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Soon after I arrived at Twanoh State Park, a shower of rain came along and put the dampeners on things for me. I had imagined things might have been a bit more tropical. I could tell that Steve and Jo from the much warmer climes of Texas were thinking like me: "eek, it all looks too cold, maybe we will hit the water tomorrow". But in a symbolic gesture, a pair of New Zealand feet were plonked into the waters of Puget Sound - and it wasn't that bad.

LEARNING TO SEW: I signed up for the neoprene mitt making class primarily to get some experience at working with neoprene so I could eventually make a neoprene tuilik. I was learning heaps: like sewing; and cutting neoprene with 'cloth scissors' and paper paterns with 'paper scissors', but I was making really slow progress and the down side was that I was missing out on paddling time. But it wasn't all bad because I was closely checking out what John Doornink had done with his tuiliks and comparing that to what Shawn had done. Plus I might have been spending more time chatting away to Dick Mahler and John Petersen (who were also doing the mitt class) rather than sewing like I should have.

Ken Jenkins, my host, had brought 3 kayaks along to the conference and kindly lent me his son, Jeff's fine kayak (foreground). Ken had met me at the Bainbridge Ferry and brought me to Twanoh State Park. As we were carrying my enormous pile of luggage and food out of the ferry terminal a police officer with A GUN (In New Zealand our police officers are mostly un-armed so this was REALLY unusual for me) came up to Ken and said "Excuse me sir, do you realise that your vehicle is parked in an illegal area".

I immediately thought that we were going to be shot on the spot for illegal parking and started to wonder exactly what sort of bad company (traditional intuit kayak conference goers) I had fallen in with. But it was just Ken's friend Tom the police officers way of saying "Hi" ... Well you could say that was almost a change of underware moment for me ;)

With the neoprene mitts pretty much sewed up, it was time to finally hit the water for the group paddle. Paddling on Puget Sound was pretty with a harbour seal lurking around, Bald eagles flying by, plenty of forest and expensive realestate to look at. It was much more scenic than I had expected and sensational to be paddling in the company of so many skin on frame kayaks.

The rest of SSTIKS conference was a whirr of: Greenland paddle strokes class with Pavia Lumholt and Dubside .... Intermediate roll class with Shawn Baker.....The roll demonstration..... The race where I proved that not all New Zealanders are internationally competitive (although I did hold onto 2nd place for half the race). Being unfit and after a busy day it was inevitable that I should 'blow up' at the turning mark and idle back to the finish line gasping for breath and using my first spectacular glimpse of Mount Olympus poking through the clouds as an excuse for taking it easy. This was actually a life altering moment for me as it marked the start of what has now become an active kayak racing career (once I got back home) ... Then there was .... Dubsides spectacular demonstration of inuit rope moves ... Brian Shulz steam bending demonstration ....

GOOD FOOD: Bob Kelim pretty much did something of a religous trick by feeding the multitudes with plenty of fine barbequed salmon and some fresh pacific oysters which tasted mighty fine and made sense of why every body was jealously gaurding their oyster patches along puget Sound. Lunches were a healthy 'Al Fresco' affair and I secretly believe I ate most of what my Conference fees were worth.

MILK WARS: at one stage I was going to have a coffee and asked: "what is this 50/50 milk - 50% what? and 50% what else?" - the reply was "50% milk and 50% cream - it is what we put in our coffee". This was a shock to me because we mostly sell our milk in New Zealand by the pint. American milk comes in at least half gallon lots. Just imaging that half that container was pure cream was enough for me to have a cholesterol induced heart attack on the spot and immediately start drinking tea without milk for the rest of my stay in America.

And still there was: Good company .... curiously strong Midnight margaritas with the effervescent Montana lads ... Harvey Goldens replicas ... rudely 'gazzumping' Dick Mahler at the last second in the silent auction for a Harvey Golden Kayak drawning .... replica Inuit harpoons and otter darts ....Great kayaks: Baidarkas, retrieval and recovery kayaks, East Greenland, West Greenland, Baffin Island kayaks and then some more. I found plenty to do and everything was absolutely fascinating.

With the great variety of kayaks it was hard not to be impressed and very soon I could see a building programme coming on. I loved the Baidarkas from the Aluetian Islands and reckon they would perform really well in our open water off Wellington, New Zealands South coast.

The short retrieval kayaks looked pretty good too and I can imagine they would be a barrell of fun in the surf and probably would make great pool polo kayak training boats (if not perform well in 'battle')

Harvey Golden's replica kayak was too cute for words and its function was a mystery. But I bet it would make a great duck hunting boat. Having bought Cunninghams book I feel that I just have to make a roll optimised skin on frame to help my rolling along. Now that I have been so inspired it is just a matter of hunting down some wood.

$100 WARS - Before coming over to USA, I hadn't really thought about how much money I might need to bring along. $1000 US with the old credit card as back up seemed like a good start. When the bank asked me how I wanted that money I went for $500 cash and $500 Travellers cheques. They looked at me funny but I figured that I was just hedging my bets for contingencies.

The first $100 war was when I was mooching around a Food and Drugs store buying some supplies for my SSTIKS stay at Twanoh State Park - New Zealanders think that is funny - being able to buy [recreational] drugs from your Food AND Drug supermarkets [maybe that is why Americans call them 'convienience stores' hahahaha] - but then apparently Americans think that New Zealanders are pretty wild for selling 'pot' plants [= New Zealand for house plants] at our plant nurseries). The shop manager must have thought I was 'bad sort' because he asked if he could help me several times and seemed to be keeping a very close eye on me. My replies of "Nah, just looking" (which was exactly what I was doing: American supermarkets have about a zillion more brands of cereals and jams than we do back in New Zealand) weren't reassuring him at all.

When it came time to pay for my groceries I handed over one of my $100 US bills. The manager marked it with a felt tip. I said "Oi what did you just do" to which he replied "if it is yellow it is ok". I didn't say anything because he was edgy enough with my shopping experience, but if we did that to our money in New Zealand (along with piracy and treason) are the few things that we can still actually be hanged for. Plus the $100 US bill better had been good because I paid the bank back home in Kilbirnie, Wellington about $130 NZ for it (evils of exchange rates).

The second war was when I made the classic mistake and handed over a $1 US bill to Sasha for my SSTIKS fees instead of the $100 that I should have for the tee shirt, mitt class and more food than I needed (OK, I was distracted at the time and New Zealand dollars notes are all colour coded while all $US bills looked pretty much the same to me - it was an honest mistake but certainly not a great way to make friends and influence people). Not surprisingly, Sasha was not amused and thought I was some kind of 'petty crook'. I wasn't entirely convinced that Sasha hadn't palmed my $100 US bill while I wasn't looking and was waving the incriminating $1 US bill as a possible lure for 'doubling her money'. After a brief Mexican stand off I realised my mistake and appologised ... but you have to see the funny side of it all.