Day 4, June 30: Oh, Canada at Last!

While Matt and I slumber at Mooney Bay on the morning of June 30^th, might we nip to now and examine this writer’s present moment…just for a moment?

It’s just before seven as I sit at Brian’s dining room table at Lake George. It’s perfectly calm, the quiet broken only by birds and the gentle murmurs of Mr. Coffee in the next room. As the sun crests Pilot’s Knob, 32 miles of pristine water cradled in the Adirondacks glisten outside, water ultimately and inevitably destined for a ride over La Chute, a trip up Champlain, a course along the Richelieu, and an eventual procession through the St Laurence, past the Saguenay River to the sea.

In a cup at Pitch Pine Point or bordered by the Adirondacks, tumbling over La Chute or scaring the crap out of an oarsman forty-two miles east of Quebec City, was this water once all of one? Water, like people, is labeled for its boundaries and borders, identified not for what it is but for where it lives or for what holds, controls, or shapes it. Water can be seen in a molecule or a drop but takes on its identity in a cup, a lake, a river, or an ocean. Has that happy droplet lapping the gently sloping shore of Brian’s bay right now once rubbed elbows with the droplets contributing to my extreme discomfort off of Baie St Paul? What’s the history of this water in my cup? Where is confluence in the Ukraine, and when did the individual who launched that missile last tuck a child into bed?

Were my boat here and not in Quebec I’d be rowing, not writing. And if I had the next Great American Novel in me, here is where I’d write it. But for now I’ll let this Kosmic Moment pass, perhaps take one more cup out to the point, and get back to writing about the row. After all, Matt and I have a border to cross and a loathed river to revisit!

Better get back to writing....

Back in the boats for our third day on Lake Champlain, Matt and I were pretty sure that we’d make the Canadian border but less certain about our state upon arrival; dark cumulus clouds more typical of a late summer afternoon storm were already well developed by seven in the morning, and soon out of Mooney Bay we were wrapped in heavy, penetrating rain. The wind came up from the south again so we were able to deploy our running gear, but keeping a sightline on shore was not so easy as visibility began to deteriorate. Think “buckets” of rain…the kind of leaden rain that makes water dance and hat brims thunder…and you’ll have it.

Happily, and perhaps in no small measure due to the controlling beneficence of our present Administration, the rain abated as we approached the Canadian border at Rouses Point. Matt and I used the Customs Dock and the advice of a most pleasant officer to walk into town for a late breakfast at The Squirrel’s Nest. Wouldn’t you? A plate of eggs, another cup ‘o joe, and a spot ‘o corned beef hash later, the sun met us for our walk back to the boat and an easy crossing to Canada.   

The delightfully casual Canadian countenance that greeted Brian and me three years ago on our way home from Ontario has been beefed up considerably. Two stern, armed, Kevlar-jacketed gentlemen asked for our IDs and our intentions, might have cocked an eyebrow or two behind the aviator glasses in hearing “Saguenay,” but then passed us on to the suction of the upper Richelieu.

I carry a small GPS unit in the boat not so much for navigation purposes as for monitoring boat speed and, in doing so, in trying to assess the current. On flat water at cruising speed, Matt and I sustain about 4.5 to 4.7 mph. Up to now the wind had been the only variable on this progress, mostly for the better. With a tailwind and maybe a bit of sail to augment our rowing, I’d seen episodic registers of “5.5” or even “6.0” on the Mach meter and, of course, numbers as low as “2.8” or “3.2” when nature pushed back. But now, in water flowing north from Champlain into the Richelieu River at an increasing rate, the very current that bedeviled Brian and me back in 2011 again exerted her grip (see “Row, Canada!”…ibid, Brian, “goddamned Richelieu!” and “I’ll be glad never to see this place again.”). Our flat-water pace now generated 5.0, 5.1…5.2 as the lake narrowed and we entered the top of the river. When the south winds built later in the day, the new standard would be six. Oh, what a difference a compass heading makes!

Almost forty miles into the day brought us to St. Jean sur Richelieu and the top of the first lock of the Chambly Canal, a great place to stop if not to camp. Peter, allegedly the marina owner, allowed us to pitch our tents on the dock next to the boats…not the most comfortable ground, but convenient. Peter’s restaurant roasted a steer for me and we hit the hay amid the festivities of a pre-Canada Day festival. Late at night it began to rain and since my rain tarp was now a part of Matt’s sailing kit, he graciously allowed me entrance to his capacious tent during the downpour. This prince of mine….he’d been living like a king, I learned. But I sure appreciated his hospitality.

