Saturday on Lake Olathe

Sam picked up the new rig for this years race, a Wenonah Minnestoa III. Kevlar layup maybe? Either way it is a whole different class of canoe when compared to the Grumman. It tracks amazingly straight in my opinion and turned relatively easy, at least compared to the C2 we tested out previously. You still had to make a pretty wide arc but last time I checked there weren't many hairpin turns on the MO.

And here we are almost a year to the date from our first outing in the aluminum Wasson-canoe. We got out and motored like a couple of seasoned amateurs. You can see the extent of my cool weather active gear, flannel. Warm weather is right around the corner looking forward to getting this boat out on the river and see how she performs.

Beach party

Henry and I and the dogs got out this last weekend for a Missouri River beach party. It was chilly but as long as we got out of the wind we warmed up nicely.

2013 - MR 340

Sam and I are on the boat hunt for the 2013 MR 340. Sam got a line on this C-2 for sale here in town. It was a balmy 50 degree day, seemed like a perfectly good idea to try out a new boat, sure the water might be a little chilly if we were to tip it over but I was totally confident in our ability to stay dry. And we did stay dry, a few moments felt as though we were certain to tip but we settled in nicely. While this boat was significantly faster, tracked amazingly straight and didn't feel too bad once we got moving it doesn't look like the boat we are after. I think the first 50-100 miles wouldn't be too bad but the lack of room and the stability issues that one would encounter on day 2-3 really concerned us, so the search is refined and the hunt continues. Thanks for letting us try out the boat krista.

Adventures continue

Sunday 8-12-12.
  my buddy andy and i got in another new stretch of missouri river. from just above the i-435 bridge down to kaw point. most of the adventure was getting the boat in the water. had to do a little portage/drag/bushwhacking  just to get into the water... pics were shot with the waterproof cover on so most are dingy.

one of the many benefits of an aluminum boat.

small hill no.1 no problem...

portage

train, that's andy in the weeds.

one more small incline to get to the river...

i got that shirt for canoeing across the fine state of missouri, official river rat shirt now.

being that i invited andy to get a little river time in i should have been better prepared, at the last minute we decided to go "a little further" upstream to check out a few things along the way. turns out it was more like 8 river miles upstream, our original plan was t just do 10 miles.  not that big of a deal but we didn't get in the water till almost 7pm, so it got dark on us pretty quick. we made time to stop and smell the roses though...

stopping to check out cool shit

and have a smoke

1 Down, 99 to go...

 well, maybe. either way this is a cool list:

America's 100 Best Adventures

M.R.340 Success!

we made it to st. charles! it was a great time, my brain is still a little foggy but here are a few pics and thoughts of the race along the way.
 

kaw point, monday around 5pm. it was cool to walk around and check out all the boats. alot of very nice boats but not too many 70's era aluminum boats?

kaw point, tuesday 6am. we arrived at 5:30. got our boat loaded up and paddled across the kaw and waited for the start. good strategy but hard to relax for 2 hours... this is a sticker collage from henry on my coffee cup.

my seat, and view for the 79 hrs and 56 min that is took us to finish. custom seats routered out of pink styrofoam and layered in green yoga mat, trimmed in duct tape. they performed damn good and they looked good too.

our boat on the south side of the kaw, waiting. boat ramp is looking hectic. glad we got in earlier...

night 1, somewhere between waverly and miami.you might notice that we are pointed in a westerly direction and you might be thinking to yourself, "shouldn't they be going away from the setting sun?"  yes, most times when we stopped paddling and floated for a few minutes the boat would find itself pointed upriver... i didn't mind a bit with sunsets like this...

dinner night #1, i made black bean, potato, and some kind of buckwheat grain burritos. they were tasty and did a good job of keeping me going. waterjug with a camelback bite valve worked out great, it is sitting in my custom styrofoam "console" trimmed in realtree camo duct tape that also has as a little tray in front  that i kept chapstick and my phone in. it came loose at some point during the second day, next time i'll glue it down better.

a few extra thoughts on food and things i will do differently, i brought simple foods, granola bars, tuna salad kit, pb&j, broccoli and carrots and beef jerky (the real stuff, imported from hatfield's near neosho,mo- thanks mom!) greek yogurt and granola for breakfast, some crackers and banana's.dinner was 2 burritos.  i had just a little too much food, 1 too many pb&j per day. and an extra granola bar per day. not too bad really.  i divided things up into servings then compiled a morning bag and evening bag for each day.  this made it easy to get out of the cooler and made it easy to see how much i was eating, which you have to keep on top of,  otherwise it's crash-aroo time. more of the veggies next time, they were cold and easy to get down in the heat of the day. chewing on a dry ass granola bar when you've been in the sun for 10hrs and it's 105 degrees is not that cool. i'll keep the banana's out of the cooler. they were probably still good but i have a hard time with mushy banana's...
  life jacket is the other thing that i would change, i'm getting one of the self inflating waistband style ones. my killer stay cool shirt was awesome except for the part that was under the lifejacket. i started to get what i believe was a bit of heat rash that led to the itching frenzy. not cool.

