My hands went numb and became unable to grip. I couldn’t hold a pen or button my pants. At night my hips and legs were screaming in pain. My mind went into a fog, incapable of holding a thought or completing a task. I slipped into a deep fatigue I have rarely had in my life.
Rowing 500 miles had been an all-consuming effort. I never lay in my tent reading a book at night, and never had need for a corkscrew. We rowed until we ate and camped, then got up, rowed, ate and camped again. Al would say goodnight, and I’d hear snoring within ten seconds.
Our expedition went from near-cancellation to completion in a dramatic 24 hours. Wednesday afternoon we were on the public beach in Burlington with Al’s back in spasms and he was sucking down a pharmacy of painkillers. We waited for sundown then raised camp on the beach. We had barely lay down when a security guard came bumbling along and made us move our tents off public property. I told him my friend was hurt and needed rest. He offered to call an ambulance or the police, whichever we preferred. Then in an uncharacteristic transaction with a security guard I said, “OK”, and we moved far enough to please him, which was 20 feet.
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| Brian and their tents |
We woke the next morning with a North wind blowing over our backs and we were in the boats by 7:10. Al quickly discovered that his injury the day before had been caused by rowing all day in the stationary seat. He moved to the roller and he was good.
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| Meeting up with Steve Kaulback and Dave Rosen at Basin Harbor |
Except for a lunch visit with Steve Kaulback and Dave Rosen, the builders of our boats in Vermont, we took that wind and rowed as long and as far as it would take us. We rowed until dark and beyond until our support squad of Peg and Kathy found us a boat ramp for camping at 10 pm, where they met us with the fattest killer hamburgers you ever saw. And beer. We had rowed 45 miles that day. I couldn’t stand and I couldn’t sit either.
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| Peg awaits the guys in the pitch black on July 7 |
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| Brian arrives exhausted (no sitting or standing for him!) |
The next morning Al went ahead to find a spot to begin our portage. He rowed up the La Chute River, which goes through downtown Ticonderoga, but a half hour behind him, I missed the mouth of the river and rowed three or four extra miles making my mistake and correcting it. It probably cost two hours.
Al’s mother and friend Doug Livingston met us with our two-wheeled portage carts, and we rolled our boats out of the public park, across a covered bridge and right through downtown Ticonderoga, past the waterfalls, the Aubuchon Hardware, and a mile uphill to the outlet of Lake George.
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| Portage begins in Ticonderoga |
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| Portage starts at a covered bridge |
I think I finished the day on adrenalin. I was so excited to be on home waters, and looking forward to ending the pain and sleeping in a real bed that night. We rowed past Rogers Rock, to the 400-foot stone slope that Maj. Robert Rogers in legend slid down in winter to escape the French and Indians. We passed Hague, Silver Bay and Sabbath Day Point. We stopped twice to go swimming.
We were running a little late for dinner. But people were coming out to us in their boats asking, “Are you the guys?” and we said, “yes, we’re the guys.”
Al was expressing doubts about the merits of even trying to get the Lake George Club for dinner. I said maybe it was my fault, but we had built an expectation and people were going to be waiting for us. “We have to be the guys”.
At the mouth of The Narrows, where the lake widens to the south, we were met with a headwind. It was like being at the base of Heartbreak Hill. Eighteen days of rowing would have to end with one last supreme effort. It was 6pm.
At first we picked a line straight off Dome Island, which would take us to the end, but the wind was beating us. We veered west to go behind Clay Island in Bolton Bay, then up behind Three Brothers Island, and straight up the West shore into the wind. People came to their porches recognizing us, and giving encouragement. I was deep into grim determination.
When we pulled into the beach at the Lake George Club I felt relief, and some disbelief that we had done what we’d just done. It was 8:30 and that last row from the Narrows took the last of what we had.
During our interview Sunday with Buzz Lamb from the Lake George Mirror, he asked whether we’d had any revelations along the way, and we couldn’t answer. I said I was glad to find out that I was still as tough as I had hoped, but that’s not a revelation. People had asked why we did it, and we couldn’t answer that either. We joked that we were going to keep rowing until we had an answer.
Along the way I thought a lot about history and the development of civilization. The Rideau Canal, the result of a monumental effort to built a supply route to defend Canada from attack by the United States, was never used for that. Now it is an historic artifact preserved for the use of pleasure boaters. All that expense and lives lost building it, for nothing. We passed the churches along the Ottawa River, the St. Lawrence and the Richelieu. A couple of hundred years ago people arrived dirt poor and the first thing they did was put their money together and build magnificent churches.
We rowed past the ruins of Fort Montgomery, known as “Fort Blunder” at the Canadian border built to defend the US from the British, with its gun ports oddly facing South. It was never used and now it is North of the border. We rowed under the walls of Fort Ticonderoga, high on a ill an impregnable fortress that was captured with a knock on the door. You look back on these things and it makes you think what we are wasting time and money on now, the ruins of the future.
I thought about the loons that popped up next to our boats making the trilling call. They must have done the same thing to the French, the Indians, and the British and the Americans. They’ve seen the foolishness of man and they’re laughing.
At the end of it, my revelations are small. If you go on an adventure, make sure you have a way to make hot coffee in the morning. Kill all the mosquitoes in your tent before you go to sleep and sweep out the sand in the morning.
When rowing upstream, stick to shore and the lower end of the bends. But avoid rowing upstream if you can.
Point your small boat right at the highest waves and raise your middle finger to French Canadians in cigarette boats.
Dry bags are in fact superior to Hefty Steelsaks.
A good hat makes the sun bearable and a plate of spaghetti will restore you.
And if you do something this grueling with a friend, do it with a friend who is such a good friend that after the misery, the spoken tension, unspoken tension, the frustration and near disasters he is still a friend who laughs at himself, laughs at you, and will be your friend forever.
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| Still best of friends! |
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