The Trouble With Normal Is It Always Gets Worse

Talking with youth the other day we got onto the topic of types of fun, the now ubiquitous three types of fun first made popular by Kelly Cordes who has had more type 3 fun adventures than most people alive today.

If you go back and read Sketchy Kelly's original article on the three types of fun it is quite clear that anything beyond type one fun involves significant risk to life and/or limb. After all, Kelly's description of type two fun is "swimming up sugar snow that collapsed beneath us, roped together without protection." Anyone with any climbing background immediately feels their sphincter tighten and recognises that this is a high consequence activity and is in no way analogous to just having a hard day out in the outdoors.

Storm bound on the Lillooet Icefield, PC. S. Fiddes

The youth I meet, who have never "enjoyed" any type two fun, argue that because most people don't do anything difficult or dangerous, the scale should slide down to accommodate the reality that type two fun for the bulk of the population is now having to walk into Maccas to order junk food instead of using the drive through.

This, I suspect, describes exactly how modern society has brought us to the place wherein we now reside. As physical and mental standards slip instead of asking why they are and how we can remedy that, we simply slide the bar of what is average down lower.

In Search of a Half Century: Sunshine Bay to Depot Beach and the Tollgate Islands

When I planned this adventure, an attempt to paddle 50 kilometres in a day (read on to see how far we went), there was both anticipation and dread. As the day approached, and I felt every day the fatigue of the long and hard training cycle I have been in, dread came to overtake anticipation. Certainly, when the only other person who expressed interest - besides Doug, my long suffering partner in arms of all these adventures - turned out to be Speedalot Blacklock, the dread deepened. But, I told myself, these things often turn out to be worse in the anticipation than the action.

Not quite a year ago I did 53.5 kilometres self powered which didn't actually feel too bad. I had to be swift at the change-overs, but otherwise I finished the day feeling pleasantly tired not totally thrashed. However, the changing activities, from running to paddling to cycling, allows your body to get into different positions and to use different muscles whereas paddling 50 kilometres locks you into a fairly small space for a fairly long period of time.

When we arrived at our local beach around 7.30 am, Speedalot was already there kitted up and ready to go "You ran a marathon yesterday didn't you?" I asked thinking some pre fatigue of the speed machine would be beneficial for all of us, sadly, the answer was no. Just as we were leaving the beach, Talkalot arrived so we were four, at least for a while. Talkalot could also talk endlessly at Speedalot and distract him from paddling like a demon from the get go.

It was a funny morning, very humid with dense sea fog. So dense we could not even see the Tollgate Islands which are only 4.5 km from our home bay. My map did not have the Tollgate Islands on but I thought I could remember they were south east not due east of our launching bay so we headed out on a compass bearing roughly ESE.

My fall back navigation stance was that if we did not find the islands within 40 minutes of leaving we were off in our direction, but, after about 30 or 35 minutes, the rocky islands started to emerge through the mist. The other give away was the easterly swell began to abate as we got within the lea of the islands.

It was still dense fog, however, and I was guessing again, but a course due north, erring to west of north if anything, should bring us to Three Isle Point within a short period of time. And, soon we could hear waves breaking and then Three Isle Point emerged through the fog and very quickly after that the mist cleared and we settled into the day. Calm winds, a two metre swell and four kayaks heading north.

My plan was to hug the coast as we went north so that we could accumulate a bit over half of the days kilometres before we turned around. Then, if we were lucky and got an afternoon sea breeze, typically a northeasterly here, we could sail/paddle back off shore. When you have a big distance to cover, I always find it better to try to get the bulk of it done in the first half of the day. Psychologically that seems to help.

At Richmond Beach, around the two hour mark, Talkalot decided to return to the Bay, so we landed with him for a brief stretch. I had not eaten yet and felt a bit queasy but was unable to eat more than a few peanuts. Disappointingly, my tracker showed we had only done 13 kilometres. It would have been nice, although physically impossible, to see a 20 on the screen.