i took alot of self portraits, daybreak day 2, we got into miami at 1 am slept for 3.5 hours and were back on the water at 5am.  the self portraits document the progressive sleeplessness and general fade that occurred, which was to be expected.  overall i felt like i held up pretty well. it's pretty amazing what your body can physically handle. i had my moments that for sure but changing paddling technique even just slightly or changing how i was sitting made a big difference. i was very conscience of my posture, i have a tendency to slouch and after 12 hours in the boat a persons lower back just can't handle it. good posture made a huge difference and kept my back happy.  mentally i had my moments as well, when you start to feel itchy all over it can really lead to a feeling of legitimate craziness but a quick dip in the river and a snack helped get through those moments. the addition of a radio really helped, watching tenths of a mile go by is not a good way to spend a day on the river...

day 2, great day to be on the river, i was worried that day 2 would be a hard one to get through but it turned out to be one of the most pleasant in my memory. taking a break, sam is probably calculating something. one of the funniest things was our increasing inability to do simple math. "so we are at mile 132 and we are going to 125 that means we have 4 miles to go!" ha. happened to both of us and we laughed about it. we just stopped doing math by night 2. easier that way.
we really laughed alot on this trip, good laughing too. 

my mom also hooked us up with neck coolers, very nice to have on a hot midday afternoon. sam got fancy with a double windsor knot in his during a paddling break. did i mention that mustaches just magically appeared once we got on the river? a gift from from the river gods to help us on our way...

moonrise night #2, the moon was amazing. our other night excursion were with next to no moon and to have clear skies and a full moon it was like having a lamp on all night. almost weirdly bright. and in the evening the swallows were out eating bugs i suppose or doing whatever swallows do in the evening. they were cool see, at some points it felt like there were thousands of them flying around. here we are closing in on the I-70 bridge, we were probably 2 miles away from it and pushed a little too hard to get there while there was still light. we didn't make it and it wasn't as cool looking as we thought it would be. it was the only recognizable landmark on the river (for me anyway) and it put into perspective how far we had gone. the river was a bit of a mess after the bridge, you could spot the lights at katfish katy's but it was forever away, and the channel markers were nonexistent. not even really sure how to describe it but it was weird.

coopers landing! night #2 ,arrived 12am.  this was a destination for us, they kept the campstore and thai noodle kitchen open all night night and it was pretty sweet. i scarfed those noodles down and drank half a beer and almost fell asleep standing up. all i really wanted was to hear the beer open and have the first sip. and it was a good sip. we got a good 5 hours of sleep this night. campground was cool, makes me want to check it out again!

this is jon, ground crew extraordinaire. he was on point at all times, except for that time he got lost...

day 3 storms a brewin...

day #3, we encountered a little rain, not much really. it was like this for 15 min and felt pretty good. the wind after the rain was not cool though.

self portrait day #3 this is jefferson city check point and that is the capitol in the background. hanging in there. about a mile from here we encountered some gnarly headwind that we more or less sat out and once it passed we were smooth sailing again. later in the day the sun was back out and we were motoring along and i was saying to sam, i just love being on the river, all of it, the miserable parts come and go but at the end of the day i just really enjoyed being on the river.

hermann checkpoint night #3. got in around 8pm, took it easy then tried to get some sleep, not happening when you are 30' from the train tracks. train ran every 30min i think, or it could've been every 30 seconds. either way next time we motor past here and sleep on a sand bar... i did get a snowcone here that gave me the worst brain freeze ever.

daybreak morning #4 after a night of hit and miss sleep and getting back on the water at 3am. this was my low point. i was actually nodding off while paddling, i was out of sync, i couldn't keep the boat going straight, i just felt like a mess. luckily sam pulled us through, sam was a champ the whole way through this event, he had a great attitude and we really enjoyed ourselves.  after i got a few more doses of caffeine in my system, i finally started to come around at about 8am. and was some help, i think

this wasson knows how to float... lazy river time.

hermann checkpoint, this one is out of sync but it shows the checkpoint flag and another great sunset.

the last bend and what we thought was the last bridge, about 2 miles from the end, turns out there was another bridge after this one. last self portrait, i lost my sunglasses the day before (an offering to the river gods) and thought i would just deal with it, next time i'll pack a spare. the final 12 miles or so was a fight against a consistent headwind. we chugged through, i was all kinds of crabby and sam was hyped up but when we actually saw the flag and the finish line i was back on an upswing, it really was pretty sweet.

here it is, the medal. the missouri river rules and i can't wait to get back on it!

my list of things i would change or do differently:

-self inflating life jacket

-faster boat (rudder even?)

