For the Unbelieving FJDIII...

wow!!! that is crazy!!! something I have always wanted to learn!!!

-- Matt, Napa, CA...119 days to sanity...

Well, after 40, be careful…

I can tell you, you lose those cat-like reflexes to do that crazy stuff that you have when you’re younger.

But, uh, when you’re hiking out of a 2000’ gorge AFTER wiping out in a big Class V drop, swimming a solid 1/2 mile in serious rapids AND losing your boat, you can look at a lot of nice trees that will never be turned into lumber for furniture.

It’s enough to make you want to take a Windsor Chair class.

Don’t ask me how I know!

-- Chuck, Pullman, WA

It is hard for a guy to stop doing what he loves to do. My brother and I are in our 60’s and we still climb up trees 20 + feet in the air every fall to bow hunt deer. Glad you enjoy your sport as much as I do. Thanks for posting.

God Bless
tom

-- Mc Bridge Cabinets, Iowa

I won’t ask Chuck. Go for the gusto, my man!

-- "Bordnerizing" perfectly good lumber for over a decade.

yikes!

-- "Functional WoodArt" by Debbie, Canada (http://www.execulink.com/~yohan)

ThatiscoolasHeck, WhattheChuck… lol.

-- As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. (Proverbs 27:17)

That’s a great picture but whose the guy in the boat? LOL

-- Fred.... Poconos, PA ---- Chairwright in the making ----

I’d love to do that, in spite of my age. I do canoe down the Guadalupe River, but not in the rapids below Canyon Dam – some really good white water for kayakers down there. Also an excellent Trout tailwater – yes, in South Texas! The largest chapter of Trout Unlimited is in Texas, and we only have one stream that sustains trout through the summer – the Guadalupe River just 20 miles from my home.

-- Always do the Right Thing the Right Way the First Time - if you can figure out what that is! Ken, Spring Branch, TX

Is that a cedar strip kayak? Is this the final photo of the blog on building such a worthy craft :-)... did it survive?

My limited whitewater days are well behind me…even if I survived a ‘rapid’ such as that one I don’t think Jenn would be too impressed with taking that kind of chance (I swim like a clumsy rock). Nice to see photos though.

If yor brain, or whole head, were made of wood you couldn’t sink right, so this would be a very safe activity…unless you got caught in a roller…hmmm maybe you need a really bouyant wood like balsa or something LOL.

-- ....next big purchase is wood for the next project, Mark

I always found woodworking and kayaking to be complementary hobbies—I’d woodwork in the fall and winter, and kayak in the spring and summer.

But as I get a wee bit older (I’m 45), spring is turning into more shop time. It’s cold in Idaho in April!

-- Chuck, Pullman, WA

Awesome! The biggest drop I’ve ever run is 25 feet (the put-in rapid on Short Creek in Alabama), but back in ‘91 or so I had one of those “I don’t know where my limits are, but they’re further than this, and that’s okay” experiences and switched to open boat, and then a bit over 10 years ago I moved to California and whitewater is further than I want to drive, so I sold that, too.

Now I just do road biking.

-- Dan Lyke, Petaluma California, http://www.flutterby.net/User:DanLyke

Hey Dan,

That’s pretty wild—because that’s where my path has taken me too. I ride my road bike—not fast, more far—a lot more than I kayak.

And the driving thing really doesn’t do it for me anymore. So I’ve scaled back. But I still boat Class III – IV+.

Real Class V requires a commitment that I just can’t make anymore. Man, you can get hurt if you screw up! After my big swim three years ago, I called a couple of my dead-end California friends, folks that I did the Middle Feather, the Kings Canyon and such with 15 years ago. They said “Chuck, everyone stops paddling Class V sooner or later. Some actually stop before they get killed!”

Chuck

-- Chuck, Pullman, WA

Re the commitment for class V, yeah. Half of my wake-up was running the Ocoee at well over 10x normal flow, and the other half was when Jesse Sharp, whom I’d run into hanging around the Ocoee, tried to run Niagara. Both of those were a “oh, yeah, this sport either ends when you walk away from it or when they don’t find your body” reminder.

I was a weekend guide on the Ocoee for many years, and then paddled decked boat in the winter (Eastern Tennessee, Northeastern Alabama, and the whole western Carolinas area has lots o’ good water), so even though I had a day job I was getting in well over 50 days a year of good hard whitewater. I had a lot of trouble introducing people to the sport because my idea of training was “Dude! After my last run on Saturday afternoon we’ll take a six pack out to the lake and teach you to roll, and Sunday we can go run some basic class IV, see how ya like it.”

As I’ve gotten older, the finesse of a paceline zipping through the scenery down Route 1 along Tomales Bay, with just the rush of the air and the whirr of the chain interrupting the hyper focus of arcing through turns 6” off the wheel of the guy in front is more my speed. Don’t need fast descents, just the zen of getting that pedal stroke smooooooth.

-- Dan Lyke, Petaluma California, http://www.flutterby.net/User:DanLyke

I used to live in NC (grad school) and yeah—pretty much the same thing. I started wandering out West, doing CO and all the rivers, and then locating here on the Idaho border because when I drew circles with a compass, it had the best WW.

I’m glad I did it all—I read now about all the young bucks stepping it up to stuff I never dreamt of, and think fondly back to my days on the N Fork Payette (I read a description of the experience by another blogger—he called it like ‘running from the Terminator’) and still get a smile.

But for every thing, there is a season. Now if I can just stop my 8-year-old from killing himself… he took off on his skateboard yesterday, tearing down a 10% grade and came back with the fronts of his CROCs completely annihilated.

Guess it runs in the family!

Chuck

-- Chuck, Pullman, WA

Very cool!

Thanks for the post

Callum

-- Look great, get your TTK merchandise now! http://www.printfection.com/thetimberkid/ Check out my site http://thetimberkid.blogspot.com/