Opportunity Knocks

It was either a short kayaking time today or a long one.
First, I went out for a short loop around the little rock garden. Well, yeah, it's my favourite place to be on the water. Lucky for me it's within sight of the Beach House. Sure, there are more beautiful/challenging/interesting/awesome places to paddle. This one's right here, and it's only my fault if I don't go here every day.
And when the sky got bright before 8:00 am, and the weather was cool and calm without any wind or rain, it didn't even seem like winter. No excuses! How many days in February dawn like this? It might not be a nice day by afternoon, but it was nice in the morning. Opportunity was knocking, so I went out in my little inflatable kayak.
I didn't stay long today, though I'd planned to do figure eights around and around several of the rocks. The tide was high, after all. But during my first figure eight, I came around a rock and saw four little heads swimming toward the little rock graden. It was an otter family, probably the one I saw Friday, bobbing and ducking their sleek way towards my playground.
Their playground.
Yeah, I get to play in lots of places. So do the otters, but this was where they wanted to play today. And I had to be somewhere else in a little more than an hour.
I ducked out of the otters' sightline, and paddled away. A homeowner on the bluff above the water leaned out from his balcony to tell me there were otters just on the other side of the rock. We chatted about them for a minute, then waved goodbye.
Back to the shore, running the gauntlet of dog-walkers, and I got ready to go somewhere else.
That somewhere was the mall, where some of us kayakers spread out charts and talked about places to go during the spring and summer. Man, if we go everywhere we want to go, we'll be busy every weekend and several weekdays too! Familiar places to revisit. New places to try. Challenging crossings, as well as easy day paddles out from a campsite.
So that was a long kayaking time, if you count all the imaginary trips we laid out on those charts. I'm psyched. I'm ready. Bring it on!

-later, the next morning-

The very next morning began with heavy grey cloud, a steady onshore wind, and big fat raindrops spattering on the duck feeding in the puddle in front of the Beach House. Yep, good idea to get on the water yesterday, cuz it aint happening today! Happy St Valentine's day to all paddling friends.