Rowing with Kierkegaard, Part I

Sunday morning, 8/21/17

I’ve been looking backwards a lot this summer- literally - and now, this morning, figuratively. 

The literal stems from rowing 695 miles in July, from Lake Huron to Lake George. Rowing entails facing backwards, of course, and as I row I often don’t know what I’ve passed until I’ve already passed it. I’d wave back to that friendly couple on the pier who had been watching me coming for the last ten minutes. Or I’d pull up lightly to observe a heron that I’d just passed as he stood motionless in the reeds not wanting to have to abandon a sweet fishing spot. Or I’d pause gently as a furrow-browed osprey would eye me from her nest above the light tower. “Keep going,” she’d blink. “I’ve been watching you. Don’t make me have to leave this nest.” I’d cease my labors as loons popped up behind to the boat or to allow a threatening wave to slide under the hull or to simply stretch at least once each hour. Sometimes I’d ram a buoy, a rock, or a dock through inattentiveness or just bad luck, and at other times I’d sigh the relief of the reprieved fatalist as a Kevlar-piercing iron bar lurking just under the surface would slide past the hull with just inches to spare. 

There are ways to remedy this kind of blindness when rowing, but each entails compromise.  One can stop and turn around by twisting in the seat and looking forward, a practice that affords a glimpse ahead but painfully knots up the neck by Day 2 and bleeds hard-earned momentum from the boat. I had experimented with an assortment of mirrors before I’d embarked, but a mirror in a rocking boat is ineffectual if it is too small and, if its large enough to be useful, it creates drag in a headwind. 

Besides, an Adirondack guide boat ought not to look like a Peterbilt. 

I soon adopted a technique familiar to pilots who fly tail-wheeled airplanes that block a view directly over the nose when taxiing: the S-turn. I’d pull on only one oar three or four times, yawing the boat in one direction or another to allow for a view ahead over the opposite shoulder without much of a twist of the neck, maintaining some boat speed in the process. This system worked well except when a buoy or rock lurked in the yaw. And they do.  

For three weeks this summer, the world ahead of me was always behind me. I could savor the slowly receding vista over the stern for hours at a time but not avoid the unseen rock ten feet off the bow. I’d recall Kierkegaard’s reflection, “Life can only be understood backwards, but we have to live it forwards.” When you’re in a rowboat for ten hours a day for three weeks, you think about things like Kierkegaard and Shakespeare and life and love. You have to. And you sing. Try Willie’s Sonnet 29 as a country western song. It passes the time.

This morning, in recalling my gratifying adventure from the comfort of this easy chair here in the kitchen, I feel a figurative blindness as I pull towards the opening of school next week. As I look backwards over the chronological fantail, I can survey fifteen years of teaching experience, wonderful colleagues as mentors waving from the pier, and even a curriculum as a rudimentary chart. But considering what I’ve been watching and hearing since I climbed out of my fifteen-foot Kevlar bubble in July, the waters ahead seem turbulent, angry, uncharted. Teaching English will be easy- even joyful, I think- because learning to read thoughtfully and to write honestly and well are enduring life skills, the tools of responsible citizenship. But times being what they are, I ask myself, if rhetorically, “Really, what will I teach this year? What should I teach this year? What do my students need to learn this year? What do they want to learn this year?” As I write this, the TV on the kitchen counter blathers on as the Sunday pundits grapple with the junctures of freedom and censure, history and ignorance, fact and fake news, principled and institutional loyalty, love and hate. 

I wonder what’s ahead. Are the boys paying attention?  These cultural waters are choppy, murky, threatening, and unpredictable. But they are also exhilarating, instructive, and inspiring, calling on our better natures to become our best selves, compelling us to examine who our best selves really are.   

