Paddle

What outdoor activity is inexpensive, requires little skill, knowledge or exertion, provides hours of thrills and adventure, and can be done all while sitting on your butt? It's tubing, where one rides a river's current while sitting in an inner tube. Unlike canoeing or kayaking, there's no paddling involved in tubing - you pretty much let the river take you where it wants. There's no fancy equipment to buy. All you need is an inexpensive truck tire tube, some old tennis shoes, a swimsuit and a decent life jacket, just to play it safe.

Twilight canoe trips, a family-oriented program to help acquaint paddlers with the natural surroundings on Deer Creek at the Eden Mill Nature Center, are held from 5:45 p.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays through Sept. 30 at the center, 1617 Eden Mill Road, Pylesville. The center is a nonprofit, environmental education facility staffed by volunteers and their families. The fee is $4 for center members, $6 for others. Registration is required. Wild Week Summer Expeditions for children, ages 6 to 8, will be offered from 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. tomorrow to Friday at the center in Pylesville.

OXFORD -- Right from the beginning, police Chief Jim Borga and local waterman Thomas "Tex" Bringman figured their third straight trophy in the International Cardboard Boat Race was in the bag. The buff young guys from the town's Coast Guard station looked like serious competitors. But one glance at the square-nosed bow of their vessel was enough to make the old-timers, two-time champions of the "law enforcement" heat, downright cocky. As it turned out, Borga and Bringman calculated right.

In these times of international tension, real news professionals disregard their personal safety and head for the world's trouble spots. Thus it was that recently I traveled to the U.S. Virgin Islands, where I faced the very real danger that, as a journalist in the field, many of my expenses would be tax-deductible. The Virgin Islands are located in the Caribbean, which gets its name from the Indian words "Cari," meaning "body of water," and "bbean," meaning "that makes you really glad your computer has a spell checker."

After kayaking 17 miles down Kauai's stunning Na Pali coast, every one of Cindy Chase's muscles hurt -- in her face. She and her paddling partner, Jamie Klein, had spent the entire day grinning. "We couldn't wipe the smiles off," she said. Cindy and Jamie are seasoned whitewater boaters. A death-defying plunge down experts-only rivers, like the upper Youghiogheny in Western Maryland, is routine to the Morgantown, W.Va., couple. But sea-kayaking the waters off Hawaii's oldest, wettest and most beautiful island was an entirely new thrill for them.

WASHINGTON -- If President Bush's Wall Street mission was to take big business to the woodshed for corporate corruption and greed, the lashing he delivered was about what you might expect a reluctant father to dole out to a favorite son. While lecturing the assembled corporate leaders on the need for a "new ethic of personal responsibility," the president essentially continued his argument that a few bad apples were spoiling the whole bushel. That was to be expected from a Republican chief executive whose core political constituency was sitting before him. At the same time, it was clear from Mr. Bush's call for tougher criminal penalties against corporate abusers of the public trust that he knows he must convince average voters that he is on their side.

The small flotilla of kayaks and canoes glided easily into the wide, shallow riffles, momentarily disturbing the solitude of a bass fisherman standing waist-deep in the Monocacy River. Traffic noise from above on Devilbiss Bridge Road quickly faded, muffled by full-summer leaves and rocky outcrops, and replaced by the small splashes of paddles and large carp, or the drumming of a woodpecker. Pairs of Canada geese and mallards seemed to take wing around almost every bend. It was part of the second Monocacy River Paddle, a weeklong celebration by a Frederick-based conservation group that wraps up today and is intended to raise interest in one of the state's scenic rivers.

WE LAUNCHED in shirtsleeves, swatting December mosquitoes, and landed with a north wind blowing tundra swans down from Alaska. It won't be the year's last paddle, but it was the last paddling trip -- trip defined as enough days afloat to settle into "river time," to let tide and wind and the allure of unplanned side excursions control the pace and direction. A factual accounting -- the Chesapeake river's name and location, history, trip length, even the flora and fauna -- would miss the point of the journey.

YOU KNOW when it's fall. The whine of the leaf blower is upon the land; the howl of the shredder-vac and the scratching of leaf rakes infiltrate every residential byway. As owner of a shady, suburban half-acre, I have become expert in coping with the annual molting of the trees. As a public service, I kept this log this autumn--yardwork techniques honed over 12 years in residence, shared here for the first time. Mid-October. Dogwoods and maples beginning to shed. Oaks won't be far behind.

Those in the corporate world travel to work and business meetings by car, train, even airplane. So, now what? Kayaks. That's right. A new, nonprofit program that developer Bill Struever and restaurateur Charlie Gjerde are launching next month encourages those who live, work or hang out around the Inner Harbor to kayak across it for business or pleasure - or both. "It's a way to commute," Struever said. It's called the Canton Kayak Club. Members pay $100 a year for a training session from the Living Classroom Foundation and access to a purple kayak at one of six secure docks around the harbor during the season, May through October.