Dodging boats and water bombs

Aaaaah, Australia Day. Chris kindly offered me the opportunity to go for a paddle this afternoon, so against the complaints of my shoulder I decided to go. Anton (in his Mirage) was also keen, so we met down at the usual spot around 3pm. He tells me that it's tradition on Australia day for eggs, flour bombs, and water bombs to be thrown at anyone passing along the river. It was chockers! There were soooo many motorboats, boats towing things, kids on boogey boards, waterbomb throwers and swimmers it was amazing. Trying to paddle a K1 amongst all that boat wash, with the occasional ambush by water bombs was great balance practice. One group even had a huge elastic slingshot they were using to launch them. A waterbomb even whizzed over our heads and hit the far side of the river! At another place there was a kid who saw us coming and started paddling towards me on his boogey board. He was about 1 metre away and was reaching out to tip me in...at which point I looked him in the eye and said "If you tip me in I'll smack you with my paddle" (which of course I would never do), but it worked and he obviously thought better of it. I can't believe we did a whole lap without falling in or getting hit by something!

My shoulder was very sore. At the start it hurt so much that I thought I wouldn't be able to paddle at all, but I paddled faster and altered my technique a bit and it was a lot better. The 1 lap was certainly enough for it today though. I gave Anton my GPS to put on his Mirage so that we could get an idea of our speed. Whenever he looked at it we were doing above 9km/h and often almost 10km/h. Though this is not fast enough for race speed, I was going very easy and I was amazed that we were going so fast for how easy it felt. I really am getting better in the K1. In fact, this is the best I have EVER felt in a K1.