This is an unprecedented presidency in many ways, but these are not unprecedented times in tone, tenor, or intensity. I was a high school sophomore in 1967. A lot happened then, too- you can look it up on your Google machine- and I well remember teachers whose respect for facts, knowledge of history, sensitivity to our malleable natures, patience to listen, and self-discipline not to preach made those waters safer if not calmer, navigable if not comfortable, manageable if not controllable. They were guides in our journey but not determinants of our intellectual or moral destinations, and they trusted us to pull those oars. Their capacities for navigating angry, confused waters with empathy and grace coupled with urgency and conviction inspired us to want to try.   

I hope that I can be that kind of teacher this fall. 

At the end of my row I’d seen each of 695 miles, but not until they were behind me. What’s ahead this year promises to be another grand adventure, and crewmate Kierkegaard might advise me to be patient: to live it first and to learn along with the boys…and to try to understand it later.   

    

Rowing with Kierkegaard, Part II…counterpoint.

  

Tuesday, 8/23/17

Kierkegaard was pretty much right in his thought of how we understand life backwards but have to live it forwards and last Sunday, as I wrote about my row, I couldn’t resist employing this low-hanging philosophical fruit as a metaphor for teaching and learning. But today, as I re-read Rowing with Kierkegaard, Part 1 while also digesting the national news and even some of my summer’s reading, I’d like to apologize for Sunday’s intellectual- and even moral- Pablum. Kierkegaard has no place in a rowboat and rationalizing his one-liner as a framework for teaching is cheesy at best and dangerous at worst.

Here’s the cheese….and a confession, of sorts.

It’s true that while I rowed, I hit things that I couldn’t see from my stern-facing vantage point, but the fact is that I hit them for one of two reasons: either I wasn’t paying attention to what I could and should have known (I carried charts that demarked buoys and hazards to navigation and depths), or I got lazy when losing situational awareness to the thought in my head, the rhythm of the strokes, the heat of the day, or the fatigue of late afternoon. Using Kierkegaard as a moral bumper for the crunch of my bow against rock or concrete does not excuse my complicity; as an episodically negligent rower, I could and should have known what was ahead had I paid more attention or if I’d taken the time and made the effort to do so. Taken literally and argued as I did in Part 1, Kierkegaard’s statement excuses me, suggesting that I could not have known what I did not know and that I could only “understand” the lesson of hitting that dock or rock by actually hitting it….and then contemplating the why. That faux moral high ground does not pass the sniff test. I should not have used K as a cover.

I hit what I hit because of my own inattention, sloth, or negligence, and here’s the confession: I fully knew (“understood”) that I wasn’t paying attention even while I wasn’t paying attention. I was willfully playing the odds, gambling that I’d miss most of the obstacles, calculating that the price of constant vigilance (the sore neck from constantly turning around, the diminished boat speed by doing so) was too high, not worth avoiding the occasional ding, scratch, or dent. 

And here’s the danger in bringing Kierkegaard into the boat as a metaphor for teaching.

As a teacher, I also have charts: charts of experience and prior learning that, as imperfect as they may be, suggest a responsibility to “understand” while simultaneously “living” life forward. While I see the logic of Kierkegaard’s “understand it backwards but live it forwards” precept, teaching calls for constant vigilance, the application of prior experience to the moment, the anticipation of the crunch or the crash as – or even before- it’s happening; I may decide the fate of my hapless Adirondack guide boat and accept the negligible consequences, but the consequences of a teacher’s inattention, lack of engagement, or of ‘letting things roll’ for his or her students are far greater, infinitely more important, and laden with consequence. In this way my students and I should not share a boat propelled by Kierkegaard’s idea of “understanding life backwards but living it forwards.” Teachers are the composites of longer and more reflected experience, and my Part 1 suggestion that I’ll voyage with my students as a fellow crewmember equal in “living it forward and understanding it backwards” is profoundly negligent. I’ll travel the year with them as a fellow learner, as an equal in honoring the importance of - and in honing the practice of - lifelong learning. And yes, I’ll share my own experiential charts with them when doing so might be helpful for context and to facilitate their own voyages. But the implied wisdom of “living…then understanding” discounts what teachers can and should add to a student’s journey. Teachers know the weight of injustice, the dangers of bullying, the price of passivity, the power of empathy, and the potential of community, among other things, because we have learned through living and reflection. We can hardly ignore our ownership of these charts, charts which carry much detail and depth not yet possessed by our students.   

