majored in Poli Sci, I think. Or Environmental Poetry? One of those.Anyway, notice how I'm holding my paddle. Just a bit wider than shoulder width. Now the most important part of paddling is this: we paddle with our shoulders. What do we paddle with? Our shoulders. We do notpaddle with our arms. Not with our arms. We don't want our arms to fall off. The last group I took out, two people lost their arms! Kidding. Nobody lost a thing. Well, I lost two kayakers, but who's counting? Kidding, kidding. Most of you will get back.So you have paddling down. Anybody caught going in circles is not going home. Ha!Now these are sea kayaks and have a rudder right here on the back. Once you're in the water--you flip this rope and it will flip the flipper. Flip! But of course, not while beached, after you push off, right? Right foot rudder you go right. Left goes left. Easy, right? Easy tourist design!So we'll get in our boats now and get pushed off. Good. Let's go!Now as we head out around this point--what's that? Oh, I've been doing this for twenty seven years. And twenty million paddles probably. And two divorces. Ha!There's a mallard, the little cute bastard.Anyway, yeah, my first wife I didn't see but one month out of the year, because you know, I'd be here in the summer and then down in the Everglades in the winter, guiding down there with the 'gators. So I don't blame her, being up in Ottawa and all.What's that? Yeah, Canadian. Outside Calgary. Anybody been to the Stampede? Nice place to grab a beer or forty. Ha! You all from other places I bet?Crow, three o' clock.We're just going to paddle up here a few hours or so. More sun lotion anybody? It'll crisp ya. But we'll be back before dinner.This morning we saw about fifty harbor seal right here in this exact spot. Pretty calm here now. Too bad you weren't out here this morning. Fifty seal. I've never seen that many in twenty seven years. Twenty seven years.But we'll just head over here to Ladderkillbob Point. What's that? No, no, funny story. It's actually both. There used to be a fish ladder, and a ladder did fall on Bob Guthen before the mill closed. Believe that?So the other week we saw three bald eagles, a little family of them. Right up in those pines. Nothing up there now. Maybe she took that eaglet and headed back to her mother's in Vancouver like the second wife. Ha!Yeah, so we'll start back.Really nothing out here on the water today. But I'd rather be here than a hot subway in New York.Skeeters are coming out though, aren't they?That flag pole just doesn't get any bigger does it! Ha! That's what she said.Almost back.And . . . shh-bump! Home again.So thanks for coming out with Krazy Kayak. Look me up if you'll be in the Everglades this winter or back next year for summer twenty eight!Ha! Wait! Did you hear that? We musta just missed it, folks. Loon.
