Not just one leader
Our approach is very much that of a team. While there is a designated “leader” on “official” trips, there are also assistants that work with the leader as a team. Much (often most) of the responsibility for guiding the participants is delegated to the assistants with the leader taking a largely supervisory role and concentrating on the “big picture”. This promotes cooperation, teamwork and situational awareness, as well as safety. It also reduces the workload and responsibilities on the individuals within the leader’s team. That makes for a more relaxing and enjoyable atmosphere.
Cripes, relaxed and enjoyable
Holly smokes, grown adults relaxed and enjoying themselves, naw, most wouldn’t be caught dead that way. MIght have a hard time getting back to being type a.
Yeah, joking aside, it is a good idea!
Sorry… Brian
I know there are a lot of positive experiences with the club. But there are some negative ones too. That’s natural given that it’s a fairly large club.
sing
So you say that a quote based on
– Last Updated: Dec-02-04 6:03 PM EST –
The tao de ching is confucian, make analogies between humans and animals, say I favor social herearchies, call me long winded, (but make little attempt to rebut specific points, then hide in the robes of a BS Zen,
that's ok Zen is often the last refuge of scoundrels these days.
It's a spiral not a circle.
Yep I might lead a formal trip that
– Last Updated: Dec-02-04 8:47 PM EST –
Nystrom is on, (I hope to do so next year). (I've been working on some good current timing stuff lately). If so, I know a lot about what he can do if the poop hits the fan. If he is not an official leader on this trip, I still know his loyalty and skills. (Or at least enough). Folks often mentor from the background in our club. He knows mine as well (or at least where I was when we last paddled) I would not plan to impose on him, but still knowing about your resources is important. There are other paddling friends of mine who paddle who are not nspn leaders, but if taking a formal trip with them I'd talk to them about whether they are willing to give a tow (I have practiced this skill with them) do rescues etc. It's all a matter of having the resources and knowing where they are.
Leadership of a large group is a team function and at NSPN lots of the trip leaders know each others capacities really well. Most trip leaders are available as resources to draw on. Wayne is so right, extra resources are wonderful and important.
Self assessment is called upon for all participants. (again you've got to know your resources), Our trips are always classified by level, and if someone we do not know is showing up for a higher end trip we'll e-mail trip leaders to check them out, e-mail the participant, check em out however we have to. somebody who had pulled an outrageous stunt, might be asked not to go, someone who does not have the skills for the trip would be asked to reconsider, and or denied permission to go on that trip.
Great instructors, (like Jed, Nystrom, Sanjay, Foster and others; sorry gents but it's true) and not so great wannabe instructors (like me) offer their time and give their best. This promotes skill building for paddlers, and lets the trip leaders get to know folks and theri abilities. It'a a lot easier to trust that a person can do a wet exit when you or your buddy has practiced it with them ten times. It's a lot easier to ask an intermediate paddler to do an assisted rescue in light conditions when you know that nystrom has taught them how and that they've practiced 10 times this summer. Then you can watch the big picture an give a light eye to the rescue. The trip leader should only get hands-on with a rescue as a near last resort, unless there are other leaders who can be looking out for the big picture. (Dangers, group stability, channels, boat traffic etc etc.)
As a leader you look to yourself (should not have to spend a lot of time doing that) your group, and the person who need assistance, in that order.
some clubs require that you be able to get an ear wet and not exit the boat before some trips go any distance from the shore. Blow that roll or brace or scull, and swim; you're gone. That's one solution.
I never said that quote…
– Last Updated: Dec-02-04 10:28 PM EST –
...was Confucian - I said YOUR THINKING was!
BIG Difference.
You misread and went off an tangents from everything I wrote. You're so wrapped up in details and being right you invent these seeming disagreements - and miss the simplest messages. No wonder you get so many versions of the same book. Maybe if you learned how to actually READ - and think at the same time things would work better.
PS - I do not associate myself with any "ism". I can find interesting thoughts among them, but all such structures provide "refuge" in the negative way you used the term. "Zen" merely points out the futility of clinging to ideas. Ideas are not truth and in the end can only separate us even farther from it. Knowledge is not and never can be Wisdom, nor can it lead you to it. Collecting knowledge is a fine pursuit. A mind should be worked. Yet the pursuit of Knowledge is no more noble than any other. A fully occupied mind never has time or space to come to know itself.
