Paddling humor: one-liners said to you while paddling

[Mnoutdoorfunguy]

I, for one, could use some humor.
I thought it would be fun to hear paddling related one-liners said to us while we have been out participating in our sport.

I have three.

My wife and I together:
A year ago last Spring, we canoed the Headwaters of the Mississippi.
Part of the trip was over the Minnesota fishing opener.
It was much busier than I thought it would be on the opener weekend.
Since we were in a canoe and had our gear in the boat, we endlessly got
“going all the way?”
Meaning, of course, all the way to the Gulf.
Our replies, out of earshot, became:
No, too old
No, too cold
No, too tired at the end of the day
You get the picture.

Said to me:

Having just gotten done with a paddle, we were stopped at a red light with our 22 foot tandem kayak on the trailer and the windows open.
A young lady pulls up along side and asks,
”excuse me sir, how long is it?”
Well, that has done wonders for my male ego over the years and my wife still gives me grief for it.

Said to my wife:

We were paddling our kayaks (21” wide) on a nearby lake passing by a couple fishing in a small resort-owned boat.
My wife was nearest and the guy says,
”how do you get in those skinny-arse boats?”
My wife has relived that many times and takes it as gospel that if she can still get in the boat she is in great shape.

Thanks and thanks in advance for sharing.

 

[pblanc]

The most common semi-humorous thing said to me while boating has occurred many times. While carrying a 6 foot plastic kayak playboat down to the water wearing a dry suit, helmet, Type V PFD, and a neoprene spray skirt I have many times been asked by a passerby "Goin' fishin"?"

 

[frozentripper]

... another tippy canoe entry/exit story... on Georgian Bay which sees (actually saw) some American boat traffic. One old guy was watching us out of some goddawfully expensive cabin cruiser... "Yo bettah be careful theah boy... ah sweah, yo gonna crack yoah haid on them rocks"... that brainworm had us repeating that for days, including climbing out of the tent first thing in the morning, and on every port for the remainder of the trip.

 

[Alan Gage]

My first canoe camping trip was the Big Fork River in northern Minnesota. It runs north and empties into the Rainy River on the Canadian border. I was paddling a 14' Wenonah Vagabond. With rain in the forecast I paddled 45 miles on the last day and pulled up to the boat ramp about 10:00pm, well after dark in April. I was surprised to see the parking lot full of trucks and boat trailers. Apparently it was the sturgeon opener and everyone was out for it.

As I slid up to the ramp a DNR officer came down to meet me. His eyes got really big and he said, "You've been sturgeon fishing in that!?"

Alan

 

[ppine]

One summer night at 3 o'clock in the morning my friend and I had our sleeping bags hanging in a tree next to the Snake River in Idaho. The river had come up over night and soaked our camp from the release from the dam upstream. "Its a good thing there are no women on this trip" was all he said.

I was on a portage in the Boundary Waters about 40 miles 15 portages from Moose Lake. A guy stopped me on the trail to ask about my cow dog. "Where did you get her" asked. "I got her in a poker game" I replied. "Did you win or lose" was his snappy comeback.

 

[Guest]

I, for one, could use some humor.
I thought it would be fun to hear paddling related one-liners said to us while we have been out participating in our sport.

I don’t even know where to start.

“Anyone seen Mary?”. We had left her behind at the take out after a long group day trip with paddlers randomly piling into unassigned cars and open truck beds. Mary had wandered off unannounced to take a leak in the woods.

We stopped, multiple times, for gas and beer and ice and groceries en route back to camp before that querulous phrase was first uttered. It was quite dark before we returned for her, but she took being abandoned well. So well I later dated her.

“The wind always dies down at sunset”. My own assurance on a group coastal trip when the wind howled insanely all of paddle-out day. The wind did not die down at sunset, and the overcast night sky, new moon, can’t see the bow during the paddle out became the stuff of deserved legend as I led us blindly up dead end guts trying to hug the wind protected shoreline.

That same trip, one of our more novice Aussie paddlers assumed command in frustration of my blind ineptitude, confidently announcing “I am a great night navigator, follow me”. I did not follow him, I already knew better. A few other folks did, to their lasting regret.

Those two lines, “The wind always dies down at sunset” and “I’m a great night navigator” have lived on, oft-uttered now for 30 years.

Perhaps my favorite line(s), “He’s going to get lost you know”.

