Kayak Attacks


 I mentioned the Kayaks and that was because they were so awesome. They were magnificent injection molded plastic vessels that were built for affordability and rugged wear and tear at the hands of scouts. Our troop quickly monopolized them and used them to terrorize the other denizens of the water. Four man canoe, over-run, mocked, sunk and hit in the face with paddles. We were just to quick and too agile to be caught by those lumbering antiques. We were ravaging the coast and then a couple of the previously capsized sailors teamed up and got out the 'War Canoe' which was a huge 20 man job they thought could overpower our guerrilla flotilla. Obviously they had not read up on their Clausewitz to realize their mistake. They came out chanting, hollering and swearing revenge . They paddled towards us and our pack of ten kayaks tried to swarm them but they were good at holding us back with their long paddles. What they had forgotten that old maxim of the sea – never bring a paddle to a psychopath fight. A kid swung his ten foot paddle and hit Ryan in the head and sealed all of their dooms. He recovered his wits and grabbed the paddle dropping his own and quickly pulled himself alongside by going hand over hand up the shaft. When he was abreast he jumped on board and started punching and chucking as fast as he could. When he had pummeled and disembarked about half of the war canoe's crew the rest were too few to keep back our swarm. We pulled the remainder into the water and Ryan ran back and forth on the boat re-kicking and paddle stabbing anyone foolhardy enough to attempt re-boarding. When we had cleared the decks about half of us jumped on board and stood on the gunnel to sink the boat and when it was under the water we got back in our kayaks and were off to terrorize someone else. The War Canoe humbled and up to the tips in the water took an hour or so to get back to shore and many of her humbled crew required some medical attention for what appeared to be paddle wounds to their heads and faces. When our troop brought in the armada for a lunch break there were an awful lot of camp authorities waiting for us.
“Were you gentlemen the ones that attacked and sunk the War Canoe?” Well now, that's hard to say. Attacked is a strong, almost accusatory word. What we could tell them was that we did engage the War Canoe in a little mutual combat and that we were better at it then they were. The twenty vanquished scouts identified Justin, Ryan, Jay and I as the instigators and the powers that be banned us from the kayaks for the day and made us each do 50 push ups and then apologize to the battered losers. We were all in great shape so fifty push-ups was a joke but the apology was bitter medicine indeed. As we walked down the line of those we had wronged and as soon as I was out of earshot of the leaders I started fake-pologizing by saying that were were really sorry they were such massive pussies and that we were sorry that they had to go crying to their mamas because they lost. This started another fight where Ryan had to punch one of the youth leaders. We got to do 150 more push-ups, which was really hard but which we did as cockily as possible to show it had no effect on us. Then we were ordered to stay in our camp for the rest of the day. It was worth it.