Early this month I picked up a copy of It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis (1935), “a cautionary tale about the fragility of democracy…an alarming, eerily timeless look at how fascism could take hold in America.” (In June I’d re-read Orwell’s 1984 and, times being what they are, I was interested in reading an earlier foray into this topic.) Lewis’s protagonist, Doremus Jessup, heroically endures the consequences of fighting the republic’s slide to fascism and concludes,

“I am convinced that everything that is worthwhile in the world has been accomplished by the free, inquiring, critical spirit, and that the preservation of this spirit is more important than any social system whatsoever. But the men of ritual and the men of barbarism are capable of shutting up the men of science and of silencing them forever.” 

The cultivation of “the free, inquiring, critical spirit” evokes the generic mission statement of the educational community…..and ought to inform the responsible oarsman as well. If I‘m going to foster “the free, inquiring, critical spirit(s)” in my students, I’d better get out the metaphorical charts and remember that the “understanding” gleaned from the wakes behind us always informs our journey forward. We can understand what’s ahead, or at the very least anticipate and be better equipped to influence the future, by paying wise attention to the past in explaining and expanding what we know to be true even as we redraw our charts for the future. 

It’s what the responsible oarsman…and teacher…must do.

So…out of the boat, Kierkegaard!  

Home

Cleverdale, NY

34 miles (row), 2 miles (walk)

I’m home. Yesterday’s departure from Chipman Point at 5:45 may have been a bit early, as I had none of the trouble I’d anticipated in winding my way up ‘La Chute’ to Ticonderoga’s town park. At this moment I sit on mom’s porch ‘ the morning after,’ a hot cup of coffee and a day to do nothin’ at all in front of me, and the feeling is bittersweet; the last three weeks established a healthy, challenging, and ever-varying routine concentrated on both enjoying the moment and achieving a goal. What’s not to like – and miss - about that? Yet here, home, with friends and family and an on-demand cup of coffee … well, as I’ve said all through this journey, I’m a very lucky, lucky man.

Yesterday’s sunrise emerged over Vermont, ‘La Chute’ was largely clear, and Doug and Susie Livingston arrived right on schedule to enable me to cart my boat up the hill – a vigorous 2-mile portage – to Lake George. They also delivered an egg salad sandwich and a vanilla malt, the only fare I would eat, or need, to power myself home. A tip o’ the sunhat to Bob and the crew at Snug Harbor Marina, who allowed me to re-launch the boat with good cheer and no fee … and after a five-mile run on Champlain, I was only 29 miles from home.    

La Chute

Where Lake George flows into Lake Champlain

Within two hours, a south wind came up that would be on the nose all day; what could have been a relaxing final sleigh ride down the lake was, instead, a tough, slow slog down the east side. That these clear, inviting waters were familiar and prompted the best kind of nostalgia eased the pain, though, and by 6:30 PM I arrived to cheers, hugs, and kebabs from Hannaford.

Thanks again to Doug and Susie for their heroic logistics support, to Bob and Bean and company for their moral support north of Black Mountain Point, and to son Matt for checking on his dad a few hours later, reminding me again of the warm welcome ahead. You all made a final hard push for home a little bit easier.

So … last night my head hit a real pillow for the first time in three weeks, and I don’t remember it. Instant sleep. Instant. Today I’ll assemble the bits and pieces of my 3-week universe … I’ll take my steaming laundry to a laundromat in town rather than tax our ‘lil Whirlpool, I’ll disassemble and clean boat parts and hardware, and I’ll sleep and swim. And repeat.

