Capsizing Kyaks

I woke up this morning to a beautiful blue sky day- the only problem was that it was 28 degrees out. I had my first kyaking session today, so I walked up to campus about 10:30 to meet up with the club. While putting on my semi-damp wet suit, booties, and life jacket, I realized that it might be a little cold today on the water.

We started down River Corrib learning specific strokes and skills, and even played freeze tag with kyaks! There were about 8 of us in the class this morning. We continued down the river, which was quite beautiful today. The river runs along stone walls and through downtown Galway- it's quite a site! When we reached the point where we were to turn around we played a little game. We made a circle with our kyaks. Then when the leader called two peoples names they had to get out or their kyak and run on top of the other kyaks to the open kyak faster than their opponent. Ironically the only person that fell in the river was our instructor. Oh- did I mention that this is the river that I took pictures of 2 weeks ago in which it was FROZEN!

We paddled back upstream and just when I thought we were done for the day when we were told we had to do a skills test. That meant we had to purposly flip our kyak and preform the proper release technique before surfacing. OH MY GOODNESS IT WAS COLD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh- did I mention it was cold!? I came up with a look of shock on my face- but it's over with! The walk home was a little frigid but I've finally thawed out. I will try and take some pictures next time so you can see the shed, shoreline, and river. Despite purposely capsizing our kyaks I absolutely loved it. We have lessons up to 3 times a week, but you are only required to go one day. In four weeks we get to learn how to go off of a short waterfall- don't worry mom and dad we wear helmets :)