h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I’ve thought to do the NaJo for the last few years, but never actually made it into print. Last year I managed to create the ‘A’ page, but failed at the last moment to produce anything that may be considered to be ‘content’. Nevertheless I thought again this year and decided to make a meaningful effort to produce something… anything. But what? You can already guess that I’m struggling, can’t you.

A couple or three years ago I took up paddling, (That’s in a boat, as opposed to with bare feet and a knotted handkerchief) and it has taken up quite a lot of my spare time. Originally it was to do a long distance race that features prominently in the paddling community’s calendar, but as time went on I gradually learned my shortcomings and that sort of faded away and was stacked at the back of the mind for future reference. I did eventually take up racing kayaks in the national Hasler league. That’s an annual series of races named after ‘Blondie’ Hasler, the commander of operation Francton, better known as the Cockleshell Hero’s raid on shipping during WW2.

Eventually the amount of time spent on training sessions and travelling to events became just too much, especially when the club that I belonged to seconded me to help with the coached sessions twice a week. Something had to give and I’m now taking a sabbatical of undetermined duration away from it all. Perhaps now the garden will get sorted properly and I may even find the time to write a journal.

Your kayaking stories were really informative. Now, I can't even paddle a canoe properly, but my brother-in-law loves both canoes and kayaks. He's done kayaking weekends on the rivers around here. Sometimes he takes his son and grandson.

I hope you won't give it up completely.

I probably won't be giving up altogether but it's going to be seriously curtailed, at least till next summer.

What I'd like to do is a bit of canoeing in the American 'Free Style' er... style. Canoeing done to music. You might already have seen this but as far as I'm aware it's not a mass participation sport and it's not practiced in the UK at all. ('Free Style' canoe in the UK is something else entirely.) It takes some skill to handle a canoe like these guys:

http://youtu.be/9iDVWn77VuM

Unfortunately this isn't a sport in the UK. Perhaps I could start a new trend.

I've never heard of this! This video is going to the brother-in-law, thanks! Very impressive sport.

Wow indeed That is skill!