Author: Larry Jensen

I awoke this morning feeling down, but this time it wasn’t from the paddling or what lay ahead, but today was Lexie’s 13th Birthday. I should have been planning a nice steak dinner for my little girl and not paddling 2000 miles trying to find Life after Death, but she’s no longer here and that is what I’m doing. Mommy and I miss you terribly Peanut.

We can fight physical challenges and often, humans do very well with the physical, but the emotional challenges are much harder to overcome. Often, failure is not due to physical limitations, but emotional ones. After lunch I began to battle my mind. While I now had a few great nights meeting wonderful people, the loneliness on the water is getting to me. This is the battle I set out to conquer as the loneliness was also affecting me in Vermont too. My mind was full of a strong desire to quit.

After a rough emotional day yesterday, today was energizing. I left the marina around 9:30 am and paddled down the canal and into the bay. As soon as I hit the bay, I checked my route so I could try to find a landmark to navigate to and realized I’d be paddling right across the large open bay. I was a bit nervous about that as there were no real boating lane here so I’d have to watch all around me for large recreational fishing boats to make sure the saw me. I picked a water tower barely visible on the Eastern Shore of the bay and I began to paddle.

August 18th 2016 Point Pleasant, NJ I’m right back where I began, well almost. Today started off perfect. Martha and Steve took Arlene and I to the boardwalk, just a few houses away. I could see Jenkinson’s, on the Boardwalk, but it was the Palm Trees that really caught my eye. Palm Trees! I’m in…

With the gear and kayak loaded up last night, Arlene and I awoke to what should have been an easy morning, but as always happens, there are things you forget and sure enough I forgot to wrap up some e-mails and tasks before we hit the road. I was scrambling to get out of the house and we didn’t hit the road till after 10am, an hour behind schedule.

I started off the day doing some investigative research into Elana’s past while Arlene attended a Real Estate closing. I’m trying to locate anyone who may have been friends with Elana when she was a little younger. I’m still searching for the period of time after she got married and before her husband passed. Unfortunately, all my leads were dead ends.

Upon arriving we headed to the Beluga Whale exhibit were we got to see two Beluga’s playing in the water in front of us. Tinier than I had imagined, but still large enough to make me worry if I encountered them in the surf where I’m kayaking, but luckily they are Arctic and Sub Arctic mammals, but even so, would probably not be interested in me or my kayak.