Group night paddle on a coastal delta estuary where three rivers come braided together in a everything-looks-the-same Spartina grass marsh. It had been a pace-of-slowest-paddler group trip, and during a marsh muckle up I felt a sudden, overwhelming need for speed, and announced “I’m going up this way!” and took off east up-delta, stroking for everything I was worth.

The last thing I heard as I sped away was Joel’s wife Kathy saying “He’s going to get lost you know”, and Joel’s response, “Yeah, but he likes being lost”.

No one followed my speedy wild hair, and I did get lost. And enjoyed it, more so because Joel and Kathy and a few others waited long at the take out for me to make sure I did in fact make it back.

Screw a GPS; if you never get lost you won’t properly appreciate getting found.

 

[lowangle al]

It was a solo trip back when I started taking a long paddle. About five lakes in I'm paddling my loaded tandem canoe while standing. I came across another group and a ten year old kid in one of the boats tells me that you are not supposed to stand up in a canoe. I said, "Yea I know, that's what I told my wife two lakes back." The old guy with him laughed.

 

[gumpus]

I went back to Ann Arbor over the summer for a good long upstream paddle on a section of the Huron River that I used to paddle often. It's a section where they rent boats for downstream paddlers and I chose a weekend since I wanted to see other people for a change. Passing one large group a man that looked like a professor said to his group "we are going in the wrong direction". Later on a young woman said "2-way traffic?".

Just recently I was paddling upstream on a local river and working my way through a section with current and fallen trees and my boat was getting pushed around a bit and I passed two fishermen anchored in their powerboat and one said "you're crazy". They asked where I put in and I told them "about 7 miles downstream" and one said he'd seen me launch at a farm (that's another 5 miles downstream) and asked if that was where I launched. I say "no, that would be crazy".

 

[Turtle2]

I once poled up a local creek from one bridge to the next one upstream. there was a fisherman at the upstream bridge who asked me while pointing downstream " you do know the creek runs that way, don't you"

 

[Jim Dodd]

Putting in at bridge one Summer, I slipped while getting into my Cedar strip canoe. I saw a bearded guy fishing nearby. I said , after recovering and getting in my canoe," That was embarrassing ! At least you don't know who I am ! " his response was, "I know who you are ! " I was really embarrassed then !
Later I ran into him again. The Joke was on me.
We had a good Laugh !

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

I was all set to paddle my outrigger canoe in a lagoon from Turtle Beach on Siesta Key on the west coast of Florida. It was crowded sit-on-tops, rec kayaks, would-be surfers, million dollar yachts, and legions of bronzed Roman god and Playboy model types. Not a one had a life jacket on . . . except me. Not only that, but my life jacket was festooned with 50' of throw rope, VHF radio, PLB, cell phone, waterproof camera, and rescue knife.

A middle-aged lady worriedly asked me, "Are you a suicide bomber?"

The lagoon turned out to have an average depth of about three feet.

 

[stevet]

While paddling across a lake near Bellaire MI in a tandem with my wife, a fisherman in a passing boat seemed obviously concerned for our welfare and shouted out in an incredulous tone “do you know it’s 80 feet deep out here?” Guess he assumed we would capsize. We did have pfds on.

 

[Guest]

Last (maybe) one, another Kathy utterance, “YOU CHEATED!”. We were on a tidal group daytrip in the expansive marshes of Dorchester County MD, down Pokata Creek, up Island Creek to Island Pond, so no opportunity for tidal-assist timing.

I should note that, our purported destination, Island Pond, is 8 miles up Island Creek after the confluence. We had an oddly mixed group of tandem and solo canoe, and sea kayaks. We stopped for a group muckle-up a couple miles up Island Creek, and when the sea kayakers wanted to push on the canoeists assured them “Ok, we’ll catch up”.

We did not catch up. We had all of the easily accessible delectables in our canoes, including some of theirs. We also had, oddly but perhaps not surprisingly, two inflatable “guitars”. These things (later that night as we celebrated our victory)

EK_0042 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

We enjoyed a long muckle up air-guitar concert sing-along on Island Creek, taking turns with our favorite tunes, lasting until the sea kayaker contingent came long-day-paddle back down creek and paddled past without much of a stop in their speedy glory. We trailed after them shortly.

A mile downstream from our air-guitar concert muckle-up Elliot’s Island Road comes within feet of an easy landing, where my partner and I had stopped for a much needed bladder evacuation. There is nothing, nothing, on that stretch of that marsh backcountry peninsular road, but as I was voiding my bladder I heard the rumble of an old pickup truck approaching, walked to the road edge, and stuck out my thumb.