Looking at the map, I thought if we followed the coast north fairly closely we should arrive at Depot Beach at over the half way mark. This meant we paddled along the shore of Durras Beach. I don't know anyone who does not find this a bit of a slog. It is only a couple of kilometres longer than a straight bearing from Wasp Head to Point Upright, but something about passing a long sandy beach makes it seem longer.

We passed inside of Grasshopper Island and landed at Depot Beach in a bit of a dumping surf. My tracker was showing just shy of 26 kilometres. Again, a little less than I would have liked. Speedalot was ready for the run home, looking at his watch, no doubt thinking he would be faster on his own - true, so we decided to turn around at Depot Beach. I knew this would put my distance at a little shy of 50 kilometres but thought I could make up the final one to three kilometres in more sheltered waters where the paddling would be easier.

Off we went, setting a straight course down the coast. There was no wind, nothing, even though it was after noon. Gradually, a little wind came up, then a bit more, until finally when we were passing North Head we had a decent 12 knot northeasterly. I had put my sail up at the earliest opportunity having previously decided that using the sail on a 50 kilometre day did not meet my criteria of cheating. These things are all so subjective, we make our own rules as to what constitutes fair play.

Passing Three Isle Point I was knackered, sitting sloppily in the boat like a sack of potatoes, all body tension completely lost. Speedalot was still sprint paddling to catch waves and, although he had brought a sail, he did not deploy it. At Three Isle Point Speedalot sped off while Doug and I paddled into Judges Beach for a last rest.

Just about 21 kilometres on my tracker, still a bit too low as I knew we would only accumulate another five or six kilometres back to our home bay. After a break, we headed back out with a very pleasing tail wind. It would have been easy enough, but breaching the "rules" of my adventure to just sail back as we were probably progressing at over six kilometres an hour. Somehow my rules allowed sails but not sailing without paddling. Go figure. At our home bay I was just too tired to turn around and paddle back out into the wind for 1.5 kilometres to make a round 50 so we called it quits at exactly 47 kilometres.

The Sunday Paddles: Upwind, Downwind and Montague Island

I had a keen crew all set up for the Sunday paddle to leave from Mystery Bay, paddle out to and around Montague Island returning to the mainland at Narooma. And then, the strong wind warning blew out of nowhere as they have done all this long Covid year. These are peer group paddles so I don't have to make the decision whether to go or not go, so I simply sent an email out to the entire group to let each person make their own decision. Very quickly, the number of paddlers dropped from 7 to 1 with only Harry, who loves paddling by himself in wild conditions remaining. Harry had access to car shuttle help, the kayaking equivalent of a belay slave, so he went off and paddled the trip as planned, and, apparently had a great time.

On Sunday, Doug and I launched from our home beach and paddled down the coast, into the wind, for about 12 or 13 kilometres until our stomachs, which had not been fed, starting feeling like food. The wind was not really that strong, and had a bit of westerly in it so by staying inshore we didn't even work very hard. At Rosedale, we had a nice long break on the beach with hot tea and brunch, and then paddled straight out to sea to catch the wind.

The following sea was pretty good and we covered 10 kilometres in one hour, no sail, just sprinting to catch waves. As usual, I was feeling pretty tired by the time we got to our home bay but still had enough energy to do my usual 2 to 5 rolls per side. This will stop when winter comes and the air and water is colder, but right now with warm water and air, rolling is pretty tolerable.

Perusing the wind observations for Sunday later it was clear that, as is often the case, the wind was only around 12 to 14 knots with gusts to 17 or 18 knots. Another fizzler. On Monday, however, we had a good blow at our place and the wind out at Montague Island was steady around 20 knots with gusts to the mid-20's. Ron and Jean, who had been at Mystery Bay on Monday said it would have been difficult to launch from the beach.

Now, however, the ear wig of a Montague Island trip had been planted and on Tuesday, with drizzly conditions and fair winds, a crew of eight left Mystery Bay and headed out to Montague Island. In a brave move for me, I did not take a sail. Neither did Doug or Nick. Nick does not need a sail to paddle twice as fast as everyone else, and Doug can also hold his own without a sail, but, it was work for me keeping up with the sailing kayaks.

