Paddle

KINSALE, Va. - "Smells like detritus!" hollers Justin Powers, 17, as our kayak flotilla noses into a salt marsh where the Yeocomico and Potomac rivers meet near the Chesapeake. It is good that Justin and his 15 colleagues from Turner Ashby High School, in the far-off Shenandoah Valley farming country, know the odor of organic matter decaying from tidal marshes - vital fuel for the web of life in the Chesapeake. Making the connections between farmland and bay waters has never been more pressing.

About a dozen people stand on the beach at Gunpowder Falls State Park, wrapped in lifejackets and clutching paddles, watching Julio Perez teach. In a minute, they'll wet the bottom of their boats and become official members of the Canton Kayak Club. They've already sat through safety lectures, and now it's time for the last part -- the fun part -- of training. Perez is president of the club, which has about 400 members and holds weekly training courses and monthly events. The next training course is at 9:30 a.m. Sunday, and the next event, Newbie Night, is at 6 p.m. Tuesday.

On their annual kayak trips, Tim and Vicki Johnson have been charged by grizzlies, tossed by rough seas and terrorized by sea lions. Tim once almost ran out of drinking water and another time sank in quicksand up to his thigh. Despite - or maybe because of - these brushes with danger, the couple from Elkton both say they feel most alive when they're on the water in their kayaks, paddling around such remote areas as Alaska's Inner Passage. "We've paddled with orcas," Vicki said. They've also traveled alongside hundreds of thousands of salmon.

Bad news: When it comes to wide-open spaces, Maryland is not a large state. Good news: With the Chesapeake Bay and hundreds of rivers and streams, it is a wet one. Looking to capitalize on those liquid assets, Sen. Paul Sarbanes and three of his colleagues last week asked the National Park Service to see about turning the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries into a first-of-its-kind paddling trail. The John Smith Chesapeake National Historic Watertrail would honor the explorer's role in founding Jamestown, Va., and mapping the Chesapeake Bay. It would be similar to 13 established land-based paths such as the Lewis and Clark and Pony Express trails.

With flashy backhands and grunts that would make Monica Seles blush, pingpong enthusiasts from all over the world battled at the Baltimore Convention Center yesterday for glory and fame in one of the United States' unappreciated sports. For decades, most Americans have dismissed table tennis, viewing it as a nerdy stepchild to football, basketball and baseball - a sport for kids and the poor few who never graduated to the grown-up version, tennis. But this weekend, for the North American Teams Table Tennis Championships at the convention center, there were no snickers - only the pitter-patter of players hitting balls across 144 tables.

I am going to take a class in smooth-water kayaking. According to the instructor, I should be exercising my upper body and arms. What exercises would be good for this? I belong to a gym and have access to exercise equipment. To answer your question, we enlisted the help of Edith Callahan, certified athletic trainer at the Downtown Merritt Athletic Club. The best way for you to train, says Callahan, is to mimic the kayaking motion as closely as possible. The simplest way to do this is to break down the activity into steps, and re-create each stage with free weights.

As American appetites for Asian-made DVD players, cars, clothes and other goods grow in coming years, trans-oceanic traffic is expected to boom -- possibly doubling the amount of cargo through U.S. ports by 2020. With all this new and hotly contested business up for grabs, largely in 20-foot metal containers from China, the port of Baltimore does not appear to have geography on its side. It's on the East Coast and a half-day's trip up the Chesapeake Bay. But with thousands of port-related jobs and a hefty piece of the local economy on the line, port administrators, including a new marketing director, say they must persuade the world to see the map differently.

ATHENS -- In many ways, yesterday marked the changing of the guard for the U.S. men's whitewater paddling team. Two-time Olympians Joe Jacobi and Matt Taylor have most likely competed in their last Summer Games in the double canoe. Kayakers Scott Parsons, 25, and Brett Heyl, 22, checked out the competition with an eye toward the Beijing Olympics. Jacobi and Taylor, both 34, finished eighth in the double canoe competition and failed to make the cut for the final round of six boats. "You'd love to have another opportunity, but that's not what life is about," Taylor said.

Without a Paddle is pretty much without appeal. It's a comedy about three buds who decide to do one last really stupid thing before surrendering to adulthood. They head out on a long camping trip in rough backwoods country, then spend the rest of the film getting each other out of the really fine mess they find themselves in. The premise is not without possibilities - think Laurel and Hardy starring in Deliverance for an idea of what the filmmakers were going for - but it's executed with little imagination and even less wit. Brought together by the death of their mutual friend Billy, longtime pals Jerry (Matthew Lillard)

When thirtysomething actors known for adolescent humor want to appeal to their own generation, are they up a creek in Hollywood? Seth Green, Matthew Lillard and Dax Shepard - the stars of Without a Paddle, opening Friday - are betting that the new film will put their goofy years behind them. The trio play childhood pals on the cusp of 30 who, after the funeral of a friend, embark on a Northwest canoe trip (think Deliverance with a laugh track). The comedy has its outrageous moments - including sex-crazed female tree-huggers, wild hillbillies and Burt Reynolds as a hirsute mountain man - but the actors say it was the movie's heart and Stand by Me-like style that got them.