Objects on the plate may appear closer than they are...but not larger.

Today we crossed the border, remained thoroughly soaked for much of the day, felt the embrace of favorable currents, and ate well.

Tomorrow we’ll hit our first locks… and then barely survive Skippy’s Charnel House of Aquatic Mayhem, eh? 

Day 3, June 29th: Telemachus Morphs to McGuyver….Wins Adyrondaque Kup!

The third day of a long row is too soon to be able to say that you’ve established a routine or rhythm but as we broke camp at Essex on Saturday morning, patterns were emerging.

First, neither of us was going to be breakfast guys; a breakfast bar and a cup ‘o joe from the burner seemed to be enough to get us into the boats and going without longing or complaint.

Second, there’d be no dawdling; mornings are typically calm, and Matt and I felt a shared urgency to get on it…especially on this particular morning at Essex where Champlain widens and where a headwind or crosswind on the wide waters could make for very tough going. Senator Patrick Leahy would say that we had a great lake in front of us and he’d be right even if he was overruled for Great Lakes funding. (Senator, put any of your colleagues into a 15 foot Adirondack Guideboat and push him/her out onto Champlain and I bet you’ll win a vote.)

Finally, by Day Three, stuff begins to find its home. Once one is in the seat, the arrangement of items in the boat becomes paramount to safety, comfort, and convenience, and it takes a couple of days for a pecking order for the relative importance to emerge. Beverages and ice must be easily accessible while underway but they weigh a lot so the boat’s center of gravity must be considered, along with convenience. Rain gear, sun goop, batteries, a flare, and a whistle must be close at hand along with a life jacket when you’re not wearing it, along with the little transistor radios we carried. All of these little bits called for attention and careful placement. The tent, sleeping bag, air mattress, and warm clothes on a hot day could safely be stored out of the way in the bow or stern without affecting performance or comfort. They don’t weigh much individually but they’re bulky. Keeping the deflated air mattress closer at hand soon made sense since it could be used as a bolster during infrequent rest stops. I carried the edible stores as well, a weighty sea bag holding the burner and vital Via packs, dry-pack tuna, beef jerky, five dehydrated meals “just in case,” a large can of Dinty Moore Beef Stew (a key victual later in this story), granola and breakfast bars, dried fruits, and of course, Raisinettes ®. Lots of Raisinettes ®, but never enough. 

We pushed off early and were immediately rewarded by a nice southerly breeze and building waves from astern, just the kind of weather that can make a one hundred mile lake seem manageable. Morphing from Telemachus into McGuyver, Matt soon pulled up on a sandy delta at the mouth of the Bouquet River and went to work with what he’d collected along the way: some nylon twine, the length of PVC pipe from Crown Point, a broom handle, and the rain tarp from my tent. Larry Ellison’s money and technical genius may have changed the America’s Cup forever, and Matt can lay claim to having turned this leg of our journey into a kind of Addyrondaque’ Kup. His rig wouldn’t win a Concourse de’ Elegance, but it caught a lot of wind and moved his boat smartly. I lofted my own pusher rig kept handy for rare following breezes, and we spent much of the day efficiently “motorsailing” north behind a kind wind from the south.

Are we the last great superpower, or what??

We stopped at Willsboro Bay for lunch; we may not have been breakfast guys, but we’d hunt ruthlessly for mid-day game. While ashore, Matt collected more bits for SailPlan Iteration 2.0® which added a salty looking “Master and Commander” spar across the top of the broom handle.  When Matt launched from the dock after lunch, a guy in a big cruiser asked me, “Hey, pal, where do you get a rig like that?” I could honestly reply, “From the dumpsters between here and Ticonderoga.”

Recycle, re-use….relax.

The day’s row went well until the wind shifted from southerly to westerly. Say what you will about our cobbled-together sailing rigs, but don’t say that they allow for a beam reach. Our boats are not keelboats. We spent the last several hours pulling for Mooney Bay through a pretty tough crosswind, so we angled to the shore and caught the protection of the New York side as we arrived at dusk after 38.2 miles.