And as odd as it sounds in the reading, I’ll write again when Peg arrives with my computer; the handwritten journal has been a wonderful old school throwback medium, but I’ll look to my keyboard for deeper stuff in the coming weeks, if only for my own sense of closure to this blog.

Peg, thanks for the transcription and editing of it all, for even sending a hard copy to my techno-peasant brother, and for being there in every way … including finding my wallet by telephone. You rock!

If you’ve read, thanks for reading. If you’ve passed a gift to Boys’ Latin, thanks for that generosity as well; ‘paying it forward’ leads to our best selves, yes?

More blog later!

Peace, love, and happiness … and thanks for being aboard.  

Lake Champlain

Chipman Point, VT

19 miles, 1 lock

I’m off the water at 2 pm today after 19 easy miles up southern Lake Champlain. If there were ‘bankers hours’ in a rowing expedition, this is it. Or them? Chipman Point, a lovely spit of land at a particularly narrow point of the lake, affords me a good jumping-off point for Ticonderoga tomorrow morning. I’ve moved my cart rendezvous with Doug to 9 AM so I can hopefully beat the predicted turbulent weather tomorrow afternoon. Thanks, Doug!

This morning’s rowing was sublime … even a bit sad … as I’ve come to love the sense of adventure, and progress to a beloved destination, over these last three weeks. The ospreys barked out their warnings at each nav tower.

And a couple took turns circling overhead, perhaps considering my cheesy straw hat as possible material for the nest. I’d be easy pickings for the likes of them if they decided to get serious.

As one proceeds north on Champlain, the lake opens up like a picture book, a delightful development after 200+ miles of canal confinement.

Granite cliffs are appearing, the water is clarifying …. And hey, it’s Vermont!    

The row today was proceeded by my horror this morning in discovering the breech in my tent that one thousand mosquitoes had already communicated to their thousand friends. I must have been pretty tired not to have detected the transfusion that was taking place … or maybe the Chicken Parm served as an innoculant. Sadly, every mosquito who paid the ultimate price showed evidence of an earlier score. I’ve got some sanitizin’ to do when I get home.

The placid nature of this morning’s row incited some reflection about these past 20 days, particularly the rhythms of this sojourn from the high, clean waters of the Trent-Severn and its dozens of lakes to the truly oceanic and thrilling expanse of Lake Ontario to the Oswego/Erie/Champlain canals … placid, mostly, but not when the Tstorms sweep in! Skinny water, wide water, crystalline water, muddy water, dead calm to deadly rolling … I’ve been able to see it all over these last three weeks – how lucky I’ve been to have the time and to enjoy the blessing of Peg and my family to go explore.

I love you all more than I can say, and my time to think and remember and recognize my many blessings has brought me closer to all of you than ever … but the hugs will wait until after a long, hot shower.

Peace, love, and happiness …   

My Best Purchase

Bonus Blog!

While rowing on a sliding seat delivers a full body workout, some might wonder what challenges are inherent in a carpal tunnel-like scenario such as this. Let’s break it down. As of tonight, Day 19, we’ve clicked off 642 miles. If we took 4 mph as an average, that’s 180 hours in the seat. Adding 70 or so locks to the mix at, say, 15 minutes average per lock, we’ll add about 17 more ‘sitting’ hours … maybe 200 total hours to date with two days to go.

Even though the hands, wrists, arms, shoulders, hips and legs are all moving with every stroke, the derriere sits. This concentration of weight and focal energy led me to the best purchase of this adventure.

The bare sliding seat, standard on the boat. This hardwood seat of elegant craftsmanship features slightly ‘dished’ halves that would comfortably accommodate the posterior of an Olympic balance beam medalist. Sadly, as I am a bit of a ‘wide body,’ my backside simply overwhelms this seat pan … and after an hour or two, pain ensues. Towels, shorts, or thin cushions are similarly compressed after a while. A solution needed to be found if long distance rowing was to be pursued. (Sorry for the passive verbs.)

I turned to the long-distance trucker community. Who knows more about ‘active sitting’ than these people? Their answer? The Dura-Max.

