With Intent

Things are starting to get exciting! We have our first competitive race this coming Saturday, May 12^th – an early season long-distance race organized by Kawaihae Canoe Club. The race starts at the harbor, goes north for close to 5 miles, turns around and finishes back at the harbor, for a total of about 9 miles. This is an early season warm-up race, but Kai `Opua will have a good number of canoes racing, both kane (men), wahine (women) and mixed.

I am not entirely sure what boat I will paddle in, as the same morning the annual Visitors Industry Charity Walk will take place at Waikoloa Resort. This is the largest fundraiser by the state’s entire visitors industry (hotels, restaurants, activities companies, and anybody else that caters to visitors), and last year over $160,000 was raised on Hawai`i Island alone, which then got distributed to over 40 charitable and non-profit organizations on our island, all of which support the community at large with worthwhile endeavors. I will attend the charity walk at 6:30am, run the 4 miles, stay around for a while as I am the Chairperson of the Hawai`i Island Chapter of the statewide Lodging and Tourism Association, and then rush up to Kawaihae to paddle in the canoe race.

At the 2011 Charity Walk

All of this will lead to the first regatta on May 19^th in Kailua-Kona. All of us can’t wait, as it will give us a good first gauge on where we are at in our conditioning and blend compared to all the other clubs. After that, it will be non-stop, weekend after weekend of what will be a very long racing season.

One of the reasons why I love being part of a canoe club is that you get to meet a lot of interesting people from all walks of life, and each one of them can teach you something of interest, something that enriches your life. I remember quite a few years ago on Maui, I was invited to train all winter long with five other individuals for a pre-season long-distance race on the Island of Kaua`i. My friend Kimokeo was the steersperson, I was one of the paddlers, and it included a paddler in his sixties who came from the mainland to Hawai`i when he was a very young man and made a living performing all kinds of very interesting jobs, including being a writer for various magazines and newspapers. Every Wednesday, he had a column in the Maui News, and every Wednesday I would check and see if the story included some hints of our paddling adventures or any other hidden reference to some of what was going on in the group. He was a tremendous individual and always interesting to be around.



Kimokeo



Another gentleman, a local person whom I only knew by his first name, had made a lifestyle choice to sleep in his car, take showers at the canoe club and spend his days reading in the public library, literally everything from Tolstoi to Hemingway to contemporary authors, and he kept quoting from his readings and talk about his latest studies.

Yet another paddler was a whiz-kid electrical engineer who worked as a project engineer for just as long as he had to in order to earn enough money to live for a few months, and then enjoyed life as long as he could until the time came that he had to work again, which was mostly on some highly-complex and technical project that common human beings like myself have absolutely no comprehension of. He kept trying to explain to me what he was doing, but typically he lost me during the second sentence.

Here in Kona, I have already met many interesting individuals and once again get inspired and learn a lot from each one of them. Some of them are older in age like myself and bring a lifetime of experience to the club, while others are young “bulls”, full of abundant energy and not a care in the world. One individual in particular, whom I spend quite a bit of time with in the boat, made a very profound statement that resonated with me. While we were paddling on Saturday, he encouraged us to “paddle with intent”. In the heat of the battle, I didn’t think much about it, but later on pondered his words and realized that this made a lot of sense and was very similar in meaning to a saying that I use a lot, “do it once, do it right”. Paddling (or anything else in life) “with intent” means that we should concentrate on what we are doing and doing that particular activity really well, full of intent (or intention), and striving to do it the best way we can – not better than anyone else, but the best we can. Sometimes that ends up being better than anyone else, and sometimes it is just as good as we can possibly be. Too often, people do things just to get them done, off their to-do list and out-of-the-way. In the process, the job doesn’t get done properly or with mistakes and either remains that way or has to be redone. I find that nowadays, with all the information overload, telephone calls, instant messaging, electronic mails and multi-tasking, fewer and fewer people really work “with intent”, and it really impressed me that a steersperson in a canoe would make such a profound comment (obviously because us paddlers triggered this due to lack of intent in our stroke).

Another great moment was when our coach Eddie talked about the difference in various clubs and how we are “inclusive”, versus other organizations which may be selective instead. This statement very much mirrors life, as we often have to get something done with a group of individuals we cannot select, but who are there and we need to get them together as a group, utilize all their talent and make things come to fruition as best as we can. Sometimes it would be easier to have an all-star team, but not everyone would be able to participate and something would be lost. This very point is the subject of heated discussions in the paddling community when the talk turns to club crews versus all-star teams doing long-distance races. The traditional way is to take the strongest paddlers in a club and send them to do a race, while the most competitive paddlers want to take the best paddlers of any club and form the strongest possible team to achieve the fastest time. I have always been a believer that if paddling is your hobby, and you do it as a counter-point to the rest of your life, you stick with your team and see how far and fast you can go with the paddlers you paddled with all season long. If however you are young and paddling is the main focus in your life, I don’t see anything wrong with trying to get the best crew possible together, but it may not always be in the best interest of the club. Remember how in an earlier blog I wrote about how difficult the job of a paddling club coach is? The above are some of the reasons why.

A hui hou - until next week when I hopefully will be able to report on the first race.

Chris