Canoeing trip at Pine Barrens
The mail from Office of International Programs at UPenn came at around 9:30, 24th April about a day long Canoeing trip at Pine Barrons on 29th. I looked at the details, got amused and then choose to ignore it as I hadn't had great experiences at the events organized by OIP before. I almost forgot about the trip till Vikranth called me up at 10:00 and asked if I was interested. That call was enough to get me interested in the trip again. I rushed to take the tickets before they were sold out. Santi, Shravan, Raja, Sandhya and Mounica were unfortunately tied up for the weekend. So, it was going to be only Vikranth and me. I reached the OIP and asked for two tickets if they were available. Soon, I found out that we were the second on the list to buy the tickets. At that moment, It looked as if our excitement preceded the rate of tickets sales by a mile.
A day before the trip, we received a mail from OIP about the stuff we should bring to the trip and the stuff that we shouldn't. The mail contained a long list of instructions but what it wanted to convey was a list of three things
1) Get lots of food.
2) Get extra pair of dry clothes.
3) Sleep well before the trip.
So, we were all set on the day of the trip. We filled out backpacks as much as possible. We were supposed to reach the starting point (OIP) by 8 AM where a school bus would take us to the Pine Barrens. So, we started from our home by around 7 AM. Here are a couple of pics as we waited for the city bus.
We reached OIP on time. The trip from OIP to the Pine Barrens was only one hour long but it was kind of boring because everyone on the bus was half-asleep and more so because we didn't know anyone there. We reached the Pine Barrens by around 9:30 and soon, we were ready to go canoeing. The following pic is the place where we were allowed to choose our canoes :).
Mark, one of the organizers, took a small session telling people about the inventory of canoeing and about how to hold the canoe paddle etc.. It was a good session but we later hoped he had also told us about how to control the canoe :). Here is a pic taken at the beginning of our adventure ride.
The stream flowed at variable speeds. Sometimes, the stream would be still and it would make us feel proud at our canoeing dexterity. And there would be times when nothing that we did made any difference to the canoe and it would go randomly downstream or it would hit the branches at the edge of the stream. We didn't have too many accidents in the beginning of our course. However, we were witness to quite a few accidents of the other canoes. One of the canoes had capzised and they were waiting to get back on the track. As we realized we were doing quite well, we also felt the excitement of an adventure, the sense of danger and thrill of learning. It was far more exciting than I had hoped for and I was loving every bit of it. The following are some of the pics that we "managed" to take from our canoe. I was on the front and Vikranth was in change of affairs at the back of the canoe.
I remember an instance where Vikranth was so involved in taking pics (actually he trusted me to look out for danger) when he didn't realize that the back of the canoe was going to hit a branch. Somehow, he could save himself and the camera at the last moment.
The entire course was for 5 hours. After we had canoed for one hour or so, we decided that we should bank our canoe and take a few photographs of the beautiful surroundings and of the two of us together on the canoe. As we were taking the photographs, Mark who was holding the rear of our battalion also arrived indicating that we were now one of the last people in the group. Here is a pic which we took at that location.
We resumed our journey from there. As we almost reached the place where people had stopped to have their lunch, our canoe hit an underwater root of a tree as we tried to save ourselves from the projecting branch of a tree and it overturned. We couldn't believe, both of us were in water now. The stream wasn't deep and so we were able to stand there. But it was flowing at great pace and our legs were frozen. Hearing Vikranth's shout, I soon realized that my paddle has slipped out of my hands and was flowing downstream at great speed. It sounded impossible for me to go and catch the paddle. So, We decided to look for the paddle later and hoped it got struck among the branches somewhere downstream. Vikranth did a great job and gathered both our bags, his shoes and the camera as I held on to the boat. Now, the immediate goals were to straigten the boat and reach the bank before cursing our luck. The area where our canoe capsized was a camping area, so there were a few benches for us to dry our clothes. The water had successfully penetrated my bag and wet my clothes, Vikranth was lucky as he kept his clothes in a plastic cover. We put our clothes for drying and pounced on our lunch boxes. We laughed at ourselves and thought it would be nice to take a picture there. This was an incident that we would remember forever. But, we got another shock when we found out that a little bit of water had got into Vikranth's camera and it was no longer working. (The following are the last couple of pictures we had taken before our canoe capsized).
While we were drying our clothes, we saw two more canoes overturning at the same place where our canoe had capsized. Mark's was one of them. We requested Mark to find our paddle downstream as we couldn't find it by walking on the shore. Mark was an expert at canoeing and so we hoped he could find it real quickly. Soon after he traced our paddle and gave it back to us, he and his girl-friend also stopped for lunch at the same location.
It took quite a while for our clothes to dry and soon, we resumed our course. I sat at the rear now and was incharge of directing the canoe. We were extremely low on confidence now and every moment looked dangerous. We couldn't imagine our canoe capsizing one more time, it would be disasterous. But luckily, we quickly learnt about how to control the canoe effectively and now, we were paddling with great confidence and making the best manoevers. We reached a place where others were waiting for us. We had covered two-thirds of our planned course but people had decided to stop as there was not enough time to continue till the end. In our entire group, 5 canoes had capsized at some point of time which the organizers didn't expect. We returned our canoes and took the bus back home. Extremely tired but greatly satisfied with our experience.
