Chapter 61

The morning was gray and blue. The drive down to Point Reyes Station had started early, and it had started in a Ford E 350 Econoline van.

The van was driven by Tom Lowenstein, a wide-smile surrounded by dark, curly hair, sideburns and beard. He was Greta Petrizio's boyfriend, and Greta was a dark-haired, blue-eyed beauty considerably shorter than Kelli. The third lady in our group was Gina Urich. Gina was somewhere between Greta and Kelli in height with blonde hair and very light blue eyes. Her Husband Wyatt helped me load my pack in the back of the van. He was about six feet tall with jet black hair and brown eyes. His hair and nose suggested some Native American ancestry, or maybe Middle Eastern. It was always easy to make assumptions based on physical stereotypes. Our other two adventurers were Sid Simpson and his partner Ryan Thedescu. Sid and Ryan were almost two peas in a pod. Both had short, dirty blond hair, thin faces with sharp noses and both had accents.

I got picked up at the house because we were taking the Guerneville Road to the coast so we could take good old U.S. 1 down the coast to Point Reyes Station. The overcast skies were soon matched by the blue-gray waters of the Pacific as we sped on down the highway. There had been music on the radio and happy and excited chatter all around, but it mostly flowed around me.

There was an empty place in my thoughts that used to be Bud.

I didn't notice when we made a big dogleg around Bodega Bay and away from the coast. I did look up when everyone's excitement picked up when we returned to the ocean of Tomales Bay.

Somewhere along the way Kelli thought to ask me what was wrong. I told her someone close to me had died. It wasn't true, but it felt true. True enough that Kelli didn't question the pain in my eyes. Even Harley was hurting, I could feel it.

When we left Marshall after stopping for breakfast, and passed by the Marconi Conference Center, I knew we were getting close to Point Reyes. I worked at drawing myself out of the funk I was in and getting into the spirit of things. Soon I was laughing along with everyone else at Wyatt's attempts to sing along with the White Stripes' 'Fell in Love With a Girl'.

We were all still laughing as we piled out of the van at Point Reyes Outdoors, our kayak tour guides.

"You must be the Urich party?" A short man with a shaved head and Harry Potter style glasses asked when we walked up to their counter.

"We are," Wyatt answered. We were introduced to Nate and Jenna, our tour leaders, and there followed some measuring and fitting as we were set up with life vests and water shoes. I was glad I'd brought my own, as they had nothing in my size. Kelli was at least able to wear a men's size 9 when they didn't have any women's shoes in her size either. We were the two Paul Bunyans in the group.

"Who here has any experience with kayaks?" Jenna asked. Everyone raised their hand.

"Okay, who here would consider themselves an advanced kayaker?" I raise my hand as did Sid, Ryan and Kelli.

"Would any of you consider yourselves as 'very experienced'?" she asked. I raised my hand.

"How do you come by your experience, ahh Mr. James?"

"Cooper please," I answered. "Marine Corp training ma'am."

"And all of you please call me Jenna," she replied. "The Marine Corp teaches kayaking?"

"Their advanced aquatic survival classes do," I answered dryly.

"Very well then," she said with a bright smile. "We try to pair up each of our experienced kayakers with an inexperienced one. You have four experienced kayakers and four inexperienced. Nate and I will each tandem with one of you inexperienced. Which of you four would like to volunteer to tandem with a less experienced friend?"

The four of us looked at each other for a second before we all raised our hands more or less simultaneously. Ryan gave Sid a look and stepped forward.

"Sid and I will volunteer. We are an old, settled couple. Let the young lovers here share a kayak," he said in his eastern European accent while pointing to Kelli and I. Kelli blushed. I must have too, based on the laughs from everyone.

"You are presuming a little ahead of the facts I think, Ryan," Greta giggled.

That got Ryan to blush and it was our turn to laugh.

My long legs had been problematic when I'd been training in kayaks in the Corp, and they proved to be problematic here as well. Not just any kayak can handle someone with legs as long as mine. But we'd been asked to provide out heights and weights in advance, and they had a Feathercraft K2 ready for me.

I had some familiarity with this model, and they were very adjustable. It was a cloth and frame model, not the usual fiberglass models the tour company favored, so it didn't get a lot of use, except by the tour operators themselves but they were glad to see I was familiar with it.

Before we left the store we went over our gear and how we would store things. A load balancing chart was made, showing which bags would go where. The kayaks rode on a flatbed truck, our gear bags tucked in with them, and we rode in another Econoline van, a much older, more beat up one than Wyatt's rental.

The ride across to Schooner Bay, where our adventure would start, was mostly unremarkable. The scenery wasn't much different than what we'd been seeing on the drive down. The launching area, near the Drakes Bay Oyster looked more like a ghost town than anything else. There wasn't a lot there.