-minor tweak to food supplies

-extra sunglasses

-if we were to have similar goals of just finishing i would modify day 3 and push past herman , probably even past new haven and find a quiet sandbar to sleep on. 

- start growing my mustache waaay earlier

i am proud of what we did, sam's schedule was spot on, we lost a couple of hours of the course of day 3 and 4 but overall i am super happy with how things went. i really had no idea what it would be like but i really thoroughly enjoyed being out on the river. i can't wait to get out there again, i'm ready for more!

 i have to say thanks to jon the ground crew, he really was on top of things and made life pretty damn good. thanks to my dear mom for hanging out with henry while i was away and saving the day with a killer sun shirt that kept me from getting burnt to a crisp. huge thanks to sam for sharing this adventure with me, thanks to andy for making our custom seat pans, literally saved our butts... and my lovely wife courtney, for her patience through this whole process...

july 14, 2012 saturday

we had an epic training run on saturday. we put in at kaw point at 8:20, although we really wanted to simulate race day but were running behind a little, and we paddled to miami, mo - 105 miles in 17hours 50min. and we were pretty damn happy with ourselves! at about 2 hours in we got passed by a 3 man boat that was scooting right along, it looked like they got to lexington (approx 50 river miles) 2hours or so ahead of us, and by our fuzzy river math that put them at least averaging 2mph more than we were doing,  it was impressive to see and the first time we have seen another canoe while on the missouri.
  a few things became abundantly clear, long sleeves and tights or sun pants are a must. my farmer tan is pretty bitchin but i have no interest in nursing a sunburn for 80 hrs. steph saved the day, she sent sam with an extra long sleeve shirt that not only kept the burn off but help with chafing on my life jacket. a needed upgrade in the hat department is a must, my current river hat has little holes woven in it and apparently the sun can go right through those holes and burn a sweet pattern into your head...
  river conditions seemed damn near just right, water was about 2' lower than our previous runs which didn't seem to affect our speed much and the added clarity of channel location was worth it. the wind was mild, and it was hot but it didn't feel too bad. our pace has been pretty consistent every time we have gone out, the thing that strikes me is that we don't go any faster but we go farther before feeling miserable, that means there is hope.
  we ran the stretch from lexington to miami in the daylight and realized all of our miserableness from the last night run wasn't just in our minds, that stretch is just slow and weird. there is a big long sweeping curve to the right and it makes you feel like the channel must be elsewhere, it's not, just got to slug through it. i have a feeling there will be many more places such as that the farther we get down stream. by the time we got to waverly it was dusk and we realized we had strategically planned again for the least amount of moon possible, this time a waning crescent that wasn't even coming up till 2:15 in the a.m. it's probably good or we might not have spotted the ufo/ floating light thing, not even sure how to describe it but it was there and it was weird. i'll be on the lookout for that again.
  we made a quick pit stop at hills island and decided we should come back and camp here on a more leisure expedition, very cool sand beach, no light pollution meant the stars were bright and although it was dark when we stopped you could sense the potential of a good time.
   we only had 1 tree sneak up on us about 6 miles from the end which would have made for an unpleasant night had we hit it but we motored by without incident. moments like that coupled with the mild amounts of delirium we experienced gave us the notion that a sense of caution is not to be ignored at night.
   at one break sam was making use of his pee jug and didn't realize we had drifted around 180 degrees so when we got back to paddling i was trying to turn us around and sam was was trying to paddle upstream, i laughed and laughed until we got to a bend that i swore was a straight until sam lit it up with the spot light and i had almost steered us right into the bank so sam had his laugh and all was good.
  paddling at night is really pretty cool, at one point the big dipper was positioned over sams head and the stars were so bright it was just a beautiful sight, the kind scene that makes you wish all the people you care about could be there seeing the same thing with you... 

  those are my thoughts thus far. 

waverly at dusk

sam and jon at sibley

hills island

waverly dinner and a movie...