Kayaking in the desert?!?

I guess it's cheating if the desert I'm talking about is a small peninsula surrounded by water... Still... if you'd have asked me a year and a half ago about the sports I imagined I'd be doing while in Doha, kayaking would be the last on my list (and so would rugby for that matter). It all started way back during Ramadan when one of my colleagues over at the Qatar Foundation started talking about this crazy Australian dude who had brought his surf ski's from Australia to Doha and wanted to start giving lessons to people. Qatar Foundation had drawn up a deal with this guy that they would buy a couple dozen boats, store them at the Diplomatic Club marina (right on the water), and this guy, Dr. Paul, would teach Education City students how to paddle. Naturally I got Dr. Paul's phone number, rang him up, and we met on campus to chat about plans for paddling. Turns out he got the Dip Club to sign an agreement that anybody could come to the marina and take lessons with him (usually only Dip Club members are allowed to use their facilities and boy are they expensive!). We spun off in this conversation about what a great feeling it is to be on the water with just you, your boat, and your paddle. He talked about so many success stories where he'd taken these awkward, lazy, overweight Aussie kids and turned them into some of the best paddlers in the country, drastically improving their self-confidence and drive in life. He wants to do the same thing for kids in this country. It also turns out that he knows this guy in Oman through whom we're trying to organize a paddling trip for next spring break. What are the odds? Turns out, pretty good considering there are only a handful of paddlers in the region as a whole.

We're now in our 5th week of holding lessons for students and we have a regular crowd coming out on Saturdays from Noon to 2. Falling in seems to happen less and less these days, but it's a right of passage for anybody new to the sport. Heck, I even took a spill my first day on Paul's racing surf ski. We're hoping come next March we'll have a good group of students who know how to use a paddle such that we can lead the trip in Oman without having to start off with the basics. The best part of all of this is just being able to get back on the water for a couple of hours a week. I miss it dearly.