Nick Blacklock photo

We had very lumpy conditions with two opposing swells and a sea on top of that. Most people thought it was one of the lumpiest transits to Montague Island they could remember. In my quest for speed, I have been watching my paddle enter the water as a short paddle stroke had been one of my defects and so the entire way out to Montague Island I watched my paddle blade to make sure it was entering the water completely and far enough forward. That did my head in and by the time we got to Montague Island, I thought I was going to throw up.

Nick Blacklock photo

After a good rest in a sheltered cove, we paddled along the western side of the island to the north end and then pointed towards Narooma and the mainland. The seas were a little less lumpy and I made sure to keep my eyes on the landscape ahead and not the ocean, plus, I was working solidly to stay ahead of the sailing kayaks. Montague Island to Bar Beach is about 10 kilometres, but there is always a southerly current in the "channel." For a while, I thought we might do that in an hour, which would have been a very good speed for me, but it ended up taking about 20 minutes longer, which is still pretty respectable and probably twice my speed before I started getting ad hoc coaching from Nick.

As an aside, I did the entire trip essentially fasted (I had one egg just before leaving the beach at Mystery Bay but nothing else since dinner at 6 pm the night before), thus proving once again that humans are highly adapted to burn ketones for fuel.

Adventures In Kayaking: The Normalisation Of Deviance

Sometimes I am surprised at how slowly our minds can process information and make decisions when unexpected things happen. I went out paddling with an older friend today. In my mind, it was a casual paddle across the Bay, have a leg stretch and then amble back, pushed along by a light tail wind if we were lucky.

That is how it started. We paddled across the Bay. There was no wind, just a rolling swell from the north so we were relatively sheltered. Landing on the beach on the north side of the Bay we had a good half hour break, chatted to some people staying at the holiday cabins, and broke it to them gently that a 45 minute paddle under benign conditions is not that big a deal. I had a thermos of tea and a stretch.

My friend wanted to paddle on a bit further, at least out to the headland that borders the northern side of the Bay. I had no problem with this, I am training so any paddling is good paddling, although I thought we would encounter some wind. I was also mildly concerned that my friend who is rehabilitating a series of injuries and functional issues and has not been paddling consistently on the ocean should not do too much on this first day out.

We launched the boats again and started paddling along the rocky shore to the northern promontory of the bay, and my friend was in very close to the rocks, too close in my mind. I moved away from the rocks hoping he would follow me. The swell was getting larger and larger as we lost the shelter of the headland. Soon we arrived at a point where a long, mostly underwater, rock reef extends out from the headland. One rock was showing on the surface. We often paddle through this gap, on many days it is fairly safe - probably never completely safe - on other days, the waves break right through the gap and it closes out. Today was a kind of middle of the road day. Almost closing out, but not quite.

My friend paddled through, I went around. I did not want to spend the time observing the passage to make sure that even the bigger sets were not breaking. In my mind it was not that kind of day out. As I watched my friend paddle through, I saw one or two waves rise up incipiently, not breaking, but licking over at the apex.

I'll admit I am a catastrophic thinker so it was easy to visualise a big wave cresting higher than expected, my friend not having the capacity to increase his power output and either paddle through or paddle back, the inevitable consequences of the classic low probability high consequence event. At that point I realised I did not have either my long or short tow with me, nor did I have my marine radio, and my mobile phone was securely packed into two dry bags in a hatch behind my seat.

Instantly I flashed back to an episode I had almost a decade ago with another friend of mine in avalanche terrain. That day, much like this day, was flagged with small but poor decisions that through sheer luck alone did not lead to catastrophe. And here I was again, in the midst of what sociologist Diane Vaughan calls the normalisation of deviance.

In the avalanche literature, this is known as a negative feedback loop because snow is stable most of the time "bad decisions masquerade as good ones" and people survive for years and years making a long series of poor decisions that they believe to be good decisions growing ever more confident as the years progress.

