Scot Loveland
Kayak Habit

This color was created to support the launch of our new Kayak Diva line of products. After input from a number of female paddlers, it was concluded that Kayak Habit needed some products that better represented the energetic and growing female segment of whitewater paddlers. Currently, Kayak Habit is just carrying the logo on a t-shirt, but we hope to increase the product line as sales dictate. The logo was created by a female paddler who felt that it captured the strength and beauty of her sister paddlers while maintaining the spirit of Kayak Habit’s curent logo. Please feel free to offer any feedback regarding this product line, or any others for that matter.

Also, coming soon to Kayak Habit are Flex Fit baseball hats. The hats will be in tan or black and have our logo embroidered on them. The best part is, they are made from an environmentally friendy bamboo blend! Suggested retail will be $19.95.

My wife and I were having a discussion the other day in the shower about our 3 year old daughter. Yes, newlyweds and other assorted doe-eyed youngsters, after 17 years of marriage sometimes you shower together and just have a meaningful conversation. It is not as bad as it sounds. But I digress. In addition to the normal parental blather about what a headstrong, independent, ornery, beautiful, appreciative gift from God Chloe is, the conversation eventually wound its way around to the topic of our differing approaches to child rearing.

Now I know what some of you Moms out there might be thinking, “Oh sure, it is easy for you to expound on the nuances of raising a child when you just deal with them for a few hours between work and bedtime and on the weekends.” Please note that for the last year and a half I was proudly elevated to the position of Mr. Mom, so it is from experience, and not from afar, that I offer these observations. An expert, no, but I have changed a dirty diaper or two. Additionally, please note that my wife is a wonderful mother whom our daughter absolutely adores so I am not degrading her as a parent in any way, but sometimes she and Chloe butt heads: much more so than Chloe and I do. Some of that stems from our divergent outlooks on what is acceptable behavior in a 3 year old young lady. I know this might be really hard to believe coming from a kayaker, but my style tends toward the lenient and free flowing. It is not that I do not have boundaries, but those boundaries, though well defined, tend to be much further apart than those of my wife. I am not just a “Good Time Charlie”, but I firmly believe that well behaved women rarely make history; or so a bumper sticker once told me.

Before you ask me what this has to do kayaking, it was during this conversation that I had a soapy epiphany. I realized that my particular parental style is just like kayaking (for the most part). When a novice first picks up a paddle and attempts to master all that is kayaking, they often see the water as an opponent. It is something to be battled against and overcome. It is as exciting and wondrous, as it is fearsome and unfathomably mysterious. Beginners will frequently make the mistake of trying to bend the flow of a living river to their will. They can’t read the water and they certainly don’t look past what is inexplicably and uncontrollably happening to them and their tiny plastic “death machine” at that particular moment. Those who realize their mistakes eventually continue on in the sport (where they will make even more mistakes, but that is all part of the fun). Those who either don’t reach this realization, or can’t give up control to the river, sell their equipment on Ebay at bargain basement prices.

As beginners progress to intermediates, they figure out that they can’t possibly control the river, but they still fight hard against it to place their kayak into what they feel is the optimal position for running a rapid successfully. They are no longer so teeth-clenched, white-knuckled, eyes-closed that they can’t see the next move, but forget negotiating a complex, multi-move rapid without being right on the stern of the more experienced boater in front of them. The good news is that with enough time on the river, and with a minimum of perceived near-death experiences, all this can be overcome to progress to the next level.