At the Mooney Bay Marina, hospitality takes the curious if effective form of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Our hostess (lovely lady, great restaurant, brilliant green drink, fabulous Chicken Parm….need the carbs!!) said that we might find a spot out back for our tents, and we might find the men’s room over there available to us…and we might meet an Authority Figure along the way and if we did, we all might forget that we ever had this conversation, right?

This kind of hospitality got us on land for the night, fattened with C-Parm and pasta and placing Canada within easy reach tomorrow.

"Finish your greens, dad"

Day 1 - Beginning

Matt and I climbed into our boats on Friday, June 27^th, fueled by coffee (Dark Magic K-Cups), Freihofer’s Corn Toasties (getting very hard to come by, former colleagues!), and the heartfelt if sleepy exhortations of those congregated at my mom’s dock for the 7: 00 AM sendoff.

Join us, please, for Day 1? You can climb out anytime, but I hope you won’t.

Neither Matt nor I had spent much time in the boats “training” for this trip. Matt, to be honest, had yet to touch an oar this season, but five minutes in I could tell that (you pick: a. the exuberance of youth, b. boyish enthusiasm, c. an extraordinary propensity to learn and adapt, d. all of the above) would trump any paucity of preparation on his part. After a quarter mile or so he fiddled with the geometry of the sliding seat, realigned the foot-brace a few millimeters fore or aft, and by the time we reached Elizabeth Island one mile up the lake, Matt had settled into a strong, fluid stroke that suggested- no, it screamed- that Daddykins ® would be the limiting factor on this sojourn. 

If you travel far, invite this man to join you.

Over time and through the wise coaching of cousins Bob and Bean Tarrant (Saratoga Rowing), I’ve learned that speed and efficiency on the water have much to do with just letting the boat run after a power stroke rather than in recoiling quickly and putting more power into the water. This reality is counter-intuitive to the newbie as it would seem that more power applied more often would be the key to speed- and I suppose that it is, in a sprint. But augmenting speed with the endurance required to sustain a 4-5 mph pace for up to nine hours each day calls for a curious combination of competing sensibilities: tight concentration on the moment and one’s technique while suspending the moment’s fatigue or emerging discomfiture….. patience with slow going but sustaining a kind of urgency in maintaining forward motion….maintaining an efficient heading by sighting off of an object behind (remember, we’re facing backwards) while keeping situational awareness of what is ahead. It’s a mixed and sometimes conflicting bag, this rowing is.

Finally, and most importantly, for distances, one must find unqualified joy in the moment. Boat packed and plans set, the euphoric excitement of starting a row of several hundreds of miles soon wears thin as the first blisters emerge or the lower back starts to unionize with the hamstrings and parts in between. Sustaining the excitement of the macro with an appreciation for the little things- the feather of the wake, the crystalline transparency of water receiving cherry oars, the silhouette of the fishing loon or the promising dark ruffles of a breeze building behind- these sights, sounds, and sensations feed and fuel the happy rower or are totally lost on the miserable fellow who is only counting the miles. To my delight but not at all to my surprise, Matt dialed in right away, finding his groove in technique and spirit before we hit Fourteen Mile Island. The gentle quiet between us as we rowed through our first days counts among the richest conversations we have ever had.
Gentle Reader, all l ‘m sayin’ here is that I sure was happy to have Matt as a wingman: MacGuyver in a pinch, the proverbial (and literal) calm man in a storm, a wonderful conversationalist, the keenest of observers and a faultless navigator, I missed him terribly when he had to head home from work two hundred and five miles later…

But hey, it’s no time for lamenting now, right? It’s Day One! Let’s get back in the boat!

So up the lake we headed. The glassy calm of morning morphed into a considerable headwind with twenty miles to go as we labored up the east side of the lake, Matt taking a refreshing dip across from Roger’s Rock while dad ran the calculus of the energy necessary to get in and out of the boat and decided to sit tight for now. We gnawed tentatively on the egg salad sandwiches that mom had put together perhaps three days before, while Matt continued to coach me about the long-term benefits of water over Gatorade (he’s right!).

At about 3 PM we found Peg and Tiny Tim waiting at the Ticonderoga gate where the northern headwaters of Lake George flow into Le Chute and then into Lake Chaplain. We scrambled up and down a rough hill to unload the contents of our boats into the Mini (here’s the math: 1 Minicooper Clubman= 2 Adirondack Guideboats, rounding up), the plan being that Peg would meet us at a downstream park after we had portaged our boats through town on nifty little carts.

