Game on!

Greetings, Gentle Reader, May 10, 2011
Game on!
That’s Canadian for “let’s get going!” right? Well, game on!

Read on for a bit more detail but if you’re in a rush, here are the headlines:

 Row Canada! starts on June 21st…the first day of summer. 5oo miles. Three weeks.
 Yes, I’ll look to raise money for financial aid at Boys’ Latin, where I teach. I took last summer off, and so did you. Let’s find our old rhythm, OK? I row, you write a nice check, and we both feel good. Row. Write. Row. Write. Easy, yes?
 My “brother from another mother,” Brian Rooney, may be rowing with me in his exquisite cedar Adirondack guide boat. A wingman! Woah!

“Row Canada!”, the title of this blog-book, is obviously an affectionate if transparent take-off on our northern neighbor’s national anthem, but it does convey the plan: to depart from Kingston, Ontario, on or about the first day of summer and row to Cleverdale, NY, by way of Ottawa, Montreal, Sorel, Lake Champlain, and Ticonderoga….precisely 500 miles of fresh water traversing two scenic canals, two mighty rivers, two lovely big lakes and entailing one two-mile portage. That will be ugly.

I expect that this journey will take three weeks or so to complete; the locks will take time and, more importantly, it’s been five years since The Big Row in 2006, which covered 452 miles. The Erie Canal in ’08 was 360 or so, and the ’09 Baltimore-to-DC adventure entailed a relatively modest 280. The key concern, of course, is not this year’s longer distance but, rather, the aging motor at the oars. I’ll be 60 in August and, truth be told, this will be a stretch for me. But as Warren Miller used to say, “If you don’t do it now, you’ll just be another year older when you do.”

So I’d better do it now.

If you run the math as I have, you’ll see that three weeks calls for a daily average of only 23.81 miles…nine or ten miles under my previous daily averages. My conservatism stems from these uncontrollable realities:

1. I’ll not be doing much on-the-water training before I depart. It’ll take time to get the hands and derriere in shape for a sustained effort, and this will take some time.
2. Wait. I gotta be honest. I’ll be doing NO on-the-water training before I depart. Sure, I’ll have spent some time in the gym, but there’s no substitute for the real thing.
3. The canals are rife with locks that will take significant time to transit. Locks are great for socializing and for building international relations, perhaps, but they’ll add significant time.
4. Champlain, the next-to-last puddle on the trip, is very big water. The headwind of an ill-timed lingering southern front could make that last stretch a real slog….or, of course, if the wind’s from the north, a sleigh-ride!

If I sustain a proven 30 to 32 miles each day, the elapsed time comes down to about 16 days. Big difference. We’ll see. It’s not a race. Much.

Those of you who have followed my blogs from earlier adventures know that I typically begin to write months in advance of the adventure, filling many pages with tedious ruminations and reflections on everything from preparing to row to teaching eighth grade boys to issues de jour regarding our ailing contemporary culture. Expect some of that in future installments, but not as much. After all, I’m on the water in only 42 days. Count it a simple blessing.

And finally, if I may, a word about fundraising? If you’ve read this far, keep going. This is important.

I’ll riff some other day about where financial aid funds go and to what use they are put but, for now, if you want to give my metaphorical boat a big, big early push -as I hope you will- simply go to the Boys’ Latin School website at www.boyslatinmd.com , click on “Support BL”, and follow the bouncing ball. Look, I can’t give you more than that; I’ve got to find my way home from Kingston, Ontario…I’m just asking you to navigate a few clicks. 

You see, we’ve helped many families and created wonderful opportunities for boys since The Big Row of ’06. I’ll get sappy later (graduation is on June 10th) but, for now, please know that the boys you have helped are terrific kids of enormously appreciative parents. I hope that much good can come from my labors at the oars because the kids are so well worth it. So if you think you’ll be writing a check somewhere along the way, help us establish some early momentum by pledging now, OK?

You rock.

Row Canada!

Mo’ latah!

Mr Frei