No Splashing!

On Saturday a group of us went kayaking. (This would be the third time I've gone kayaking this summer. I think this is officially becoming a "thing" I do. I guess the question is how many outings does it take before it stops being weird when you tell people that you are doing an activity?) Feeling adventurous, this outing we opted to try the Kendall Square location, which is located right near MIT and offers really stunning views of Boston. I would have taken some pictures to show you, but I'm still not at the point where I feel stable enough while paddling to try maneuvers as complicated as taking a sip out of a bottle of water, so digging my phone out of my pocket to take a picture is pretty much out of the question. You'll just have to take my word for it that Boston looks pretty nice from the vantage point of floating on the Charles. The downside to this location versus the Newton one is that since it is a lot more open there are a lot more boats to deal with. You've got multiple boathouses for the various universities in the area as well as places for people to rent sailboats. As you probably know, boats create waves and waves are not fun when you are already convinced you are going to topple over in totally calm water. And I was extra motivated not to fall in the water due to another problem I had to deal with - blue algae.

Even though a check of the website before I left that day showed no problems, apparently a test of the water that morning had revealed an elevated blue algae count and I guess blue algae is the worst kind of algae. As such, this branch was advising people to either skip boating or go to another location. Asking the kid behind the deck what the side effects of blue algae are, we were informed that it basically leads to a rash and that some woman who had been out that morning had begun to break out in hives by the time she had come back to the dock. Laying out all the things that could happen, the kid definitely had a "Seriously, I wouldn't get in this water if I were you" tone to his voice. But the fact that the place was fully staffed made me think it couldn't be that bad. You'd have to assume that if the algae was really a danger they would have just closed the location, saved some money by not paying workers for the day and not left it up to the boaters. For all I knew this guy just didn't feel like doing any work that day and was trying to scare people off so he could stay in the shade. On the other hand, a bout of poison ivy landed me in the emergency room a couple years ago, so I had a small concern that perhaps I'm extra-sensitive to these kinds of skin issues. It was enough to make me pause for a few seconds.

The weird part was that, looking in the faces of the other people in my group, I could tell no one else was even thinking about going to the other location or not boating. Honestly, I'm not sure what it says about the people I hang out with, but I could practically see the thought process going on in their heads: "Well, breaking out in hives sounds bad. But, what are the odds that will actually happen to me? That woman could have broken into hives over something else... How bad a rash are we talking? Besides, we're kayaking, not swimming and I'm going to take a shower right after this so I should be fine... It is the Charles River, so it's not like I was expecting the waters to be crystal-clear to begin with... Not to mention, we're already here and I parked in a garage. You just know they are going to charge me for the full hour even though if we left now we'd have been there for all of 10 minutes. Plus, we fought all that Red Sox traffic just to make it here and I am in no hurry to fight more of it... Screw it, this is why I pay for health insurance." It was either tremendous bravery, over-confidence in our immune systems or extreme laziness - I can't tell which. But, I obviously wasn't going to be the one who backed out (peer pressure sucks) and I was on the water in a few minutes.

When we got back to the docks after over an hour of boating I was very generous with the Purell they had provided on any spots which had been splashed even a little bit and until I took a shower that afternoon I was convinced that every itch I had was the first sign I was about to start breaking out in that spot. The good news is that it's been a couple days now and so far everyone is still in the clear - no signs of blue algae growing on anyone. So in the end we were right not to worry about it. Actually, it even worked out for us because we got a 20% discount off our kayak rentals. (I think the 20% discount is the part of this whole thing which amuses me the most. It's just works out to be such an odd figure. "Not only are we not stopping you from potentially exposing yourself to toxic water, we're giving you the means to make it even worse. With that in mind, I think $4 off your kayak rental should about make us even.") I'm not saying I would want to press my luck in every situation just to try and save a little money but it's nice to get a little something, you know, for the effort. After all, I've done plenty of unwise things without getting any kind of compensation, so it's nice to occasionally have my stupidity rewarded.