Adventures in and on Cayuga Lake

Yesterday I tagged along with Sydney and some of his fellow philosophy grad students on a canoing expedition on Cayuga Lake. Though I’ve appreciated the view of the lake from afar, dabbled my toes from the dock at the Farmer’s Market, and taken a boat tour, I’ve not had much contact with Cayuga, one of the beautiful Finger Lakes for which our region is known. Well, that all changed yesterday.

It was perfect weather: mid/low sixties, beautiful sunshine. Gorgeous day. I begged Sydney to canoe with me, since I was too embarrassed by my newbie rowing skills to impose them on anyone else. He was uncomplaining, even when it became evident that rowing with me meant that he wouldn’t be able to take part too frequently in the conversation that was going on in the other canoe, which carried three philosophers. If you know anything about Sydney love of philosophy shop talk, then you realize this was a serious sacrifice on his part.

Some of you may know that I have serious must-haul-my-own-weight issues. If I can’t handle it, I won’t take it, which is why I didn’t own a couch until Sydney and I were to be married. So I intended to really put some effort forth in the canoing. If my arms, shoulders, back, and fingers today are any indication, I did. It was great exercise; I can’t wait to go again.

But I may also be sore because I dunked my muscles in way-cold water yesterday in the midst of my exercise. We flipped our canoe.

We have absolutely no idea what happened. One minute, we were rowing along in calm water, well-balanced. Another minute, we were overboard in Cayuga Lake. Thankfully, we hadn’t gotten out to the lake proper (still sheltered a bit in the part where river and lake meet). But my lifejacket immediately tried to strangle me (I hadn’t been told to tighten it, so it had no reason to keep my body up, just itself!), so a friend undid the straps, and Sydney and I swam around, trying to lift the canoe and dump the water out. We’ve since read up on how to do this, but at the time it really didn’t seem to be working. And our friends weren’t able to row to shore while dragging us and the canoe.

Sydney began by asking me if I could swim, and I realize now that sitting there, dog-paddling, thinking about it for a minute or two (well, yes, but haven’t tried very often, and it’s cold, and . . .) wasn’t making him feel better, particularly since I wasn’t wearing my life jacket. Oops.

Eventually a couple of guys in a motorboat stopped, let us clamber aboard, and dragged our canoe to a dock, where we poured out the water and took stock of the situation before continuing on our expedition. The rest of the adventure was less eventful, and we got to dry off in the sun and warm our limbs before returning to the boathouse.

In the course of the taking-stock operation, Sydney suddenly crowed, “I know what I lost: my binoculars!!!” You’ve think he would be sad, but Sydney’s been wanting new binoculars for a long time, and now that his old ones are at the bottom of the lake he’s hoping I’ll buy him a replacement pair for his birthday.  Can you believe the gall of that man??

Erin