Recent content by Idiot Savant

I haven't yet. Right now, I still can't get away that long. I think people in my club have. If I get time, in the next few days, I'll take a look on our website and if there is a write up of a trip, I'll post a link.

I bought a new IK before Thanksgiving, but I'm counting it as a Black Friday sale. I took advantage of some holiday deals on exercise equipment. I was tempted by some other great bargains, but I have way too much gear already.

I'm talking paddling or camping gear, of course. Or, even, fitness equipment, if it's for staying in shape for paddling.

From my own personal experience, I can tell you that you can build yourself back up but, even so, I'd rule out most rotomolded kayaks because of the weight. Even if you could handle them, after you recover, you won't be able to down the road. Canoes can be very light. The thwarts and yoke are...

I don't have a back forty to keep me in shape, but I'm also a cyclist and I work on muscles for doing stuff like loading a canoe onto my truck and carrying canoes and gear up a river bank. I think excess weight is a big problem for me. I'm about 20 pounds heavier than I'd like to be and extra...

The Bull and some of the other machines you guys have posted look pretty good, but I spent less than $200 on my rower. I'll take a look at some of these and see if I can afford any of them. I used to do a lot of cross country skiing, in the winter, but messed up foot joints, open heart surgery...

I'd like to see a photo of your friend's set-up. It's hard for me to picture it from your description. I use the rower one arm at a time, mostly. I grab the bar with my index finger on one side of the tether and the other fingers on the other side and I turn the bar so it's more vertical.

I don't live in an area where you can paddle year-round and I'm not inclined to watch football and drink beer all winter and expect to be ready for paddling in the spring. Last winter, I trained my arse off and had less than fantastic results. I'm making some minor changes. I use my Total Gym a...

I'm pretty sold on inflatables, but my experience is strictly with IKs, but I have quite a bit with them. I paddled a friend's all drop stich Sea Eagle, which would probably be similar to an all drop stitch canoe. It tracks better than an IK with regular side tubes and is a bit faster but...

I think it was Gumotex that said they were the biggest. Name recognition here may be very different from that in the rest of the world. We may have a distorted view. Hard to say, but Gumotex does seem to be pretty popular in Europe. Certainly lots of videos of their boats. I always thought...

A guy in my club had one of the Travel Canoes and he said it wasn't very stable. I'm sold on inflatable kayaks. There must be a good inflatable canoe out there.

I don't remember exactly what I was searching for, but I came across a bunch of videos, by some British guy, about paddling Gumotex inflatables. Turns out that Gumotex is the largest manufacturer of inflatables in the world and hugely popular in the EU. They make both inflatable kayaks and...

Some of the backbone members of my club are gradually easing their way out of the sport due to old age and heath/injury issues. In 2021 I had a major medical incident that set me back. I've built myself back up quite a bit from that, but last winter I really worked hard and thought I'd hit...

My biggest complaint about my Echo is the low freeboard. I left it home on my last trip for that very reason. I was worried it might swamp. An Echo with more freeboard would be a great boat.

If you hand someone a bent shaft for the first time they almost always hold it backwards. The effect of using it backwards is it tends to push the boat down rather than lift it up and the phase where you are pushing water back is shorter. All marathon canoe racers use bent shafts and they use...