This trip was to be no different. While I had decided to head to the Florida Keys since ending my kayak expedition early, I had no idea how I was going to get down there. It wasn’t until I bought a bicycle to get around in Vermont that I started to play with the idea of biking down, but after looking at the cost factor involved in that, it would be as expensive as flying and I was trying to avoid expensive.
The idiom is: Before you judge a man, walk a mile in his shoes. The meaning: Before judging someone, you must understand his experiences, challenges, thought processes, etc. Earlier this year I struggled to accept the loss of Lexie, my love, my Soul Mate for the last 12 years. Sure, she was a dog, but…
In the tiny town of Hampton, NY lies a Bike Shop that is changing the world.
I’d been living in Poultney, a small traditional Vermont town, for four years before leaving on my kayak trip
I hadn’t been Motor Free since I was 11. By 11 years old, I had earned enough money working to go buy myself a Mini Bike and thus ended my bicycling days. The Mini bike turned into a dirt bike turned into a car, truck, motorcycle and so forth. Somewhere in all of that progress, I got the idea to get back into bicycling.
A little more that two months ago I had paddled the entire length of Lake Champlain and then the Champlain Canal. Until I reached the last of the locks in Troy, the Troy Federal Lock, I had gone through every lock on the canal alone. Today was different, very different. Today I was packed into the lock with two hundred kayakers and three boats. It was an amazing sight and an amazing opportunity.
I made an announcement on Facebook and the “Welcome Home” messages began arriving, but there was a problem. I wasn’t home. This wasn’t home. Home is where your heart is, right? So where is my heart. I walked around; I visited with my neighbors whom I use to spend so much time with. I walked into my old room. Saw the basement I had worked so hard renovating, all finished. I walked down to the water, the water I had missed so much. This wasn’t home. This is where I use to live and perhaps this will be where I spend a few months as I work things through, but home, no, its not here.
When I began this journey, my goal was to find Life after Death; specifically, my life after Lexie’s death. I needed to find out who I was. Where was the happiness I had with Lexie and where was I going. I needed to be able to be happy again. I turned to the one element that always brought me peace – Water. I set my sights on Key West for Key West was the farthest south I could go by kayak.
The paddle was leisurely compared to the day before and I had to laugh when a fisherman I was paddling bye commented that I was brave paddling against the current; if he’d only known what I had paddled through to date. Life is relative to your prior experiences. As I approached my last bridge in New Jersey, I turned on my VHF radio to listen to the large fishing boats talk to the Bridge Tender and each other. I enjoy listening to their chatter. I passed under the bridge, turned to Starboard and I was officially in Cape May.
Shortly after I departed, I was trying to stay out of the boat channel, as it looked narrow. Suddenly, my paddle was touching bottom. I shortened my stroke, but the ground was coming up fast, due to low tide. I was trying to get back to deeper water but the wind had other ideas for me. Then it happened. I ran aground…in a kayak!
The tide that had been fighting me started helping me as I neared the next inlet and I reached the end of Sea Isle in record time. I was surprised at how small this inlet was. There was a drawbridge that had to be opened to let the big fishing vessels in from the ocean. I easily paddled across this inlet and reached Avalon just after 5pm.