“his loyalty”?
What am I missing here? Are there loyal paddlers and disloyal paddlers? Loyal to whom? Or what?
I don’t get it. Must paddle alone too much, and that sounds better as these thread go on…
Other than the quote the is almost
– Last Updated: Dec-02-04 10:44 PM EST –
nothing in the first post, which you say is evidence of my confucian thinking. Are you logically skewered yet, or wtill trying to find a way out of being responsible for what you write.
Can you read? Can you make a point with logic and stand behind it, rahter that retreating behind the unearned manatle of a zen adept. (If you are not an adept, how is you perceptino of me so keen that you cna clissify me judge me and preach loose BS to me.)
I am not hung up on being right but you seem to be hung up on publicly classifing me, judging me and pontificating about me with no ability to actually be responsible for what you write or back it up. I see this behavior in lazy slugs all the time, but no judgement (irony here).
I am hung up on standing my ground, being responsible for what I write and do, and challenging those who insult me. I am willing to concede groun to decent argument but I see none from you, you call my thinking coufucian but do not address muy points. (including the origin of the quote which is the heart of the post you said demonstrated confucian thinking. Then you say I am a sheepdog, but you say no judgement! What intellectual bravery?
I am also hung up on the difference between human and animal motivation. I think humans shoul be, and should vigorously reject analogies between humans and animals. Like comparing apples and spermatazoa, not the most useful of analogies.
As to my being hung up on text, well literacy IS highly overrated. Maybe we should all go back to tying knots in rope. (Also anb allusion to the tao de ching are you keeping up, you wannabe religious authority)
All perceptions are perceptions of the past, only the matter of delay and the fineness of reception is different.
the after perception come attitude and action, but that is another story.
“Man of skilled” is poetry?
– Last Updated: Dec-02-04 10:55 PM EST –
must be a different school. Legge's language is so artificial and bumbling that there can be no heart in it.
Legge's english is laughable. Perhaps he hides his lack of depth of experience in his ungainly over-literalism.
I invite all to check out these two sites and perhaps take this disucssion of legge's language to the paddlers place for a campfire discussion. I am done with the overtly religious traditions in this thread.
http://www.nokama.com/tao/index.cfm?fuseaction=chapter&ch=27
and legge's
http://www.edepot.com/tao8.html
A starter here:
his use of "female feeblness" as a feminine virtue rather than a word like like "receptivity" or "yeildingness" (in poem 28) is so far from my understanding. Nothing about the Tao is feeble. Fine, flexible and penetrating (like an epee rather than a broadsword but I do not want to talk about the effectiveness of flexibility in battle), soft and yeilding yes. Feebleness???
A cookie-cutter translation; I find little poetry here.
Ever wonder why I trade posts with you?
Because it’s fun!
Nobody get their knickers twisted quite the way you do - or as easily. No one rambles on and quotes and… Well, basically does all the things you accuse me of. Maybe I do them, maybe I don’t - it doesn’t matter.
I’m not dodging - just don’t get hung up in ideas like you. You seek answers and certainty. To know the unknowable. Trouble is there are alway more questions, and there is no certainty. Stay on your hamster wheel search for answers if you like. I find the questions of any substance to be unanswerable, and distrust any who claim to be able to answer them. The questions themselves are flawed. I don’t need them answered anymore.
Intellectually skewered? Comments like that are priceless, but we’re not even playing the same game Peter. Can’t you see what my point is and always has been? It sure isn’t all the things you defend in your replies. I’m not attacking you. I’m not making any particular point from any position. In that game everyone thinks they are right and the other wrong. To what end? Thinking has limits.
We are all mirrors. Consider again what you see in others.
Perhaps thinking has limits
but some slugs seem do do so little of it, and at such low power and meaning.
Loyalty
– Last Updated: Dec-03-04 7:54 AM EST –
yes there are people who will hang with you when life gets acutely challenging, and people whose only thought will be for themselves.
Loyalty to the mission (safe paddling), loyalty to safety of the group within the parameters or reasonable personal safety. (we must consider that the larger context is paddling not combat)
Ever been a touch scared by conditions but rescued someone anyway. (Go into a rocky surf zone, rather than let them swim an extra five minutes or so in that cold water in their drysuit). Have you ever had a friend get jumped while they were 5 feet away from you? Ever been in a house party with about 12 men and 12 ladies when about 8 drunken but apparently unarmed folks come in to loot and thieve and terrorize the place? Seconds, even split seconds count sometimes, and the qualities you have built into yourself are not hideable in some situations. (Find out why a Sikh carries a Kirpan (OOPs sorry that requires either knowledge of religions traditions or thought and effort)).
