So, this was my idea

after looking at the tracks that i uploaded to garmin the other day i wondered how hard and or cool it would be to try to kayak a design. use the kayak as my pen and the gps track as my ink, so to speak. i was really excited to try it out, but i wasn't able to go kayaking until today. that gave me a couple of days to decide what design to try. i wanted to do something simple to start, but also kinda cool. my first thought was a flower. i don't know why. it just sounded good. but then i wondered if doing all the petals would be to difficult for a first try. so i thought about other simple shapes like a fish , or a letter, or something like that.

when i left this morning i had settled on doing a simple letter C. for curtis. i set the gps on my lap so that i could use it for reference and set out. but as i started paddling out into the lake i made a last minute decision to go for the flower. i figured, why not?

the stem and the circle for the center seemed pretty easy. the hardest part of that was deciding how far out into the lake to end the stem and start the center circle. even matching up the end of the circle to the beginning of the circle was easy. then i started on the petals. the first two went well, but as i continued on things got a little more difficult. since i was trying to match up all the track lines on the gps, most of my time was spent looking down at my lap. since i really had no frame of reference on the water for where i had been, that was the only way i could make sure that i was lining everything up properly. the problem was that whenever i DID look up at the scenery i got very disoriented. with all the 360's and loops around to do the petals, i was never in the spot, or facing the direction that i thought i should be. it was very confusing. and by the end, you could tell that my petals had suffered because of it (the last one looks pretty sickly). finishing the stem and staying parallel to the first stem line was a lot easier that i thought it would be, but for some reason the leaf seemed extra hard. i think i was still a little disoriented from the petals. all-in-all i think it turned out pretty well for a first attempt.

it was a lot of fun, a little confusing, very cool, and very satisfying to complete. i don't think that this is something i will be doing every time i kayak, but this is definitely not the last time i will try a shape.

Today's Trip Stats and Map

have a suggestion for my next shape attempt? let me know.