You get some funny reactions when you announce a trip like this. People assume that at some point you should give up great physical challenges. It’s like when I went helicopter skiing in Alaska. Looking at the gray hair leaking out from the margins of my helmet, some of the hotshots in their 20s and 30s said to me, “It’s great that you’re out here.”
Tell them what we’re doing and people say, “Really?”, as if we are facing some great danger. We will carry life jackets and sunscreens. And after all, we’re rowing across Canada, where even the mosquitoes are polite.
The question has arisen as to whether there is a competition going on here. Even Al has asked whether there’s a competition, and I said “No, no … not at all.” It’s not a competition. I don’t intend to finish the trip first, or even try to be ahead. But at the end of the day it would be unwise if Al stood between me and a free meal. If there’s one cold beer, it’s mine. If there’s a shower to be had, I plan to get to it first. And I‘m going to keep a close eye on the numbers on the pledge paddles.
I will quote more books than Al. Somewhat by accident both of us have cited books we’ve read, and our blogmeister has started listing them. Al spent some time this week at his local REI outlet, and I’m wondering whether a mention of the REI Catalogue, which I was viewing online yesterday, is worth a book citation credit. I may just post a competitive reading list, which would include the book I have just begun to read, Joshua Slocum’s “Sailing Alone Around the World” about his adventure in 1896. Slocum tells of shooting sharks off the stern of his 36-foot yacht and almost falling into the hands of a pirate felucca before it was dismasted in the hasty chase.
Al and I are not sailing alone. We’re going together, a hazard of a different sort. We could wake up one morning, each guy thinking, “he’s still here, I can’t shake him.” I told Albert about Eric Sevareid’s autobiography, “Not So Wild a Dream”. Immediately after graduating from high school at age 16, Sevareid and a friend took a 2,250 mile canoe trip from Minneapolis to Hudson Bay. Somewhere in the middle of it all they got sick of each other. Sevareid wrote about how one day he and his buddy ended up on a riverbank duking it out until they were snotty, bloody and exhausted. And then, without uttering a word, they got back into the canoe and paddled on.
I told Al that story and we both laughed, and then for just a beat, there was silence. If that moment ever comes to us, just before the first blows are landed, I will say to Albert, “It’s great that you’re out here.”
Tell them what we’re doing and people say, “Really?”, as if we are facing some great danger. We will carry life jackets and sunscreens. And after all, we’re rowing across Canada, where even the mosquitoes are polite.
The question has arisen as to whether there is a competition going on here. Even Al has asked whether there’s a competition, and I said “No, no … not at all.” It’s not a competition. I don’t intend to finish the trip first, or even try to be ahead. But at the end of the day it would be unwise if Al stood between me and a free meal. If there’s one cold beer, it’s mine. If there’s a shower to be had, I plan to get to it first. And I‘m going to keep a close eye on the numbers on the pledge paddles.
I will quote more books than Al. Somewhat by accident both of us have cited books we’ve read, and our blogmeister has started listing them. Al spent some time this week at his local REI outlet, and I’m wondering whether a mention of the REI Catalogue, which I was viewing online yesterday, is worth a book citation credit. I may just post a competitive reading list, which would include the book I have just begun to read, Joshua Slocum’s “Sailing Alone Around the World” about his adventure in 1896. Slocum tells of shooting sharks off the stern of his 36-foot yacht and almost falling into the hands of a pirate felucca before it was dismasted in the hasty chase.
Al and I are not sailing alone. We’re going together, a hazard of a different sort. We could wake up one morning, each guy thinking, “he’s still here, I can’t shake him.” I told Albert about Eric Sevareid’s autobiography, “Not So Wild a Dream”. Immediately after graduating from high school at age 16, Sevareid and a friend took a 2,250 mile canoe trip from Minneapolis to Hudson Bay. Somewhere in the middle of it all they got sick of each other. Sevareid wrote about how one day he and his buddy ended up on a riverbank duking it out until they were snotty, bloody and exhausted. And then, without uttering a word, they got back into the canoe and paddled on.
I told Al that story and we both laughed, and then for just a beat, there was silence. If that moment ever comes to us, just before the first blows are landed, I will say to Albert, “It’s great that you’re out here.”
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