The trip was just amazing ! By the way, the camera is fine now after Vikranth dried it in front of a fan for three days.
A day before the trip, we received a mail from OIP about the stuff we should bring to the trip and the stuff that we shouldn't. The mail contained a long list of instructions but what it wanted to convey was a list of three things
1) Get lots of food.
2) Get extra pair of dry clothes.
3) Sleep well before the trip.
So, we were all set on the day of the trip. We filled out backpacks as much as possible. We were supposed to reach the starting point (OIP) by 8 AM where a school bus would take us to the Pine Barrens. So, we started from our home by around 7 AM. Here are a couple of pics as we waited for the city bus.
We reached OIP on time. The trip from OIP to the Pine Barrens was only one hour long but it was kind of boring because everyone on the bus was half-asleep and more so because we didn't know anyone there. We reached the Pine Barrens by around 9:30 and soon, we were ready to go canoeing. The following pic is the place where we were allowed to choose our canoes :).
Mark, one of the organizers, took a small session telling people about the inventory of canoeing and about how to hold the canoe paddle etc.. It was a good session but we later hoped he had also told us about how to control the canoe :). Here is a pic taken at the beginning of our adventure ride.
The stream flowed at variable speeds. Sometimes, the stream would be still and it would make us feel proud at our canoeing dexterity. And there would be times when nothing that we did made any difference to the canoe and it would go randomly downstream or it would hit the branches at the edge of the stream. We didn't have too many accidents in the beginning of our course. However, we were witness to quite a few accidents of the other canoes. One of the canoes had capzised and they were waiting to get back on the track. As we realized we were doing quite well, we also felt the excitement of an adventure, the sense of danger and thrill of learning. It was far more exciting than I had hoped for and I was loving every bit of it. The following are some of the pics that we "managed" to take from our canoe. I was on the front and Vikranth was in change of affairs at the back of the canoe.
I remember an instance where Vikranth was so involved in taking pics (actually he trusted me to look out for danger) when he didn't realize that the back of the canoe was going to hit a branch. Somehow, he could save himself and the camera at the last moment.
The entire course was for 5 hours. After we had canoed for one hour or so, we decided that we should bank our canoe and take a few photographs of the beautiful surroundings and of the two of us together on the canoe. As we were taking the photographs, Mark who was holding the rear of our battalion also arrived indicating that we were now one of the last people in the group. Here is a pic which we took at that location.
We resumed our journey from there. As we almost reached the place where people had stopped to have their lunch, our canoe hit an underwater root of a tree as we tried to save ourselves from the projecting branch of a tree and it overturned. We couldn't believe, both of us were in water now. The stream wasn't deep and so we were able to stand there. But it was flowing at great pace and our legs were frozen. Hearing Vikranth's shout, I soon realized that my paddle has slipped out of my hands and was flowing downstream at great speed. It sounded impossible for me to go and catch the paddle. So, We decided to look for the paddle later and hoped it got struck among the branches somewhere downstream. Vikranth did a great job and gathered both our bags, his shoes and the camera as I held on to the boat. Now, the immediate goals were to straigten the boat and reach the bank before cursing our luck. The area where our canoe capsized was a camping area, so there were a few benches for us to dry our clothes. The water had successfully penetrated my bag and wet my clothes, Vikranth was lucky as he kept his clothes in a plastic cover. We put our clothes for drying and pounced on our lunch boxes. We laughed at ourselves and thought it would be nice to take a picture there. This was an incident that we would remember forever. But, we got another shock when we found out that a little bit of water had got into Vikranth's camera and it was no longer working. (The following are the last couple of pictures we had taken before our canoe capsized).
While we were drying our clothes, we saw two more canoes overturning at the same place where our canoe had capsized. Mark's was one of them. We requested Mark to find our paddle downstream as we couldn't find it by walking on the shore. Mark was an expert at canoeing and so we hoped he could find it real quickly. Soon after he traced our paddle and gave it back to us, he and his girl-friend also stopped for lunch at the same location.
It took quite a while for our clothes to dry and soon, we resumed our course. I sat at the rear now and was incharge of directing the canoe. We were extremely low on confidence now and every moment looked dangerous. We couldn't imagine our canoe capsizing one more time, it would be disasterous. But luckily, we quickly learnt about how to control the canoe effectively and now, we were paddling with great confidence and making the best manoevers. We reached a place where others were waiting for us. We had covered two-thirds of our planned course but people had decided to stop as there was not enough time to continue till the end. In our entire group, 5 canoes had capsized at some point of time which the organizers didn't expect. We returned our canoes and took the bus back home. Extremely tired but greatly satisfied with our experience.
The trip was just amazing ! By the way, the camera is fine now after Vikranth dried it in front of a fan for three days.
posted by sriram at
11:06 AM
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