2004-05-11 - Running with the Rum River Rat Pack
Traffic was bad and I was a half hour late to the Rum River Anoka Fairgrounds boat launch. Sarah Kueffer was waiting alone by the cars with empty car racks. The rest of the pack had taken off and would be circling back for Sarah and me. That was standard protocol when someone was late or we knew someone was coming at a different time than the rest. Lee Jarpey and Keith Canny, Eric Canny and Todd Johnson, and Jason Larsen in a C1 met us going upstream around the second bend. Around the next bend, we caught up to Ed Arenz paddling to stay ahead in his C1. He was the rabbit today because he was slower than the rest. The bow paddlers planted crossbow rudders to spin their canoes just upstream of our canoe so we were 2 canoe lengths behind them. This way we had to climb over their wakes, but that was only fair because they had already been paddling for a half hour and we were a fresh team.
The night was warm and the water was refreshingly cold. I was running hot so I kept splashing myself. Keith and Lee had their shirts off to expose their unusually muscular torsos for their 60 plus ages. When we caught them, I splashed Lee with cold water and he splashed me back. That started a full scale water fight and they filled out canoe with enough water that we had to open the bailers. Sarah’s new racing canoe had a bailer in the front and the water in the bottom slurped back into the river within a few minutes.
Sarah and I ran alongside their canoes until they sprinted in the shallows and then we were barely able to hang on to their 2nd waves on the way upstream in the fast current from the previous day’s rainstorm. After a few of these sprints, I began to have doubts about my ability to paddle. Those are the times when I regretted the fact that I wasn’t running since I stopped playing basketball in April. Unfortunately, the regret only lasted until I got back to the van and the fatigue faded. Fortunately, the doubts faded before then and I couldn’t wait to get back on the water and do this again.
I made a point to call for water breaks more often than the others because I was hot and sweating a lot and because I had suffered from dehydration 3 years in a row during the hot part of the summers. My wife blamed it on canoe racing in hot weather, but I had overdone it while doing other work before and after the races. One year it was digging post holes and the next year it was shoveling dump trucks full of mulch in the yard during the hot muggy days and then doing a canoe race afterwards. Even so, the breaks were quick. Barely enough time to unscrew the plastic cap of the water bottle and gulp down a mouthful and screw the cap back on the bottle before one of the teams started paddling again. The rest of the canoes scramble to catch their wakes.
Just before we got to the bend below the sandbar island, Kathy and John Sullivan and Stephanie Larsen and RoseAnne Barr came past us on their way back downstream. We continued on up to circle around the island and try to catch them before they made it back to the Fairgrounds. On the way downstream, it was easier for us to keep up and we all rode side by side, taking turns trying to sprint away from the others. The team on the inside of the bends had the edge, but if they cut the corner too close to shore the suck-water could grab your hull. You either had to stay out in the deeper channel or cut all the way in close to shore to pop it up in the where the water was less than a foot deep. However, that takes more energy than staying in the deeper water.
We heard Eric say “Let’s try 5 and 5” and we eventually figured out that meant Eric and Todd were paddling 5 easy and 5 hard strokes to make it tougher on the rest of us to keep up. Lee and Keith were the closest to getting away most often. They actually dropped Sarah and me back a wave on one turn, but we were able to catch back up to their side wake by the next bend.
Ed Arenz had been playing tortoise and hare with us the whole time. Whenever we stopped for a water break, he would paddle past us and out ahead. He was ahead of us again during the downstream sprint to the County 116 bridge and it took us all the way to the bridge to catch him, but Sarah and I didn’t quite pass him before he got to the imaginary finish line under the bridge. He held us off just long enough.
11:29:27 PM 
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