Yak4AStack

Yak4AStack was the coolest event I have ever seen. 300 + paddles from around the world descended on the Pines in Melbourne FL, for an event which promotes craziness, fun and international relations. Many of these kayakers/canoers have been training hard every day multiple times a day for the past month or 2 using the Pines as their home base. Today was now the test of all that training, it was the big race, the main event to put to test the hours spent between practices. That's right between practices, who out of these athletes reached the exhaustion point that brought them to the Nirvana of figuring out the craziest most out landish and creative costume for this race. The athletes were assembled into 85+ teams of 4, the goal go from the dock, make it around a buoy and hand off the boat(a scupper) to your two team mates then have them go around the buoy in the other direction and back to the first dock as fast as they can all with costumes on. Olympians and medalists participated in this event and were paired just as randomly with other paddlers. I should mention that the scuppers were 2 person boats. giving them the golden opportunity to try out new partners for the next Olympics (grin).
Hannah and I went out to hunt for the perfect costume on Friday night, we came up with Xena warrior princess and her side kick Gabrielle as our respective alter egos. After a run to walmart and the thrift store we had everything we needed. Debbie(the women we are staying with) managed to pull many rabbits out of her hat "closets" to help with the assemble of the outfits. She had a sewing machine and various other implements which we desperately needed to pull it off. We successfully put the costumes together by late Friday evening and were ready to go for the races the next day.
people were dressed in elaborate and simple costumes some came by water others by land and it proved to be exceedingly entertaining on all fronts .
I highly recommend that if you are in the area for this event that you join the festivities or at least come to watch.
cheers
K