2004-05-08 Eric Canny in my pro-am woodstrip

We met at 8:30AM Anoka Fairgrounds boat landing with sunshine, blue skies, for another great morning on the Rum River.  Steve Eurista took off in a C1 before we got on the river and we never saw him again, but his vehicle was still in the parking lot when we left 4 hours later.  We headed upstream to the County 116 bridge and then back to the boat launch to pick up any teams that were coming at 9AM.  There weren’t any there so we paddled further downstream around the next 2 bridges and found a basketball floating in the river in the trees near shore.  Still finding no more paddlers at the landing, we continued on upstream again.

Eric Canny & Rick Lorenzen, Dave Dahl  & Ed Arenz, Todd Ellison & Kate Ellis, Norm Strike & Duane Strike, and Kjell Peterson in his C1.  Roger Jordath in his kayak stopped for a break with us on the sandbar island on his way back downstream.  Norm & Duane turned back downstream after the break on the sandbar island.  Ryan Peterson & Scott Ankeny came downstream from the 7^th Avenue bridge and turned back upstream to paddle with us.  Kjell was the only one with his shirt off and when I got warm on the way back, I took mine off to get a bit of color for my lily white skin.  I had forgot my sunglasses and they were more than just protection against the sun.  It was also good to have safety protection for the branches near shore when paddling out of the current on the way upstream. 

I was a bit in awe of Eric because he is one of the top local racers even though he had not been racing a lot in recent years.  It was difficult for me take control and call the “Huts” when I consider the bow paddler to be better than me and that caused us some trouble while riding wakes of other canoes.  Especially on side wakes, you both need to know work together to make it work smooth.  Eric took over calling the huts, but he preferred that the stern paddler control the canoe and I could tell he was a bit frustrated with me at times.  Hopefully, I would get a chance to paddle with him more in the future.

The 12 year old pro-am woodstrip racing canoe we paddled worked surprisingly well on the upstream run.  We were a heavy team and Eric said the canoe worked especially well in blade-deep water (about 1 foot and a half). Eric is son of the infamous Keith Canny and has a wealth of knowledge in spite of being only in his mid thirties.  Kjell and Todd were giving advice to Kate on how to paddle by telling her to push downward on the paddle with her top hand.  I asked Eric if he agreed with that.  Eric said he didn’t put much pressure downward and that the apex of the paddle movement was actually in space above the top hand. 

I believe that Eric was using other words that mean the same thing to describe the way I have come to believe a human can paddle most efficiently.  You can use your arms, shoulders, and the paddle as a solid frame.  The fulcrum of the frame’s movement should be close to the neck on the opposite side from the paddle.  This allows you to engage all of your torso muscles to move the frame and transfer maximum power to the paddle blade.  The effect on the paddle blade is to drive it downward in the water while it as close to horizontal as possible.  This is similar to having a huge imaginary paddle wheel with the axle further back and far above the paddle blade.  

However, in spite of 15 years of racing and 16 years before that of recreational paddling, I was still learning how to make it work.  We were the heaviest team in the slowest canoe hull and it took a toll on us to be sprinting upstream for two hours.  It’s usually easier to keep up on the way back downstream, but the river depth was at suck-water level and that was more difficult.  Neither Eric nor I had enough zip left to go back to the shallower blade-deep water and pop it up so we continued to suffer following the other canoes in the suck-water.  This was the first time we had ever paddled together and we didn’t really know each other well enough to ride wakes well.   The other canoes dropped us every time and we finally agreed to just paddle back easy.   

Ed Arenz said you just keep pushing yourself past your limit and your limit keeps getting further away.   I'd like to believe that is true.