It is in this hallowed realm of the “Pretty Good Kayaker”(of which I consider myself to be) that the lessons learned on the river translates directly to better than adequate parenting. The “Pretty Good Kayaker/Parent” knows that the river, much like the will of a child, is not meant to be harnessed and controlled. It is meant to run free and strong. The “Pretty Good Kayaker/Parent” works in conjunction with the heart and flow of the river/child to help them achieve a goal. They make use of what the river/child gives them, both good and bad, to create a positive experience. They take the time to read and understand the river/child in order to move forward with enjoyment, harmony and purpose. The “PGK/P” knows when it is okay to play and when to be serious and focused. They have their eyes wide open to see not just the here and now, but what is happening further along so that they can plan what actions to take. They anticipate danger and prepare for it appropriately. They still have “off” days and make plenty of mistakes. Don’t kid yourself; even the pros get chundered on occasion…they just don’t show it on those really cool DVDs. Thanks to experience, skill and a calm demeanor they often work their way out of trouble. On those occasions when they do take a physical or emotional beat down, they do their best to learn from it so that they may avoid similar pitfalls in the future. They also knows that consistency wins out over a spectacular new move on most days. Above all, the “PGK/P” knows that the river/child will throw them a curve ball on occasion and they look forward to such surprises with excited anticipation. It is in these new experiences where we grow as both parents and kayakers. It is a relationship of joyous symbiosis.

As you can see from the photo, Chloe is a curious mixture of both Mommy and Daddy. She has been on the water since she was six months old and has several multi-hour trips under her belt. She was the proud recipient of her very first kayak (a red Jackson Fun1…like Daddy’s) this past September on her third birthday. When someone asks me if I want her to be a kayaker someday, I say absolutely yes…if she wants to be one. But no matter what she chooses to pursue, I hope she does so with all of her heart. Most of all, I hope that some day she is a class V parent to her own children.

Princess Chloe, the kayaker. Or is it Kayaker Chloe, the princess?

October 25,2008. The Fall Feeder Slalom Race Day, and what a race day on the feeder canal it turned out to be. Fifteen gates, for the most part, not too easy, but not too hard either. That is, except gates two and three. It required the greatest move of all time (in my opinion after four slalom races); the back ferry. A hard, but fun move…if you get a chance to practice it a few thousand times. Me? I tried it twice before the race. I pulled it off on both race runs except that I missed gate four after the move on my first attempt. My second run was golden, I think, because it poured rain all day especially at the end when the organizers were trying to pack up and all of the score sheets got soaked. I may have won my class, actually I’m pretty sure that I did, but it’s not certain. Either way, I felt really good about my runs because it was only my second race in a slalom boat.

October 26, 2008. Triathalon Day (approx. 2 mile bike, 2 mile run and 1 mile paddle on either the Little Falls rapid or a portion of the feeder canal). One word to describe it would be: epic (crazy was crossed out). Why? I picked this because I was doing well on the bike (the first event) and I was ahead of Eliza (my fellow female competitor) at the half way point. Then what should happen? I crashed my bike and Eliza and her bike landed on my leg. OUCH! The funny thing is that I was thinking when I saw all of the boys riding ahead of us in a pack, how funny it would be if they all piled up… I guess I found out how NOT funny it was. Anyway, we both got up and brushed ourselves off and I told Eliza to go ahead because I needed a moment to get myself together because my leg HURT SO BAD!! I got back on my bike, but shortly found out that my bike was broken. My front brakes were completely locked up and one of my brake pads was completely gone. No wonder it was so hard to pedal. I thought it was because my leg hurt. My front brakes locking up might be why I crashed in the first place, but the investigation was called off due to lack of evidence, interest, or brain cells on my behalf. Hey it was a long weekend….

After about fifteen minutes, one of the parents who volunteered to help with the race came and picked me up. Ironically, it was Eliza’s Mom who greeted me with a big hug and a ride back to the bike finish line. Eliza is an awesome person. She actually alerted her Mom to the fact that we had crashed and I wasn’t close behind her on the bike. I chose not to do the run portion of the race because all of the other competitors were almost finished with the whole race and I had just gotten done with the bike portion(sort of). So, I went on to the paddle portion of the race and did just fine. Awards time, Eliza got first because she finished the whole race with an awesome time and I got second place even though I didn’t actually finish the race. All in all, it was a good weekend. I escaped with only a few bumps and bruises. How is that any different from any other weekend with Team Benson???