Of course the driver stopped, and I asked if he would take me down to where we launched at Pokata Creek. Sure enough, hop in.

I was at the Pokata Creek launch in mere minutes, got the van, drove back to our boats, racked them and drove back to the put in before the sea kayakers had yet arrived.

Kathy, arriving at the launch and seeing us, boats already racked on the van, leisurely drinking a champion’s beer, absolutely bellowed “YOU CHEATED!”

I had heretofore not known Kathy had such a forceful and aggrieved voice. She did not know exactly how we had cheated for years, and “You cheated” remains a rallying cry for the disaffected.

Denouement to that story; one of the sea kayakers, despite having a GPS, overshot the confluence with Pokata Creek and continued down to Fishing Bay.

 

[Cheeseandbeans]

Running down some class II with a poor fly fisherman nymphimg some pocket water-“ you guys sounded like a dang freight train” as we passed. We must of grazed a few rocks I guess...

Bob

 

[yknpdlr]

It was 2009 and the first ever Yukon River 1000 mile canoe race. I was paddling bow seat navigation in a 34 foot long voyageur canoe, with 7 of us paddlers in the boat. We had heard that the First nation native villages along the way were alerted and knew about the race, in case any team needed assistance along the way. So here we are in the highly braided multi-channel portion of the Yukon Flats near the Arctic Circle, and I'm working hard, paddling my cadence while reading my charts finding our hopefully fastest current/shortest distance pre-planned route amongst hundreds of islands and gravel shoals. Many choices to be made.

Off in the distance ahead I see a fish wheel attached to an island. it is a large wood and net device powered by the current, turning a basket to catch salmon as they swim upstream and deposit them into a collection bin. I could see a First Nation's couple of guys were tending it when one guy suddenly powered his motorboat directly toward us. I wondered if we were in trouble for violating some kind of private passage where we shouldn't be. When the rough looking man arrived at our canoe he stood up and held out his hands about three feet apart and said in his best English: "You want fish?"

He was offering for free to us two very large fresh caught king salmon from his boat. Unfortunately, unless we wanted sushi, we had no way to prepare a whole fish during the race. All of our food was pre prepared home dehydrated, which we rehydrated and ate hot while still underway, each paddler in turn taking a short individual break from paddling. We would only have a very few very short rest hours each "night" to sleep on the riverbank according to mandatory race rules. No time to prepare or to cook fish and still maintain our position lead in the race. I felt really sorry to turn him down, and hoped I diid not offend too badly.

 

[dougd]

Poling up my local river I ran into the livery crowd coming down. One very serious looking woman said to me, "You Are Going The Wrong Way!" Didn't say a word but was thinking maybe they were.

 

[sweeper]

Stripping to his blue underwear my grandson waded into the lake 'It's a $9 lure!'

 

[frozentripper]

I've told this story before but WTH...

On a portage there were couple of trippers who seemed to be having a rough time. We saw them approaching and said hello when they were close. And the first thing one of them said to us after pausing for dramatic effect and grim intensity......

"This is a harsh and desolate land."

For the rest of our trip, that became the fallback explanation if anything was wrong.

If the weather wasn't absolutely top-notch that day, blue skies and sunbeams bursting forth from heaven... "This is a harsh and desolate land."

If the portage or campsite did not have an easy sand beach and was slippery with rocks... "This is a harsh and desolate land."

If the evening meal was burned even slightly or if the wine wasn't a perfect match that evening... "This is a harsh and desolate land."

If there was even a single mosquito bite, just one... "This is a harsh and desolate land."

If the sunset at the end of the day wasn't perfect for magic hour... "This is a harsh and desolate land."

If the thunderbox didn't have a scenic view... "This is a harsh and desolate land."

Anyway you get the idea... this was said again entering the Huntsville McDonald's on the drive home.

 

[Guest]

Stripping to his blue underwear my grandson waded into the lake 'It's a $9 lure!'

Sweeper, that photo looks familiar. Is it site #8 on Little Tupper by any chance?

If so that is one of my favorite sites on the lake.

 

[Chip]

We were at the ranger station to pull permits for the back country sites. The ranger informed us that we had to be out by Sunday, because that was youth hunting day. Scott cocked his head with a quizzical look and slowly asked, “ is that even... legal?”