Peg is an adored and treasured member of my family in part because her plans make sense and usually work out and this one did, too. After a portage that sparked curiosity and greetings, we put in at the base of La Chute where clear, perfect Lake George water tumbles from a series of rock ledges falls into a large pool perhaps forty feet below, then flows through a stream and a swamp to Champlain, hence to the Richelieu, hence to the St Lawrence….and then past Saguenay? This forty feet or so of vertical separation contributes a great deal to Lake George’s claim as “The Queen of American Lakes.”  The separation of waters (and hence flora and fauna) between LG and the Champlain/Hudson valley is essential to maintaining LG’s unique and fragile ecology; the connecting waters here at La Chute represents the front line of this separation….and protection. Champlain is lovely and the Hudson is extraordinary…but these water systems and environments are unique and must remain so.     

Anyway, we loaded the boats again with our stuff, Timmy showing no interest whatsoever in jointing us as Scupper® or Scout or Comfort Dog, but at least he reassuringly sanctioned the safety of mom’s egg salad sandwiches.

"Go ahead and row, Al; I'll catch up to you later." 

After a final embrace of lovely, heroic Peg, we rowed off from our home waters towards Champlain and beyond. It was by now touching 5 PM. We’d rowed 28 miles, mostly upwind, and it was time to think about our first night ashore.Five miles later, Matt and I came across the very dock that had been the scene of Brian’s “Hasselhoff Moment” three years earlier as he and I had labored home from Ontario. Exhausted after fourteen hours and over fifty miles at the oars and too tired to stand after crawling out of his boat, Brian ate a cheeseburger from a plate placed on the dock in front of him while on all fours. He was too tired to wag his tail…as were we all. (See Row, Canada! for the full story).  

The sun was setting and this site seemed a good launching point for our second day, so Matt and I set up camp on a knoll overlooking the dock adjacent to a parking lot which served a boat-launch ramp. We soon learned that we had established our new home at the site and moment of a fishing tournament, and trucks and trailers circled us all night long. A family told us that a state record for carp- 45 pounds- had been set just a day or so earlier off of that dock, and I asked Rufus, their son, how much he weighed. “Forty one pounds,” replied Rufus, making the connection, I think, but not liking it.

We slept well that night. We’d faced our first headwinds, completed our only portage, and heard a big fish story from a little kid. We were on our way.

July 16, 2014 - What's Important, What's Not, and Architects

I’m glad I climbed out of the boat when I did.

Jane passed away on Sunday in the presence of her loving family. Having had a chance to see her one last time and to be with her family through the week presented the confluence of a life so well lived and yet ended. She was the best mother that a boy never had, since she would have been my mom had tragic circumstances ever met my family. This week I’ve been thinking a lot about the gift that Jane gave me so subtly through my childhood in the form of that assurance as well as that of unconditional love. Not every kid can know what would happen “if”, but I and my siblings did, and the “if” was the promise and surety of Jane as a surrogate mom who would never, ever miss a beat. Her own vibrant, loving family is the best testament to who she was. It has been one of my life’s many blessings to have grown up feeling like her un-adopted but welcomed son. In her own family and in my core memories of childhood, she has left enough behind to never feel very far away.

Now I must attempt an elegant, tasteful transition from the wonders of life and love to the relative triviality of a rowing adventure… arguably as challenging as anything I faced on the roiling waters of the mighty St Lawrence.

(Pause.) Ta da!

Yesterday I sat on my mom’s porch with Buzz Lamb, a thoughtful observer of life and a writer for the Lake George Mirror, as he asked me questions for a follow-up article he is entertaining regarding my row. He delicately asked (and I’ll paraphrase a bit), “Since you had aimed to row all the way to Saguenay and came up short, do you see this row as having been unsuccessful?”  He phrased it delicately and tactfully, as he is a man of great consideration and eloquence, but you get the idea: In June I had been willing to sit for an interview and had then named a distant destination as a goal, but I would soon be heading back up to Quebec to retrieve my boat, having declared “no mas” to Ma Nature. What’s the deal with that…what’s the story? What’s the overarching theme?  In June it was something like, “Building on earlier successes, seasoned with caution and yet leavened with confidence, an experienced-if-aging rower sets his sights on Saguenay, 550 miles distant.” How will Buzz write this next story?

