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.