Paddling too close into the rocks with the danger of breaking swells is the exact same thing but in a different environment. For years and years, a kayaker can paddle too close in without the skill or capacity to escape a breaking wave and believe they are making good decisions in a seemingly endless negative feedback loop.

How much of my friends behaviour was triggered by the people we had met on the beach expressing downright amazement that we had paddled "so far?"¹ How much is the result of years of negative feedback, and how much is ego or simply hubris? I don't know. As a catastrophic thinker, I can always see the other side of the feedback loop, as I have simply had too many things go wrong in the outdoors to believe that negative feedback is accurate.

The problem when recreating with friends is that if the normalisation of deviance continues unabated at some point someone will get caught and then everyone in the party is sucked into the vortex of the accident because how can we simply stand by and watch as a friend gets carried away in an avalanche or crashes their boat, their body or both onto the rocks when a larger than average wave washes through. We cannot, we must go in to pick up the pieces and, in the aftermath of all these events, the hazard is not ameliorated; hang-fire from the avalanche remains, larger than average waves can still break. Your risk becomes my risk.

The obvious and rational thing to do is to break the cycle of bad decisions masquerading as good decisions but, as we all know if we have tried this, it simply does not work. The feedback of years or even decades of escaping catastrophe by luck builds up a very thick carapace of invincibility and one friend cautioning another about risk is easily dismissed by the risk taker who believes they are in control of the outcome.

The only other alternative is to remove yourself from the situation. Today, that was my choice. At some point, I simply said to myself, "I am done out here." I turned and started paddling back.

1Reality check - the distance is only about 6 km so only in a world where the average person has a shockingly low physical capacity is that distance "so far."

We Are All Laboratory Rats

I have always had a jaundiced eye towards social media. First off, sites such as Instagram and Facebook are clearly anti-social capitalising as they do on a very human desire to seek approval from our tribe. An evolutionary quirk that worked well when we lived in small groups but quickly became our downfall when the pool of people to whom we can compare ourselves expanded into the millions. In that environment, there will always be someone richer, more beautiful, stronger, sexier, with a better house, car, pool, holiday, life, than you, and the more comparisons you make the less desirable your own life becomes.

Second, as highlighted in the movie The Social Dilemma, all this media to which we have become addicted - a not too strong word for some users - is really about the capitalists who run the world convincing you that more stuff is what you need. And it is truly amazing how the laboratory rats running around the internet (us) have become so thoroughly immersed in the world of social media that, as we pull the levers which reward us, we come to believe that this is the real world and we are independently functioning thinkers.

Yesterday I listened to an episode of Tina Muir's Running For Real podcast and was struck once again by how we have, in a modern day example of Stockholm Syndrome, come to identify intimately with our captors. Tina has laudable ambitions to only partner with "brands we totally trust" (sic) and so the advertising liberally interspersed throughout the episode highlighted how Tina personally uses the product she is hawking. As I listened to the podcast, I suffered through several highly personalised - and no doubt profoundly effective - advertising spiels. After all, Tina brags on her website that she will "sell your product with fierce passion."

In one advertisement, Tina begins by telling us she "literally has their sunglasses all over my house" and then continues by extolling the virtues of Goodr Sunglasses who are committed to "1% for the planet" and "carbon neutrality." But here is the thing Tina, and other listeners/readers, if you really want to do something for the planet how about having ONE pair of sunglasses. Because clearly, if we are all like Tina and have dozens of pairs of sunglasses 1% and carbon neutrality will make fuck all difference. This is merely capitalism virtue signalling. And, while I am on the topic, who in their right mind, has a brand they totally trust. A brand is a capitalist organisation that wants to sell you something.

