Interviewer: Norma, I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit of how you first got interested in the sport of whitewater kayak.

Norma: Well, I loved water since I was a little kid, I was the one that was not afraid to just jump right in there, but um, I grew up with EDD so my parents were not real happy about letting me go near water. So it may have been making up for lost time but I actually started canoe camping with some friends after my divorce, and that was wonderful. But then, one of those friends and we decided to take on a whitewater workshop just let us to be able to let us tackle a few more rivers that had some little rapids on them, and I just got hooked on that. So I took some lessons, started going out with Appalachian Mountain clubs and other groups like that. I do that all spring, summer and fall pretty much. I feel like I have not come as far as I might have because I just don’t get out enough. But it’s really about practice and not being scared, not giving up, you know there is a lot of discouragement, but you got to push through that. Sometimes you just feel like ‘I’ll never get through this’ but gradually, you do, getting a feel of balancing in the little boat and maneuvering what sometimes are quite subtle shifts of your weight and leans, it was not an automatic process getting used to that but I finally have it, more or less. So that’s, you know, every little step is empowering, it’s really special because when I was a child I was not athletic at all, I was more like the kid that got picked last for the volleyball team, or got sent out into the out field, so I never identified as an athlete at all. But now I have discovered what that feels like, to be active, and enjoy it and think about skills, and pick up skills. It's a whole different outlook. It’s a rapid on a particular river that they say its a mile of continuous rapids and of course when I first ran into it, I was just like “Let’s just get through this” boom, right along, and then people said, try some turns, try to stop and rest and look at what is ahead of you, and see what’s coming, and I mean, that kind of applied to anything in life, you know. If you stop, and rest, and get calm, and look outward a bit, then you’re going to do better. And it’s like a puzzle, you know, you’re working your muscles but you’re also thinking of it like an obstacle course, like, how am I going to get through this rapid? Or what do I need to avoid, where do I need to be? And then execute that. I think that’s good for the brain, I hope it will help me as I get older, and I hope I can keep at it as I get older. That is a worry but, I really hope so.