Dickinson Bayou Brawl

The Dickinson Bayou Brawl is a canoe race held once a year on Dickinson Bayou (in Dickinson, TX). Most of the participants are students of Mrs. Kathie Derrick's homeschool Science and canoeing classes. LittleJ just started taking canoeing a couple of months ago, and absolutely loves it. Here he is at the beginning of a race called the "War Canoe Race". This a race which includes teams of four students, various ages and experience in each canoe. They much race to a certain point, turn around, and "portage" their canoes (take them out of the water and across a certain expance of land) three times at designated spots. Meanwhile, any of your competitors may try to tump your canoe, throw mud at you, steal your oars, etc., to try and delay you from winning. Hence the "War" part of the race! The above pic is LittleJ at the beginning of the race. He is the second child in the green canoe.

Here are one of the canoe teams portaging their canoe. LittleJ's canoe is actually behind this one, coming across the land (the boy in the blue vest is on LittleJ's team.... J is behind him kind of bent over carrying the canoe). Note the girl on the left side of the picture...she is throwing mud at the teams coming across the finger of land.

Here they are at the finish!!
In case you are wondering, why doesn't he have a paddle? Earlier in the race, the girl in the back, who is steering the canoe, lost hers in a battle to keep the canoe upright, so she took LittleJ's in order to keep steering. Tiny's comments at the end of the video are too cute.

After the race, you can see that it is not the cleanest activity, but boy was he happy!

Guess who's team came in FIRST place???? Wahhooooo!