Ever seen how someone else acted in such a situation? You learn a lot about that person (or yourself) really fast. Thinking about peoples probable, (and on rare occasions, proven) reactions to such situations is one of the matrices upon which I evaluate my friendships. (yeah I value my friendship with a person who has spent lots of time building qualities into themselves more than I value my freindship with a person who has not.)
Thought that comes from deep in your core and gets expressed out and has been repeated till it is instinctive, strong, and real is required sometimes. (OH but I forgot you obviously have such little value for thought, (WHY in the world do you attempt to read and post; much less argue?)). Confidence that comes from repeated realistic training and (ideally)incrementally more difficult situations will give courage and clarity that enables those thoughts (and qualities) to be manifest.
Since reading my posts will often require thought, and you seem to have little respect for the activity, I will respond less generously to you. I also will not take insults from any intellectual peasant slugs I run into seriously. I thought I would answer this question though. There is hope even for slugs, (yet my hope for some diminishes.)
Meaning
Meanings are applied. An extra layer added by mind. Another separation. Another delusion.
What holds more interest for you? Stories and “meaningful” ideas about life, or Life itself?
You search diligently for deeper meaning
Give the matter a great deal of thought
Yet even if it is found and understood
What has really changed?
Long road, short road, or no road - all the same. Only mind differentiates.
Deep
Argue? I am not arguing. Nor am I suggesting you do other than you do, or that you are “wrong”. Perhaps that is why you don’t understand and continue to go off on so many tangents?
Sure character matters, choose your companions well - of course, but bringing up “loyalty” of people you paddle with, even when meant as a compliment, is rather crass.
Everything you’re saying is so obvious it should go without saying. Since you did, you must think good character is rare in others. In turn, I cannot help but think you arrogant and condescending.
Maybe your life has had bad turns that lead you to believe the worst about others and leave you on defense all the time, but I see that as insufficient reason to justify your implications that others are made off lesser stuff than thou.
In most paddling situations, most will do the right thing as best they can. That’s where all you training and work with them comes in. On the rest, you make mountains out of mole hills.
Absolutely
This is no panacea. However, I’ve had equally bad experiences with “leaderless” groups, where slower paddlers were essentially “left for dead”. That’s not common, but it illustrates that there is no perfect solution.
I think what Peter means…
…is that even if i’m just along for the ride, so to speak, I’ll help out if things get ugly. I would say this is true of the majority of paddlers I know, or at least those that I have paddled with. It’s just a matter of mindset. Once you have some training, it’s natural to use it when necessary.
Rough…
Every man (woman) for himself, eh? That’s taking “personal responsibility” to the ultimate, separate ways approach…
So far, the majority of folks I have been paddling with “unofficially” has subsribed greatly to the “personal responsibility” theme. But I have noticed none of us have ever let a “swimmer” going swimming on his/her own with aid and comfort. When and if I encounter that, I doubt I would want to paddle much with that person. One time going down the river, I swear we were fishing folks and equipment out of the water after every other rapid. Some of these folks were in “led” groups.
sing
Sheepdogs
will protect members of the pack/flock, even if they don’t like them. It’s just what they do.
As a dog owner, I take “sheepdog” as a compliment.
Definitely
I guess my question is really about the assumption I saw in that that others wouldn’t?
Better to have skilled help of course, but even beginners would aid others as best they could (sometimes making things worse - but that’s another thread).
I have a hard time imagining any paddlers - or any boaters at all - ignoring others needing assistance on the water. Serious or minor. Goes without saying doesn’t it?
While I mostly paddle alone, I still keep an eye out for others, and would not hesitate to assist someone as best I could (which may not be exactly as the person in need wants). Main reason I carry VHF, etc. So far just a short tow for some kids on a windblown inflatable and some info here and there to help people avoid trouble spots.
I don’t think willingness to give aid is remarkable in any way, and think others would do the same for me. Perhaps I’m just naive. If so, I’ll stay that way.
exactly as it was meant