“Big E, check out all these boats,” Rob started.

He walked me around the storage room and, in typical Rob fashion, had me touch all the different boats sitting on the racks. There were boats of every size and shape, some with sharp noses like the fin of a shark, and some with fat, stubby bows. Some were long and skinny. Others were giant tanks. Some had smooth, round surfaces, and others had sharp angles.

“In all your training, you’ve only tried one boat,” he said.

He was right. I’d bought a boat early on, and I’d grown used to it, bringing it faithfully to the Center on each trip.

“The Whitewater Center is the perfect place to experiment,” he continued, “to try a lot of boats and test them out. You know the course at this point, so now you can change small variables and come away with what works best for you.”

Rob was pushing as always, and I pushed back. I hadn’t even made it down the full course without swimming, and that was with the boat I knew.

“No. I think I’m good,” I replied.

Rob continued talking about the upside of trying new boats, but while he talked about the different choices, all I could think about was the downside. Sure. In theory, a new boat might work better, but what if it didn’t? What if it was worse? I didn’t really like my current boat, but I was a person of systems and repetition.

My pre-kayaking ritual was the same every time. I adjusted my seat to exactly the right tightness, snug enough to allow my knees to bury into the knee braces and my feet to press against the bulkhead, but not tight enough to hold me in if I needed to swim. I’d ratchet my seat to the perfect position. I’d count the plastic ridges on each side to determine whether both sides were even. It had to be eighteen clicks of the ratchet on each side, eighteen ridges on the plastic tabs that I could touch and count.