Its the last day of our progression clinic, time to prove what we have learned during this wet and wild summer.
Time for round two of the Ocoee River. I am feeling all too familiar from yesterday. We gear up and walk our boats down to the take out spot. I’m also feeling a bit whipped out from yesterday since I haven’t bellyaked two days in a row. Though I know all too well that I need to muster up some strength for what’s a head. It is a smaller group today including Luciano, Jonathon a pro on the Bellyaker (representing the Bellyak at the Charlotte Whitewater center almost daily), Jamie and Adam, our instructors and myself. We start off down the Ocoee river, today we are only doing the first half of the river instead of the whole section like yesterday (leaving out the “hell hole”, hallejuah!) Though, I am a little bummed out that we are missing the second half of the river, there were some really fun rapids and I thought mostly rocks on the first part. Now, while heading down the river I can’t help but feel it is familiar yet different. Seemly less rocks, different! Or now having run this river maybe I’m just being better at avoiding them? I have more of a flow through the river and I believe I’m getting better at maneuvering by leaning my body on the boat as surfers do. I’m impressed at some of the skills that I have learned, it almost feels second nature to think of what I want to do or go on my boat and my body happens to follow to do so. Of course falling off sometimes comes as second nature as well from trying to get the balance right but when that happens I just hop right back on ready to go some more.
We are focusing on surfing waves today for there are some great surf waves in this river. I first watch our instructors hit the surf waves as they flip around to their backs while surfing, doing a 180 and hoping upright to sit and just having an all around blast. It’s less unfathomable to me how they can do this, once getting comfortable you can really just play on these things! My turn to surf, hitting the wave I have some dud times where I either flip off or just pushed right back out of the wave. Jamie helps to instruct me where to point the front of the boat, entering at a one o’clock angle then turning a 11 o’clock to cut into the water and back and forth almost like a mini ferry. I practice this and get far enough back on the Bellyak so that the weight of my body doesn’t nose dive me into the water and I successfully surfed for about uh 4 minutes!…haha I call that a success.
Cruising down the river we are hitting rapids and crushing them. With the biggest injury of the day smacking my head off the van door to get more snacks while back on land, I’d say this day was a grand success! On the way home Luciano asks me what my favorite river was and surprisingly even to myself I said.. The Ocoee?! Which is a thought I wouldn’t have imagine I’d have from the first time on the river initially I absolutely hated it, there was rocks and huge rough rapids but by the end I was fond of it. After today, I loved it. With that thought made me think of how great it is to be uncomfortable with something new, something you want to accomplish and overcoming that to feel good and have a sense of pride after. My uncomfortable thoughts before running the Ocoee were “why do I have to challenge myself with this river, I had a blast on the pigeon, why not just stick to that and be happy.” What I realize is if I’d never got the courage to run this river I’d always be stuck, and now I have a new favorite river. And new skills!
My intention to write the articles about learning to Bellyak was for readers who want to break out of their comfort level, as I did. To learn something new. I chose to write my experience because I had no skills on a Bellyak or any other form of water sport for that matter. I was able to writing about my experience and the thought process of learning something new with the hope to encourage others to go for what they want. I wanted to be real and show how fear is something that can really hold us back from doing what we can’t even imagine ourselves achieving but having the desire to get there. With this blog I offer a hand to step up and try whatever it is that you want to do, you’ll be better for it. And of course after all this is about the crazy rollercoaster of thrill sport, Bellyaking, I strongly encourage everyone to try it. After being on the rivers of the Progression Clinc and meeting the people who were on the water, I feel like I got a glimpse of a whole different world I never knew about. And it’s wonderful 🙂