The third and most troubling thing about our collective inability to distinguish the real world from the internet world is that activism - about climate, social justice, environmental protection - now takes place in the make believe world of social media. Here, we wear an armband in support of Black Lives Matter or we dedicate a mile of running to a person of colour, we post about it on all our social media channels, congratulate ourselves on being part of the solution, and get back to our real job in the modern world, consuming. Stockholm Syndrome has so completely taken over our lives that the capitalists running modern media have managed to turn our subversive acts back on ourselves. We are rewarded for taking pretend action which is no action at all. Our job as consumers continues unabated.

Noam Chomsky wrote "we are a society dominated by business interests. There is massive propaganda for everyone to consume. Consumption is good for profits and consumption is good for the political establishment. Consumption distracts people. You can not control your own population by force, but it can be distracted by consumption."

Engineers define an elegant solution as one which solves the problem in the simplest most effective manner possible. That solution is within the grasp of every single one of us in the modern world, it costs nothing, and has the power to make us truly free. The catch is, we must all take this step together.

The Sunday Paddles: Training For Distance

I missed a Sunday paddle. There were plans, and there was weather, the weather changed and the plans changed and I ended up running the Bingie Dreaming Track instead. It is a long time since I have run the trail and you forget how pretty it is, marred only by one section of "public road" where people must drive, no matter the conditions, because walking 200 to 400 metres would be just too difficult. Often there are piles of garbage, fire pits and even human excrement here, but this time there was just a terrible mud bog which did not stop people driving even then.

But the following Sunday rolled around and it looked like we might get some interesting paddling conditions, a large northerly swell with a long period, a southerly change with moderate winds and a building southerly change. Turns out it was, as so often it is, a bit of a fizzler.

Doug and I left from our home beach at 7 am to paddle south to meet the rest of the group at Guerilla Bay at 9 am. I was nursing some minor dread of what was to come. My paddle plan had us going as far south as Broulee Island which would have put our paddle day at over 40 kilometres. It has to be done if you are training for 40 kilometre days, and I have done them before, but there is the doing and thinking. The thinking is often worse than the doing. Though in the modern era of social media bragging many people operate under the assumption that there is thinking and talking. Doing never actually enters the equation.

Happily, we cruised into Guerilla Bay at 8.30 am having covered 12 kilometres in 1.5 hours, which is still about half the speed of Nick, but probably twice my early speed when I piloted the massive green slime (a plastic boat that was way too big for me) around the coastline.

The portend of interesting paddling conditions meant we had a small group, just Nick and Adrian, so we offered the lads a one way paddle as we could easily shuffle both them and their boats back to the cars at the end of the day.

However, it was way too early to paddle north so we headed south around Burrewarra Point and into the Tomago River at Mossy Point. I got out to stretch again. As I get older I notice more and more the effects of being jammed into one tight position. I have always hated sitting in the car for long periods, a long period for me being about 10 minutes. Conversely, I held this weird viewpoint that I should be able to paddle 40 kilometres straight without getting out of the kayak and anything less was a sign of terrible weakness of character. But, as you get older performance must necessarily take a back seat to persistence and you begin to view the most important goal of training as the ability to continue training.

In the river, I got a bit more forward stroke coaching from Nick, although at hour three and 20 kilometres of paddling, my ability to concentrate was severely lagging. There was a bit of a breeze on the beach and we had hopes the wind was increasing so we paddled back out the bar and headed east for Burrewarra Point and the northerly run. We dallied at Burrewarrra Point for a while where there was a huge school of fish and then continued north. The wind never seemed to get above 10 knots and the sea was calmer than when Doug and I had paddled south so the interesting conditions were actually pretty bland.

Under the Antipodean summer sun, with barely any wind and high humidity, sitting in the kayak was getting increasingly uncomfortable so we paddled into Garden Bay for a lunch stop. We don't often land in this bay as it is close to all our usual launching points, but it is really pretty, protected by reefs at the mouth and has a nice small sand beach and grass to stretch on. Not being on the main road along the coast it is generally not very busy. So some more stretching and then the final run back to our home bay. My rough estimate of our total distance was 37 to 38 kilometres so not a bad training day.

Pictures from previous trips as my camera battery was dead.