I could offer some punchy leads, any and all of which could be true:

Ø  Delusional Aging Oarsman Meets Reality….and Miraculously Survives!

Ø  A Four- Hundred Mile Row by a Septuagenarian is No Longer News.

Ø  Cowardice? Good Judgment? You Pick!

Ø  Sometimes a Long Row is Just a Long Row.

Ø  Heroic Adirondack Guideboat “Old Paint” Saves Hapless Oarsman Yet Again.

Ø  That Man in the Mirror: Wise Friend, Relentless Foe, or just an Idiot?

Ø  Oh, Look at the Little Puppy!

Gentle Reader, I have no idea how Buzz will translate our conversation and I’ll not recount it here- he will, and better- but perhaps meaningful was my immediate affirmative response to his question of whether I’ll head off on another long row in the future. The “quit” here had to do with a judgment call on the relative merits of either achieving a now-embarrassingly public goal or, instead, answering the call of intuition and experience regarding increasingly dangerous conditions. If the journey to Saguenay represented 100+ more miles of just flat-out rowing, I’d be there last Wednesday. If “redemption” might be achieved by simply retracing my steps and slogging home 400+ more miles for a total of 800, I think I could do that, too, as ugly as it would be. But an old adage, “you can only manage what you can control” comes to mind. While I can manage the discomfiture of hours in the seat and moving those oars, I can’t manage tides, winds, fogs, currents, and water temperatures that present danger beyond my ability to cope.

I’ll look forward to Buzz’s interpretation. BTW, consider subscribing to the Lake George Mirror. It’s a sweet weekly invested in the Queen of American Lakes and our environment….a great example of local reporting and articulate, constructive commentary.

Speaking of discomfiture, let’s end this rowing blog entry with a story about adaptation, if not rowing, yes? I will get back to the rowing adventure next time. Honest.

On my way back from Quebec I spent the night in the Montreal bus station, having missed the 10:30 PM connection to Glens Falls. Maybe a dozen others shared my plight. In the late evening hours, I watched them disperse to various locations and seats for the night, trying to make the best of an uncomfortable situation.  I’m no student of architecture, Gentle Reader, but I am certain that the designers of public spaces are charged to eliminate any accoutrement that might contribute to the comfort of a vagrant. Like me. Sharp edges, stiffly raked seats, few and short elevated surfaces, diabolically situated knobs and protuberances…. all are tools in the designer’s kit intended to prevent people like me from sleeping in places like the Montreal bus terminal.  

As I watched my seemingly more experienced denizens of the depot settle in for their slumber, I observed that most preferred this fixture above other options:

"Your bed is prepared, sir...."

 

I watched my neighbors closely as they tucked themselves into these fixtures, contortionists-in-training, one by one. Could their experience teach me something? Am I not a life-long learner? Some went belly-up across the center table, draping head and legs across the chairs, demonstrating a range of motion that I haven’t seen since wrestling days…or at the monkey exhibit at the Syracuse Zoo with Matt in 1979. Other smaller neighbors spooned sideways on the table, curling up sufficiently well to avoid contact with the chairs altogether, teaching us all that size matters when one is looking for a good night’s sleep in the Montreal bus terminal. Still others adopted an “over-under-over” approach: tummy on the table, knees on the chair, legs under the center arm, feet up on the far arm, with the upper body and head cushioned by whatever arms, luggage, or station detritus could fill the void.

As I myself settled in (I’ll leave it to your imagination), I realized that the variables at play in this twisted game of Hunting for Nod were many: one’s body type, pain tolerance, sleeping position preferences (or mandatories), trust of one’s bus terminal neighbors, degree of fatigue, the “fluff factor” of one’s belongings, and comfort with public immodesty all factored into the coming night’s repose.

But fatigue conquers all; rested, refreshed, and crippled, I lurched to the gate in time to catch the 7:30 AM for Glens Falls, wondering on the cruelty of architects.

Rowing a boat for 9 hours is hard. So is sleeping in the Montreal bus terminal.      

            

 

       

     

June 27, 2014 - And they're off!

Al and Matt left right on schedule a little after 7 this morning. It's a beautiful day on Lake George to start the row; a little bit of a north wind working against them when they pushed off but it seems to have completely died down.  After a quick stop for coffee at the Ashtons', they're aiming to make Ticonderoga and the portage to Lake Champlain by mid-afternoon!