(All photos and videos courtesy of Claudio’s camera; rest mouse pointer over photos for captions.)

Mr. W and I celebrated the coming of November by enjoying our nice SoCal kayaking weather with Dwaine and Claudio.

I hadn’t seen Claudio in YEARS (10+, I’d say), and only recently reconnected with him through an online networking site. I’d always liked Claudio, but didn’t know him very well. He was just “Dwaine’s buddy Claudio.” The last time we saw each other was over a few games of paintball, so obviously nobody was sitting around having in-depth conversations. Over the years of hearing Dwaine’s me-and-Claudio stories, I felt like I’d somehow kept in vicarious contact with Claudio, so it was really fun to “hang out” with him online, cracking jokes and instigating gym challenges, until we could finally meet up in person. That brings us to Sunday, November 1.

The guys came over to our house, changed into swim gear, and we were off to the Lake. Claudio and I had planned to jog the mile there, and since Dwaine was excluded from the planning process, he didn’t have veto power. I heard he was a good sport and simply packed the proper gear for jogging and swimming. This was Dwaine’s second time kayaking, and he’d improved immensely from his first time.

So confident was he in his new kayaking abilities, that he had to balls to do this:

If you had watched the video carefully, though, you’d have seen that when I started rowing toward him or splashing at him, Dwaine’s panic kept him from being able to paddle away effectively. He knew it, too, cuz you can hear his helpless laughing and cussing as he paddled, and eventually pleaded with me with sweet words that fell on deaf ears. Claudio took advantage of this later on to attack Dwaine after Dwaine doused Claudio with so much water on a back row that Claudio’s black shirt took on a whole new sheen.

I quickly rowed away from them to avoid becoming collateral damage, until I realized that something else was possibly collateral damage. “Wait, who has the camera?” I called. Dwaine and Claudio froze, and Claudio produced a dripping black package. Soon Claudio realized his camera wouldn’t shut down or retract its lens properly. That camera casualty has become a joke between us on that networking site, but luckily Claudio was able to extract these photos and videos from it when he got home.

We had a lot of fun, and I was ready for the mile walk back. But I noticed in my peripheral vision that the three men with me were bouncing up and down slightly. I looked up, and they looked like they were making very small jogging-type motions with their legs. Tiny little steps. “We’re RUNNING back?!” I sputtered.
“You set the pace,” Claudio offered. Damn it. So we jogged back, and since I hadn’t gone to the gym consistently in the past month, I tapped all my energy reserves to make it to the front door without stopping. Dwaine and Claudio had enough wind to end the last bit of the uphill in a sprint race. Argh. At least I had Mr. W to keep me company as I sucked Dwaine and Claudio’s dust. Or maybe it wasn’t that Mr. W was being nice, he was using me as an excuse to not compete with these youngsters whose shoes apparently had springs installed in the soles.

After arriving home, we sat in the backyard, had a couple of drinks (water for Dwaine and me; Coronas for Mr. W and Claudio), then set off for dinner at Chipotle.

“Did you guys shower before going in there?” Jordan had asked.
“Of course not, then we wouldn’t smell as athletic,” I’d answered. The day was a lot of fun regardless of how we smelled to everyone else.