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Alex Kerney

A Busy Summer

Since I last posted about the three-week sea kayaking trip that I led for Chewonki along the Maine coast I've been pretty busy. Since the 19th on July I've been all over the place including:

    <li>Got a call one evening from my boss during the couple of days off after the three-week trip that led to me going out and paddling with the Boatbuilders group for two nights. That's a really cool trip where the kids first spend two weeks (and change) building their own sea kayaks and then spend the remaining time of the five-week trip paddling as far up the coast as they can. I joined them in Muscongus Bay and paddled with them around to Owls Head.</li>

<li>Paddling twice with our North East Rivers group, once on the Deerfield Dryway in Western Mass, and once on the gorge section of the Kennebec which is incredibly fun big water that I hadn't done before.</li>

<li>Led two groups from Camp Winnebago (contract trip through Chewonki) on what were basically crash whitewater paddling courses up at Big Eddy. It's cool to see the differences in kids that participate in different programs.</li>

<li>Paddled some new stuff on the West Branch of the Penobscot with my buddy Tom and another friend Dave. Tom is just about to leave for the West Coast for a while, so it was fun to get a last hurrah paddling with him (which turned out to be a second to last hurrah as he also showed up to paddle on the Kennebec)</li>

<li>Been up to the Big Eddy Campground three times, and into Baxter Park twice.</li>

<li>Drove something like 1200 miles in Chewonki vehicles between resupplies, group pickup and drop-offs and returning participants back onto their trips. Only managed to get one flat tire in that time period on the logging roads, but I think built back that luck by retrieving a trailer that a group left at Big Eddy.</li>

<li>Interacted with six different groups in the field. Including showing up to one group only to find that a kids tent was sitting in a river that was about 4 inches deep during a ridiculous rainstorm.</li>

    Now for a handful of pics:

    [largeimage description="Boatbuilders on Harbor Island"][/largeimage]

    [largeimage description="Sunset over Cribworks"][/largeimage]

    [largeimage description="The Great Game of Raft Dodging"][/largeimage]

    [largeimage description="Tom Going Deep"][/largeimage]

    Finally it was the end of the summer, so we had a party which included contra-dancing which had many smaller fans.

    [largeimage description="Chewonki Contra-Dancin"]

    [/largeimage]

    Tom also just posted an amazing video that he made of some paddling this spring, so check it out.

    http://vimeo.com/27709618

    If you've noticed that anything has acted a little funky lately, wander over to the blog where I'm going to throw up a post describing whats going on soon, but largely you can buy things right off the site now!