Signs and Colors

Last weekend was either leisurely or extremely full for us, depending on who you ask, but no matter who you ask, it was definitely cool (albeit in a metaphorical sense only).

I spent most of the weekend crewing hot air balloons for the balloon festival down in Ascension Parish.  Compared to being chase crew, paddle trail maintenance expeditions are definitely more work, but they also involve waking up quite a bit later.  Call it a split decision, then.  Conveniently, however, the very early starts meant I had time between the morning and evening sessions to stop by the paddle launch at Highland to admire the new sign.

We’d been wondering just what was going to show up on the plinth, and now we know.  It’s definitely a cool (and informative!) sign.  We can’t help but like that one line: “Community efforts in recent years have helped to clear several miles of these log and trash jams from Highland Road Park to Bayou Manchac.”  Yep, that’s all of us!  Now we have to keep it all clear and clean.  We’re all on a sign.  I think that also means we have to pack the house at the ribbon cutting on October 15th at 2pm, yes?

And speaking of doing good, BREC’s annual Kayak In Colors event was great as usual on Sunday, with PaddleBR helping out as BREC Outdoor Adventure and all the sponsors worked to benefit Cancer Services of Greater Baton Rouge.  The weather was quite nice.  BREC Outdoor Adventure’s brand new kayaks had their first run as part of the BREC OA fleet.  And everyone who came out had a great time (except, perhaps, that one young boy who wasn’t quite content with being on the water in a tandem kayak, but hey).

Of course, Mike decided that he didn’t want to stand against just one or two forms of cancer.  He was against them all!  I must say, he was rocking the colors as he went around on his first time on a stand-up paddleboard.  In fact, he was so stylish, we said he needs to just step it up half a notch and he’ll have his outfit ready for the Pumpkin Paddle Parade next month.  (The Pumpkin Paddle Parade, incidentally, is the Thursday before our third-annual PaddleBR Paddle-In Movie, tickets for which become available starting at 10am this Thursday! Woo-hoo!)