Drifting

The word drifting reminds me of this car racing game I played more than a decade ago – Need for Speed. I spent many a weekends during my engineering days trying hard to complete the “Factory Driver” levels in NFS Porsche Unleashed. And that is where I perfected the art of drifting a Porsche using my keyboard arrow keys.

Anyways, this blog post has nothing to do with that drifting. So read on. Though Singapore is a small country it is blessed with a whole lot of reservoirs. I had a chance to Kayak in one of them a few weeks ago. Now, mind you, my physical fitness level is embarrassingly bad. And any kind of Kayaking requires serious upper body strength to move your kayak in the direction desired.

While I have kayaked in the ocean and in rivers before, I was totally unprepared to kayak in a reservoir (or so I figured out!). So as I set out, I set myself a target to go to the other end of the reservoir and make my way back. What I didn’t notice was that there was a steady flow of water perpendicular to my direction and while I was inching forward by my paddling, I was also drifting away (without me noticing). After what seemed like an eternity, I reached the other end of the reservoir. And when I turned around to get back to the starting point, I gasped in horror as I couldn’t see it anymore. That’s the time when I realized that I had badly drifted. Anyway. while it was sunny, I had enough water and a life jacket to survive. Yeah no chance of a cast away. So I slowly and steadily started my herculean task of paddling my way back.

Luckily, the operators realized that I was no where in sight and having known my physical capabilities assumed that I had drifted. So a knight in shining armour came in a power boat and tied my kayak to his boat and dragged me back. I might just have set a world record for the fastest kayak ever. I am sure kayaks don't get dragged this way unless an incapable idiot is paddling them.

Anyway, long story short, I had an experience of a lifetime riding behind the power boat with a kayak. I held my paddle high up above my head and came back to the shore like a hero.