"He took what was like fear in him, and made it humility: I'm damn small, he thought, hanging like a mote of dust in still air, in a sea that's damn big. But that's alright. I can do that."

--China Mieville, The Scar

Wednesday night, I drove the 45 or so minutes south to Stowe with one express purpose: falling out of a kayak. Now you might think I had this idea backwards, but really, the purpose of a kayak rolling clinic is largely getting comfortable with the idea that failure means hurtling along upside down in a river, strapped to the now-underside of your boat. It's a fabulous lesson in perspective, if nothing else.

Kayak rolling is an art form that could save your life one day. Or at the very least save you from sailing ass-first and boatless over a set of serious river rapids. Here's the scoop: in whitewater kayaking, you're wedged into a small plastic boat with a layer of rubber stretched over the opening to keep out most of the water. As you go through rapids, there's an increasing likelihood that you'll tip over, at which point you have to decide whether to flip back upright or pop the layer of rubber off and fall in the river.

The latter option, the "wet exit", is the maneuver I've always employed when getting from point A to point B while upside down. Just after you flip, you scrunch forward, pull the grab loop (aka The Oh Shit Button (tm UC Davis Outdoor Adventures)) and somersalt out under the boat and into the river. Which generally keeps on pushing you downstream quite quickly. The pain-in-the-ass portion comes afterwards: you have to drag your kayak to the shore, climb out of the river with the boat and shake it around until all the water comes out. Yeah it sounds okay now, but after you've done it five times on one river, you're wondering if there's another option.

Enter the roll.

Option B: Just before you flip over, in your last moment of sanity, the world will go into slow motion. You will see the details of mosquito wings, and smell sunshine. The little voice in your head that tries to keep you out of danger will reach for a teeny, tiny hard hat. You will have time to align your paddle with the side of your boat. This last thing will become very important in about three seconds.

Over you go, only this time you swing the paddle around underwater, and using hydraulics, physics and the force of your enormous ass, you will propel yourself back upright. These steps are called, respectively, the "sweep" and the "hip snap". I may know diddly about physics, but I've got enough ass to hip-snap myself--boat and all--right up onto the bank, if not 100 yards into the forest.

I can't really explain any better how the sweep works, and neither can most kayak instructors. The easiest way to learn it is to try it. Which is how I wound up taking over a lap pool with two guides, an expert canoer and a morning radio host. The guides were really, really nice and patient, which is what you want while learning skills to keep you from drowning. First of all, we all had to practice wet exits, so that nobody freaked out and remained stuck to their upside-down boat.

I'd never seen Stowe before, and even now I'm not sure I understand its attraction as a legendary tourist mecca for winter in Vermont. It's small but wide-flung, with one twisty road through the middle, with various quiet motels, restaurants and outdoor equipment shops scattered along it. My class took place at The Swimming Hole, a fitness club down a quiet sidestreet, with perhaps the finest view from an indoor pool deck I have ever seen. Here we are strapping ourselves into boats and more neoprene than the cast of Blue Crush while the sun sets a majestic pink six feet to our left.

The first couple of times you flip a kayak are surreal, because intuitively, your body wants to panic like a motherfucker. You're upside-down underwater, and you're pinned to the thing that's holding you under the surface. Major brown swimsuit time. But one of the guides taught me a neat trick: I measured how long I could hold my breath comfortably on the surface (26 seconds). And he reminded me that it takes about 10 seconds to get out of a flipped boat and oh, by the way, he could flip me back upright in six. After that, it was much easier to hang out underwater, practicing my sweep and hip-snapping swimmers into the lobby.

This is not to say that I have my roll down pat. As the instructor put it, it was "90% of a roll". So I will need to practice, which luckily enough, I'm more than happy to spend time doing. El Yo and I have gone kayaking the past three weekends, although at no point did I need to practice my roll. Besides, apparently the best way to practice a roll is to have a willing participant standing next to you in the river/pool/Waterbury Reservoir who can flip you back over if your roll is unsuccessful. You know, a roll assistant.

I have to agree it sounds good, but this also sounds like the best way to practice anything. Clinical trials would go so much smoother if I had my own assistant to remind me of deadlines and pill counts. Housework? Can't even begin to express how cool an assistant would be, because the rabbits refuse to even clutch the dustpan in their paws. So uncooperative. Also, I vote we deem a lot more things "practice". I have 90% of an academic transcript. I'm still working on it. Me and my assistant.

And also, nose plugs? Best. Invention. Ever.