Gimp -  ;D That's close, and useful (thanks) but I thought there was a longer one that made me a bit uncomfortable as a lot of things listed were, well, arguable.

Hey Jimbo - While I associated the backwards bent concept with you, I had thought you had just seen it somewhere. (Mine has a definite power face so it was obvious.)

A friend of mine, strong paddler, always kept his stroke for way to long and would even dig in at the end way past his hips. We'd bob down the lake and perhaps I'm not good at constructive criticism or he's really not good at accepting it. I finally gave up and my girlfriend and I bought him a BB bent for his 30th birthday. (She was a great bow paddler) Problem solved.

That reminds me of another unfortunate incident I not like to repeat. Her and I did a rather long day of paddling towards the end of a trip in May. The distance wasn't anything special but it was cold, rainy windy.... She had handled snow quite well in the past and our destination was THE favorite campsite of a friend of mine. This was back when descriptions/directions didn't even include maps much less waypoints. The part of the description I remember most was "keep going until you think you went to far and it's a little past that." Something like that anyway.

We paddled around quite a while until the clouds finally ripped open and just dumped on us. We called it quits and took the nearest campsite saying tomorrow's another day. She set up the tent and I the tarp, hung food and played with a belligerent snapper for a while.

I finally wondered what she was up to so I went to the tent: "Hey, are you sleeping?" The answer I received could best be defined as a whimper and a scary sounding one at that.

I don't remember how it went down but I opened the tent to find her sitting in the middle with everything piled high around her and she's crying and mumbling about there being water in a corner.

I wiped up most of what little water there was with a snot rag while asking where the towel was to give her something to do. Some Snickers followed a long hug and basic encouragement. Hot coco followed that and a freeze dried and blazing fire finally got her out of the tent and after fried fish she wasn't shivering anymore.

We found the campsite we were originally looking for the next day. It would have been perfect the day before. Other than the fireplace it was nothing special beyond the rather old garbage heap in back. It was a reedy swamp so the location was pretty awful IMO. The man did like to cook though so....  [smiley=thumbup.gif]