2004-04-24 – Scouting the Snake River with our Opponents

Rick Lorenzen & Lee Jarpey with Keith Canny & Doug Berg reconnoitered the Snake River prior to the upcoming race on May 1^st 2004.  Keith and Doug had the fastest time in the aluminum canoe division last year even though they were both over 60 years old.  They were returning to the aluminum canoe division to defend their title, Rick decided to ask Lee Jarpey to do the Mora race in aluminum and challenge Keith and Doug.  Rick and Keith had been publicly taunting each other via the MinnesotaCanoeRacers@groups.msn.com email group for weeks.  In person, we let each other know that we enjoyed the friendly rivalry and we both hope that it encouraged other racers to do similar challenges.

The recent rain had raised the level of the river.  The locals say it takes 3 days to go up after a rain and it takes 3 days to go back down. The water level was 4.75 feet at the Mora gauge, which was down from 5.25 the day before.  If the gauge reading was lower than 2.9 feet next Saturday morning, the race would be moved from the shallow rocky river to Knife Lake to keep from damaging too many canoes.  At 4.75, our two aluminum canoes never touched a rock in the two and a half hour run, though we could see them just below us in the rapids.  Only three or four rocks actually broke the surface to be dodged along the 15 mile stretch above the town of Mora. 

A red-tailed hawk with a young snake in it’s talons spiraled upward from the top branches of a leaf budded maple tree.  An otter splashed into the river as we rounded a bend.  An owl flew off in fear, or maybe it was disgust. The shore was lined with fields of green grass starting to stretch upward between the parchment-colored dry grasses of last season. Dozens of blackbirds had a noisy party until our two canoes quieted them as we passed by on the river below. Clear and purple plastic tubes strung between maple trees on the shore all running to a large tank to collect the syrup that had just finished running.  It was still a bit early in the spring so we only surprised two 8 inch diameter painted turtles along our way.   

We made sure that Keith and Doug had no reason to feel threatened by us.  Lee and I had discussed in advance about how we would do that. We paddled slower at every rapids to let them go ahead.  When they waited up for us, Lee purposely swerved into them and then I ruddered us away and scolded Lee to make Keith and Doug believe we were going to have problems in the race next Saturday. We also led them to believe that our aluminum canoe was longer and lighter weight (and therefore faster) than their 17 foot aluminum canoe.  If this devious plan worked, they would be overconfident on race day and not consider us a threat.  Then if we can stay with them, they will begin to wonder why they can’t pull away from us. 

From past races, we knew Doug Berg did not like to take advantage of riding other canoe wakes. We knew that he would not agree to a pact between us to help each other by taking turns pulling each other along.  Of course, if we did that, it would only last until within reach of the finish line when all bets would be off.   However, since he wouldn’t, we decided to try to ride their wake until we got near the finish line.  If they slowed up, we would start to sprint away until they took the bait and paddled faster again.  By the time we neared the finish line, they would be tired and confused and thinking that our “faster” canoe was giving us an unfair advantage.  That would be the excuse they could use to give up and let us have the race.  They might be thinking to file a protest afterwards and they would be surprised to find out that our canoe was the same length and weight as theirs. 

If this devious plan worked, it would make victory that much sweeter because we had used strategy to beat a wily veteran who loved using strategy on others.  We decided to enter the Open Racing category with our aluminum canoe so we didn’t take any 1^st, 2^nd, or 3^rd place medals away from the citizens who were not experience canoe racers.  That way, we hoped to avoid causing any loss of future participants.  Keith and Doug may take the 1^st place medal for the Citizen Class Aluminum Canoe division, but they would know that we had the faster time and that their medals were really meaningless.   I hoped to get Keith and Doug to bet us that they would give their medals to the fastest non-racer aluminum team if we had a faster time.  If our plan didn’t work and they beat us, at least we would have tried and Keith and Doug would enjoy the pleasure of taunting us for years to come.