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A Frank Discussion Of Nudity And Paddling
"For they were naked, and they were not ashamed..." (The Book of Genesis)
Disclaimer: Pregnant women, children, and the elderly should consider
skipping this story, as it contains frank discussion of the consequences of
naked paddling. Nonetheless, it is the Author's distinguished opinion that
if you are easily offended, you should read this story with relish. And
sauerkraut, and mustard. Preferably smeared all over your body.
On to business. Nudity enjoys a fine tradition in this great country of
ours...some of our most brilliant minds are keenly aware of it. Your boss,
for instance. At this very moment he is sitting in his office, and he is
most likely bareass naked under his clothes. Not a pretty mental picture is
it? Brr! Or is your boss a woman? Could be even worse in that case.
Speaking of naked women, my wife is solely responsible for this week's
weirdness. In a moment of play (which happened to coincide with a brief
interval of nudity...er...which wasn't all that brief, come to think of it),
she told me something that got my dander up.
"All you paddlers have pasty white butts."
My dander is bigger than Rhode Island, and I wondered about her standards of
comparison. I seldom examine my own pasty white butt, and I refuse to
examine those of my paddling buddies. There is not that much money...they
have hairy backs, for God's sake.
"How many have you...", I began, and I stopped. More information than I
needed. I refrained from pointing out that HER butt is pasty white because
of the glaze-coating of ice that seems to cling to it even on sultry summer
nights, but this is doubtless attributable to some gender-specific
circulation problem...viz., her feet are affected as well, and as she is
extremely limber those same feet often find their way into my armpits.
Students of the English language are advised to take notice of the above as a
textbook example of a run-on sentence.
Well, after I shared the butt-pigmentation revelation with Andy and Skeezix,
we all decided that moons were in the proper alignment for a commemorative
streak of the Ocoee river.
Ah, yes. Tennessee's Ocoee. Home of the Olympics.
By pulling our spray skirts down around our lower thighs, we were able to
saunter straight past Lance the Friendly Park Ranger (whose issuance of
Citations for Public Indecency at the Ocoee putin parking lot was the sole
source of funding for the 1996 Olympic Whitewater Venue. It chaps my
backside that the quick-change act can earn you a $125 ticket). But we were
too clever, and Lance suspected nothing. We carried our boats down the long
concrete ramp, we quickly jumped into them, and we were off.
Now on first reading you would theorize that kayaking should be perfect for
sportsfolk who are primarily motivated by the need for genital protection.
When you're in a kayak, your lower body is encased in a solid shell much like
a turtle's. Nothing is going to slam you in those oh-so-tender parts, right?
Well, I was about a half-mile along the river when I realized that this kind
of thinking was sheer poppycock. You see, while until recently paddlers were
held in their boats by hip pads, thigh hooks, and sheer willpower, the recent
invention of the "Pleasure Pod" has rendered the Unified Genital Security
Theory obsolete. A Pleasure Pod is an ironically named v-shaped knob of
plastic or foam which is attached to the boat's seat right between the
paddler's legs and which provides the paddler an extra point of stability
during twists and cartwheels. But If you paddle naked in a boat affixed with
a Pleasure Pod, you will rack yourself up like a new game of nine-ball.
Which I learned to my sorrow the first time I tried to hit a pirouette at the
Staging Eddy. It didn't take long before Skeezix was eddied out beside me on
river left, and both of us were ripping Pleasure Pods out of our boats just
as fast as we could pop our spray skirts.
"Jeezamighty..." he moaned. His face was blue. "I hope I can still have
babies! This was your idea, you bonehead!"
"Hey...with any luck, they'll swell up on you," I told him. "You could
probably use the extra help." He grinned at me, and I thought that would be
the end of it.
But no. You see, it takes Hydro-Grip or some other industrial strength glue
to weld foam outfitting onto a plastic seat, and even after such outfitting
is torn off the seat a considerable amount of heinously strong residue
remains behind to ensnare the unwary.
So the next time that I went for a pirouette, I found I was firmly attached
to the seat of my kayak by the glue on my dander.
Trouble.
Next time I'll discuss the use of industrial solvents in emergency boat
evacuation, as well as a quick way to wax that embarrassing bikini line while
on road trips. So long!
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