In the spring of 2013, when I was 60 years old, I bought two shiny new toys. Days apart, I purchased a solo outrigger canoe, known as an OC1 among the paddling crowd, and a road bike.

I did not know there were OC1s until I came across a photo of someone paddling one in the ocean. It was the coolest paddling craft I had ever seen. Long and sleek, it looked very fast, and almost too narrow to accommodate a paddler. I had owned and paddled canoes for years. I love canoeing, but paddling canoes is an iffy proposition in salt water. The water is too rough too often for open canoes in which the paddler sits high and the hull can easily fill with water. Capsizes are inevitable unless you limit yourself to quiet salt coves and protected marshes. I enjoyed taking my solo canoe up and down a beautiful and calm tidal river near where I live on Long Island Sound, but heading out regularly into the open Sound was not an option. I had a kayak for the salt, but never really bonded with it. Yes, my plastic kayak model was too heavy, fat and clunky, but I am also not a fan of sitting on the floor of a boat in a cramped cockpit. I also preferred using a canoe paddle to a double-bladed kayak paddle (I like the ”half the paddle, twice the paddler” pro-canoeing maxim). The outrigger seemed to be the perfect solution—a canoe for the salty conditions. Having never actually seen one, I assumed they were only to be found in Hawaii and elsewhere in Oceania, along with the big six-person outrigger canoes (OC6) that are raced out there. Could one be found near the Atlantic in the eastern United States? Surprisingly, one could. There was a west coast outrigger company that had a few available right near me in Connecticut. It turned out there was an outrigger club on the Sound, and the person from Hawaii who had founded the club had brought in outriggers, including solos. I was able to buy one quickly. I didn’t care much about the model or the specifications, it was an OC1 and I could have it. I picked the boat up from a guy associated with the outrigger club who showed me how to attach the outrigger (called the ama) to the hull, gave me a few tips, and helped me safely tie it to the top of my car. I had the boat on the water in a day or two and have paddled it countless times since then, powering it into the wind and then racing it downwind. It is a blast to paddle. I even raced it once at the nearby outrigger club, and I also ended up doing a couple of races as part of the crew in an OC6.

Within days of acquiring the outrigger, I bought a spiffy new road bike from my local shop. The ride I had been using was about 10 years old. I rode it for many, many miles, and it was a fine machine, but I felt I was due for a new one before my bicycling days were over. I walked into the shop and within a couple of hours was driving home with my newest ride. The new bike fits me perfectly and I have turned the cranks on it for thousands of miles. It is cushy and agile all in one and I love to head out on it along the quiet, tree-lined country roads near my home.

The outrigger and the bike are both muscle powered. The former calls more on the work by the upper body and the latter demands more effort by the lower body. There have been plenty of days on which I have taken a paddle in one and a ride on the other, which is about as good as a day can get for me in terms of being outdoors. Using the boat and bike is also a fine ”two-a-day” workout scheme.

Aside from being muscle-powered, the other attribute these two seated travel machines possess is that they are beautifully made from carbon fiber. They are incredibly light, which makes both of them easy to transport and quite fast in use, even for a soon-to-be 70-year-old. Their sleek designs are certainly made possible by how the maker can manipulate carbon fiber, but the impossibly light weight of both (The outrigger weights 19 pounds and the bike frame weighs only several pounds) is what I can most appreciate.

I’m not sure if buying these two wonderful models of travel should be viewed as impulsive or not. It doesn’t matter, I suppose, if the impulse produces such a perfect outcome. So, as I paddled my new OC1 and pedaled my new bike in 2013, I christened the season the Summer of Carbon. The summer of 2022 is the tenth that the same carbon fiber boat and bike are carrying me over the salt water and the roads, often on the same day.