Tina and I decided to break in her new kayak with a trip through the sloughs leading from Alviso to SF Bay. I estimated the trip would be about 2 hours, and that we could time the tides so that there wouldn’t be too much flow to fight on the way back in. The trip out was nice and we made it to the power towers in about 45 minutes. The trip back was much harder and took much longer than I anticipated. That was probably due to the rain we got the night before, which increased the water flow by about 4x. Even though we weren’t fighting the tides, we were fighting the flow of the stream. It wasn’t too fast, and we were able to hide in the eddies for most of the trip back up the slough, but it was hard. Both Tina and I were worn out at the end of it, but all in all it was a very nice paddle.