It hardly felt like it, but in a week, I would be pushing with my kayak from a boat ramp in Seattle. My mind began to shift from thinking about work and the daily hassles like reviewing contractor submittals and attending meetings to thinking about how the journey would unfold. For the first time the weather forecast in Seattle now included Sunday May 29th my tentative departure date. The prediction was for rain and a maximum temperature of 59oF; it didn’t seem like it would be too windy.
“An easy first day to get in the swing of things.” I thought.
There were a few items to wrap up for the journey still. I had set aside the week for any last minute things such as activating my monthly GPS plan. When I was packing the kayak and the gear for shipment, I specifically remember having placed the GPS in my living room cabinet so that I did not accidentally ship it with everything else. Or at least I thought I remembered specifically doing that, because when I went to look for it, I couldn’t find it. Exasperated, I took all the clothes out of the drawers, rummaged through the kitchen cabinets, checked the cracks between the sofas, looked under the bed, flipped over the seats in the car, and a thousand other places but found nothing.
I sent a message to my contact in Seattle who would be receiving the kayak.
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“Hey David, need a big favor from you, can you look for my GPS unit in the Kayak gear? I don’t know which section it’s in, or which bag, so you’ll have to unpack everything; it will probably take a while to find it.”
“Yes, no problem. I'll be home in a few days, will look for it then and let you know.”
A few days came and went, and I heard nothing from David, and began to worry. I messaged him and got some bad news. “Hey man, I got into an accident, got several cracked ribs. Can’t lift anything.”
“Oh darn. No worries then. I’ll buy a new unit, and if the old one turns out to be there, I’ll find a way to return it.” Like any normal person, I hate to spend money to fix a mistake, especially a $400 mistake which is how much the GPS unit would cost me, but the peace of mind was priceless.
Sea kayak Vancouver Island Circumnavigation
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