Kayak trip 1984

Sorry, I was neglecting for sometimes to publish my old-time pictures. I came to a point in my memory stream where the story would come very sad and hard to produce and hard to read too.

So, after a long time considering I finally come to a conclusion... who cares? Instead to dwell in something traumatic we all should embrace what is best in us. Take it easy.

So, this is a continuation of the story.

Those are pics from the summer of 1984. Me and Galina and 3 my friends were traveling by some lakes and rivers in the wilderness on borders of 3 regions (the region or oblast is equivalent of the American state in Russia). The regions are Vladimir, Moscow, and Ryazan.

I did usually in late July or begging of August - the best time for this northern subarctic climate to travel this way.

Well, there could be made an argument that climate is not truly subarctic, certainly not after temperature rose so much in recent years, but at the time it was pretty close.

Take a look at the type of boat we were using back then. This was a remarkable contraption. We called it baidarka and this is a close relative to what Americans know as a kayak. Originated from the same Aleutian boats Russian made some technological improvements to materials from which boat was constructed. Instead of wood planks, we made aluminian pipes and some rubberized tarp instead of the skin.

Americans in most cases made different versions of hard bodies for kayaks. But they had pickup trucks and other cars, Russian had trains and buses to get to the rivers. They needed to bring kayaks on their backs.

And also we do not have alligators in our rivers.