The Dream is Over

Any hopes of Team Nicholson winning the gold medal in mixed-gender kayaking at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing were dashed at 10:02AM this morning, exactly 2 minutes after we entered the water. I always thought that kayaking was pretty easy and assumed that we would blow away the competition at the US Olympic qualifying meet.

I had dreams of standing on top of the highest box with Jessica and having a single tear roll down my eye as the stars and stripes were raised and the band played the national anthem. I pictured the cover of Time magazine and maybe even our own Wheaties box. The odds of these things happening are now less than the odds that Sanjaya is allowed back into the competition and wins American Idol. God I hate that guy. Is he an alien??

Half of the reason that we won't be competing in the 2008 Olympics

But I digress. Jessica and I went on our first kayak trip this morning and we decided to go to the river closest to our house. The Hanalei River is one of three navigable rivers and round trip, you go about 7 miles. It's a good place to start as the other rivers are more challenging. Our eventual goal is to kayak for 16 miles in the ocean along the Na Pali Coast. That my friends, will not be easy.

The Little Civic That Could showing off her rugged side

The trip really wasn't that bad once we got the hang of it. The funny thing is that we started at the point where the river hit the ocean and it felt like we were going against the current for the first hour or so. The book said that the way back should be easier as the wind would be at our back. Since we are now both Nicholson's, the wind hit us dead in the face on our return. It was a pretty strenuous workout and we headed straight for the hot-tub when we got back. We are both incredibly sore and as we all know, it only gets worse the next day. Good times.