2.2 Nobody's perfect
When I got to Juno, the other kayakers were already gathered round a fire waiting for me. I rushed up, flushed from running, damp from the steady drizzle outside. I glanced around. There were only three of them — the short stocky guide, a fidgety guy with a camera and a silent lanky guy leaning near the wood burning stove.
“You must be Linda,” the short stocky man with shoulders as wide as a double door refrigerator said.
“You must be our guide,” I said.
My fellow kayakers and I headed out. We drove down a long muddy road through the woods and made our way between fallen logs to the edge of the bay for a safety lesson — how to roll the boat if we turned upside down, how to retrieve it if we fell out. I prayed for the sun as it ducked in and out between the trees, watching the lapping grey water that felt cold by sight, never mind rolling head first into it. The water seemed to extend forever, at least as far as the looming mountains edged in snow in the distance. There were plenty of waves. We put on our booted rubber overalls that came mid-chest and rubber skirts that fit over the two open mouths of each kayak. Then, in the face of what looked like all these obstacles, we got ready to put in south of Juneau in pairs.
“You paddle with me,” the guide said to me. I was scarred, but now I was disappointed. “Don’t do all the work for me,” I protested.
As soon as we entered the boats, the tall, lanky guy, tan and blonde, kind of aloof and definitely attractive, discovered that one of his foot pedals was jammed. Without enough room for his legs, he and the short stocky guide were forced to change places. Now I was sharing a boat with him. His name, he told me, was Steve.
What I took for a Swede or a Minnesotan based on looks had a distinctly New York nasality in his voice. And a New York attitude. At first he ignored everyone but the guide, as though annoyed that he was with such lame people. I agreed with him that the nervous guy with the camera was odd. But I wanted him to know that I wasn’t. To my surprise he smiled at me. “We’ll do fine together,” he said.
Steve held the boat and I got in. Then I worked to keep it perpendicular to the waves, while he climbed in behind me. As a paddling team we were immediately in sync and took off into the sea. The tiny boat dipped right as we leaned right. It was like dancing, particularly when kayaking as two. Wrapped in the pelvis of the boat, Steve and I turned together here, dipped there, doing a pretty good maritime fox trot. As partners, we were a natural.
The sky was uncertain, drizzling, with patches of blue behind massive dark clouds now sitting on those snow covered mountains. The guide called to us to stay close. We ignored him. The waves were low and regular and we paddled through them in unison, making good time.
“I’m just back from canoeing on the Brooks Range,” Steve said from behind. “Two weeks with four guys and grizzly in the Arctic Circle. All our gear was flown in. I planned and arranged the trip myself. But I’ve never actually kayaked. I want to get a sense of it before I left Alaska.”
“What do you do?” I asked over my shoulder.
“I’m an investment banker.”
“Really?”
Remember when everyone was an investment banker?
“Doesn’t anyone do regular banking anymore?” I asked. “Where do you live?”
“Brooklyn Heights.”
I knew that high-end enclave, just over the bridge from Manhattan.
“It so happens I grew up in Brooklyn, in Bensonhurst,” I said.
“Saturday Night Fever-land?”
“More or less, but I live in San Francisco.”
“Oh?”
“So did you study business?”
“No. I studied philosophy. And religion. And then I got my MBA.”
“Religion?”
“I’m a spiritual person. And I might as well tell you now that I am a conservative Christian.
“And a Republican?”
“Absolutely.”
“Oh well. Nobody’s perfect,” I said.