Kayaking and Writing (not at the same time)

If I've got a writing deadline, even a self-imposed one, I sometimes feel a little guilty going out and Having Fun. But today I took a great kayak break for a couple of hours on Eagle Creek Reservoir. This time, Stephan and I paddled all the way up under the I-65 bridge and down the more creeklike sections for a while. A few others were out, including some people fishing, but not really bad for a Saturday. We saw numerous blue herons, cormorants, 2 or 3 green herons, egrets, a kingfisher, a killdeer, seagulls, a tern, a plover, and any number of other birds. The highlight was seeing two red tailed hawks in an aerial battle right over us! One of them was chasing the other and nipping its tail. It could have been territorial, but when the one being nipped flew right over me and I got a good look, I noticed that it's feathers still had the mottled pattern of a young bird. Maybe this was a case of "go and catch your own food--I'm not feeding you any more!"In addition to seeing the birds, we got in some good exercise while enjoying the serenity of being on the water. Did I ever mention how much I love kayaking?Naturally, during the course of this, I mulled over some things in my novel and decided that my protagonist, when faced with a crisis, really needs to have an honest-to-goodness choice about possible options rather than being all but forced into one option. It's only fair, even though later she will feel she was rushed into a decision, that she have a possible plan B, even if she ends up discarding it. She's been forced to grow up rather quickly, and is already less naive than she was on page 1. In the course of making an important decision, she confronts truths about herself she didn't really want to acknowledge.I've also been working out some logistical details of how to get two fugitives smuggled across the border of one quasi-Baroque city-state into another one. I think I've got a solution I like, though I don't expect the characters will like it very much. :)