Talk Without Speaking

Life is, indeed, strange sometimes.

As with summers past I’ve been picking up as many kayak guiding shifts as I possibly can that fit in with what are most likely my dying days at my current job. On Tuesday it was a massive tide day and I was on Bowen all day long hauling water-fighting ESL kayaking students out of the ocean – what fun The tide hit low at 0.5 and high at 12.5 – to translate this for you it meant that the tide was changing about 2 feet an hour…pretty massive.

We had been told to be on our best behavior for the final early evening tour of the day. This turned out to be 6 guides for 35 young adults between the ages of 20-30 who had come to Bowen on their private yacht as part of some entrepreneurial conference. Sons and daughters of American CEOs and presidents, they were an…interesting bunch.

Paddled them over to a beach where they were met with fruit plates, cake and drinks – is this for real? The last time I sat on this beach which exists only at high tide and was disappearing rapidly beneath us I was with a group of about a dozen terminally ill clients who come kayaking as part of their support group. What a stark contrast.

I hopped back in my yellow kayak, sitting half on the rocks, waited for a big wave and then hip-flicked my baby back into the rapidly swelling ocean so that I could watch the stationary eagles as we both try our respective surfing, they on the wind over the bluff and I on near white-capped surge.

Later, 6 guides simultaneously bit their tongues as 2 clients trip (?) and fall into the ocean off the dock. They were in the water…oh, lets go crazy and say 10 seconds before we could scoop them out by the top of their life jackets but the apparently spoiled silly, rich, diamond-studded-g-string-wearing, woman burst into brief hysterical tears before being embarrassed back into a furious silence.

Did I say kayaking was the most relaxing thing in the world?

Only to some apparently.