By Amos Ludwig

The weekend started by kissing the girls good-bye and sending them off to their DC trip. The rain was falling here, but would it be enough to bring up my favorite creek, the Nescopeck, for a Sunday paddle? Saturday came and went with no movement on the gauge even though it had rained alllllll day. Waking up very early Sunday morning, I hoped that the gauge had moved overnight. It had…to a bare minimum level and it was already dropping like a stone. Giving up on the thought of a day’s paddle, I started doing mundane chores around the house until the phone rang at 10:00 am with the offer of an 11 o’clock put-in for Broadhead’s Creek, another local gem.

What to do? To boat or not to boat? I had already canceled the thought of boating and was well into my projects and watching the made-for-TV movie of “Salem’s Lot” in which I had already invested 4 hours of my life that I would never get back. Having not boated in quite some time, let alone an unfamiliar creek, I was apprehensive to say the least. The question rears its ugly head yet again: To boat or not to boat? I lingered around the house for another 20 minutes trying to decide whether boating was a good idea or not (as if any of us doubts where this is going??). I walked outside, felt the air temperature, looked around and tried to figured out how to fit my Super Hero into the back of a Chevy Impala with no rack system. No problem, I would MAKE it fit somehow, because I’M GOING BOATING!! With indecision behind me, I gathered the rest of my gear and stuffed myself and my boat into the car and headed for the Broadhead.

Put-in was filled with many more emotions than I am used to. Maybe it was the fact that the girls weren’t there to help verbalize all of those feelings. Or the fact that I didn’t have to be the voice of reason when faced with all of those tough questions and not having to reassure either one of them of their abilities, skill-sets, and fashion/clothing choices. I was only concerned about me, Stu. Did I dress warmly enough? Am I going to be too hot? Will I hurt myself? Will I swim?

Of course, none of that mattered as soon as we put on!! By far, it was the most fun I had had in a very long time!! Because of the nature of Broadhead’s Creek, being mostly drop and pool or slide and pool, it was a foreign, but welcomed experience and more challenging than any of my boating adventures in recent memory. My day turned out much differently than if I had been sitting at home folding laundry and watching 6 more hours of “Salem’s Lot”. Aside from the 15 stitches in the face of one of my paddling buddies, the day was a total success, with no serious, permanent damage to our injured friend.

The moral of the story is: To boat or not to boat should NEVER even enter your mind…. You will rarely be sorry!!

“I used Paddle Grip for the first time on my last trip to Nepal. After fine tuning the roughness in one spot with a bit of sandpaper I grew to like it more and more. It was defiantly sunscreen weather and I hate having a slippery grip because of sunscreen. Paddle Grip fixed that problem. I continue to use it coz it works and it make my paddle a bit brighter too.
Cheers mate. I love the paddle grip stuff it worked a treat over in Nepal.”

Jamie Rosenberger just recently competed in the 2008 North American Freestyle Circuit (mens’ junior division). The portion he competed in was the CanAm Junior Freestyle Competition. The first event was the Blackwater Challenge on the Black River in Watertown, NY. Jamie placed a very promising 4th. The second event was the Canadian Cup held under sunny skies on the Corner Wave, Ottawa River on August 30th. This feature is located at McCoy’s Rapid and has never been used before in competition. It proved to be steep and flushy. While a bald eagle soared in lazy circles overhead, Jamie finished 3rd in the preliminaries out of 24 paddlers. Jamie then finished 3rd in the semi-finals with a combination of blunts, air blunts and clean spins. With no worse than a 4th place finish in competition over the past week, Jamie had high hopes for the finals. However, a self-described “not-such-a-good-run” landed him in the 5th position. While Jamie was pleased to make the finals, he has much higher goals and expectations. He definitely wants to be on the podium next year and plans to train even harder to help him accomplish his goal. Jamie strong showings in the two events ranked him 5th overall in CanAm competition and landed him a new sponsorship deal with Snap Dragon spray skirts.

