It`s a clear night in Bolingbrook, with the temperature bottoming out near zero. When you step outside, the wind uses you for a whipping post, makes your eyes water, then freezes the tears to your cheeks. Everything is frozen solid. It`s a beautiful night for kayaking.
Indoor kayaking, that is. Inside the Bolingbrook Aquatic Center, where the water is 84 degrees, 4-foot waves roll across the pool and kayaks rip through them with paddles spinning. Another kayaking class of the Chicago Whitewater Association (CWA) is about to end, and the instructors–who have volunteered their time for the last hour–are collecting their reward: 15 minutes in the wave pool.
A wave pool? We`re not talking about 100 kids kicking and screaming in the shallow end. Literally, a wave pool is a pool that generates its own waves. In this one, four turbines, located behind a grate at the bottom of the deep-end wall, pump bursts of air into the pool, sending waves churning toward the shallow end. The shallow end has no wall; instead, the pool floor fans out like a natural shoreline so the waves break harmlessly on the concrete.
Cindy Slowinski, a kayaking student from Bridgeview, watches the instructors frolic in the pool. ”The waves aren`t as tough as real whitewater but it gets the point across,” she says. ”There`s nothing like the real experience, when the rocks are there.”
For Chicagoland kayakers, who are all too accustomed to idle winters, Bolingbrook`s wave pool is rock-free heaven. What`s more, it`s the only completed indoor wave pool in the country. And the CWA thrives on exposing new kayakers to the controlled waves.
”For beginners, the first time you`re on moving water and the first time you go under it`s a panicky feeling,” says CWA president Sharon Anderson. ”I wouldn`t call the waves dangerous. They can turn the machine off in something like 3 seconds. But the machine`s novel. It gives you somewhat a feel of whitewater.”
Between September and April, when most northern rivers turn from whitewater to ice, the CWA supervises beginner and intermediate kayaking classes at various pools in the Chicago area. The members who instruct the classes are committed to training safe kayakers (or canoeists), so students can always find an available boat, a personal instructor and constant reassurance.
During beginners` classes, students learn terminology and safety information as well as the basic strokes, turns and the infamous ”roll.” The roll is a maneuver that allows you and your kayak to emerge upright, out of the water, after you`ve tipped over. It`s a necessity to learn, but the technique is elusive, since you begin the move while sitting under water in your upside-down kayak. It can sap every drop of a beginner`s perseverance. Sometimes the roll will send a drenched student home, never to return.
Marge Cline, editor of the CWA newsletter and president of the American Whitewater Affiliation, can recall that sinking feeling as a beginner. ”The first time I was on a river, the water was 48 degrees and I was in the river 6 times in the first 2 hours. After lunch I got out and walked the rest of the time. That`s why I love to teach, because I remember what it was like.”
While instructors sympathize with the learning process, they emphasize that one kayaking course does not transform a beginner into an expert. ”By no means are you ready to go out on whitewater after you finish this course, and we make sure you know that,” Anderson says. ”We just give them the basics here.”
But winter kayaking isn`t all basic training; events known as ”pool slaloms” are scheduled in Illinois and Wisconsin on many winter weekends. A pool slalom course consists of a series of gates through which the kayakers or canoeists must paddle; the course also may require a roll or a 360-degree turn at some point. All contestants race against the clock.
For more information on the CWA`s kayaking classes in your area, contact one of the following:
Bolingbrook Aquatic Center, 759-2837; Conant High School, Hoffman Estates (High School Dist. 211 Continuing Education Office), 359-7234; Evanston YWCA, 864-8445; Lattof YMCA, Des Plaines, 296-3376; Oak Park YMCA, 383-5200.