As mentioned in our bio, Team Benson is an actual paddling families. We all paddle. Our individual journeys are as different as our personalities, but our differences are what make us special and what makes the family dynamic so unique. If the situation were different, well, we wouldn’t be “Team Benson”. Well defined and established roles are what make most family units work. That would be mostly true for Team Benson, as well. For a day on the river, Stu loads the boats and paddles, Brynn spends most of the morning in a pre-adolescent fog (rapidly evolving into teenage angst), and I pack and prepare everything else. What’s hard to define is where individual personal responsibilities leave off and the “River Mom” responsibilities begin. I feel personally responsible for the comfort, care, feeding and safety of Team Benson; on and off the river. No one has ever officially assigned me these “roles”, but something in my DNA just won’t let me relinquish these duties, even to the detriment of my own paddling progression. Hence the play on words…. my river roll. My flat water roll is lovely. My combat roll, however, is nearly non-existent at the moment, due in a very small part to a fractured ankle back in July. Stu would quickly come to my defense with some cliche like “we’re all between swims”, or” if you’re not swimming, you’re not progressing” blah blah blah…but I digress.

When any and/or all of the members of Team Benson are on the river, my River Mom senses tingle. I am unable to relinquish my role as River Mom to give my river roll my undivided attention. This is a point of serious conflict for me as the River Mom. There have been many instances, especially when Brynn was just starting to paddle, that Stu would be off surfing a wave or working on eddy hopping hundreds of yards away and he had no idea what she was up to. If I hadn’t been right with her, she would have been completely on her own. Even though kayaking is marvelous for nurturing and encouraging personal responsibilities, I felt as River Mom that I needed to be right there just in case Brynn needed me. She rarely did, but I was there anyway. When I would get frustrated with my very slow learning curve, Stu would always inquire as to why I didn’t do more eddy hopping and surfing. I would then have to bring to his attention that if I were doing all of those things, who would be watching Brynn? Oh yeah, Brynn…. We tried to switch caretaker roles but it was uncomfortable for all of us and I thought that the rewards of paddling as a family far outweighed the lack of skill development on my part. That was, until Brynn’s abilities took a huge leap forward, and I was now in the “role” of the weakest link. Complicated and conflicting emotions; mostly fear that I would be left behind.

Putting on any river every time is a leap of faith. An equation of calculated risk, plus river difficulty, with paddling abilities thrown in to always try to keep the odds in your favor. I feel that if I let my River Mom guard down at any given moment, those odds get exponentially tipped over to the “what if” side. That’s where my faith needs to be kicked up a notch. I’m certain that the head games involved in my river roll issue is all wrapped up in my River Mom role issue. A larger dose of faith might just be the “X” factor missing in my complicated emotional roll/role equation. Much more faith in my family’s abilities and much, much more faith in my own. That and a fractured ankle that needs to fully heal:)

To be continued…

Recently, I have had the opportunity (well they call it that, seems to me like a catastrophe) to return to graduate school to further my education. As an avid kayaker who has previously enjoyed spending the majority of my free time in the quest for new rivers, the added pressure of schooling has caused me, at least temporarily, to place a primary emphasis on my academic success and only a secondary interest in my kayaking prowess. While the gigantic cutback in boating is quite a loss, it is only a short term loss. The long-term payoff being movement to a job with even more time off that allows me to boat on an even grander scale. What follows are my mental adjustments that make this departure from the obsessive pursuit of kayaking possible. I list them as a pseudo-guide for other boaters who may one day find themselves in a similar position.

First off, it pays to remember the end goal and say it to as many people as possible (hence this writing) as it keeps what you are doing in perspective. Without this perspective you may find yourself wondering why you did this to yourself in the first place. Secondly, it is important to make the most out of your few remaining moments of free time. This means boating with your closest of friends and making the most of each day, either by grabbing that extra eddy, catching that other creek nearby, or simply stopping for a moment and being thankful that you are on the water at all. Thirdly, you have to break yourself of watching those message boards and river gauges as they just emphasize the fact that you aren’t there. Finally, take stock in the silver lining, like the fact that you don’t have to pay an arm and a leg for gas every other day to go boating because you are at home bettering your future income.

So follow those few simple steps and you will see that life goes on. Besides school does have a few breaks along the way, some of which are during prime weather seasons to hit those hard to catch creeks. I’d love to tell you more, but I have to run off to fire up a Class V lit review on Social Theory. Peace.