This cushion did indeed extend ‘time in the seat’ to unimagined lengths. Up until Monday, July 17, it was ‘the answer’ to fanny fatigue. Taking time to stretch every few hours was still imperative, and the Dura Max, while not ‘plush’ or ‘luxuriant,’ nevertheless represented a quantum leap over all other experiments. Yet, could there be more?

But then, on Monday, July 17, at the town dock adjacent to the Fonda exit of the New York State Thruway, I saw it: across the road, a retail store dedicated to … truckers! My people! No strangers to pain!

I gimped across the road hoping to find a way to augment my tiring Dura Max. I’m sure it was as tired of me as I was of it; we both needed help, a kind of mediator to bring each of us back to our best selves.

On a low shelf I found ‘Black/Noire siege angulaire, bulles massent la region lombaire du dos!’ This translates, I think, to ‘Comfort Bubble Wedge’ ..  and to success, placed on top of the Dura Max which is itself draped over the wooden seat pan, ‘siege angulaire’ adds just the little tad of extra buoyancy I’d been needing … the two cushions work in silent but agreeable harmony, and my seat pain issues have now been subordinated to my creaky neck, which is tiring of peeking around to see where I’m going.

So my $19.95 gamble on a Comfort Bubble has paid off handsomely; now I don’t have to have the buns of an Olympic gymnast to be comfy in my boat!  

   

The Champlain Canal

Whitehall, NY

36 miles. 6 locks

I walked into this tavern at a marina and saw it right away: a preposterously over-proportional chicken parm and pasta – whatever physical advancement that may have come from 9 hours / 36 miles of rowing is about to be obliterated … or at least neutralized.

It’s a testament to Kate’s sharing at Three Amigos last night that I got through the day on Nature Valley breakfast bars, fingers in the peanut butter, and lots and lots of fluids. Kate, that meal did the job it had to do … and possibly this Chicken Parm will step up as well.

Today’s rowing? After 8 more miles on the contrarian Hudson, I left the river and spent the rest of the day on the neutral waters of the Champlain Canal. Long stretches of perfectly straight waterway – four or five miles at a stretch with nary a turn – were dotted with lovely farms, friendly cows almost wading in to say hello, and narrower stretches bordered by 20’ granite walls. I had no fresh batteries for my radio, and the miles reeled by in a kind of languorous haze – lovely, really. I can’t believe I’m a day or two from a finish.

Well, between that last page and this page I dispatched a prodigious Chicken Parm. Don’t they say that you shouldn’t eat anything larger than your head?

I’m taking my chances sleeping (illegally) in a park tonight. I’m now out of the warm embrace of the lock system and will have to live by cunning and guile. The tent won’t go up until after dark – if it will go up at all – but it’s a lovely evening and if I’m under the stars, so be it.

Some industrial barges carrying stone and four or five chatty boaters were the extent of my social interface today … I will have to re-learn the art of conversation, perhaps? The discussions I have with myself on the boat, frequent and topically unpredictable, often end in a spat or one of us just leaving, but they do pass the time.  

When I last rowed this stretch – three or four years ago – sections of the canal hosted huge dredging barges and specialized equipment attending to the GE chemical waste mess near Fort Edward. Today, not a sign of any activity; all done, all clean? I saw a lot of people near the water and a lot of water toys and ladders on docks … but no one in the water. Is it safe?

Oh!! The TV here in the restaurant features a beaming OJ; a good day for him, too?

If I don’t get tossed into jail tonight, tomorrow I’ll head up the 20 miles or so to Ticonderoga … but I’ll camp across the lake in Vermont, at a boat ramp forever distinguished by Brian’s ‘Hasselhoff Moment’ as his fatigue compelled him to eat a cheeseburger while on all fours. (See ‘Row, Canada!’) Hasselhoff Point is a good starting point for the final push home on Saturday; Doug Livingston has consented to be my ‘wheel man’ as he’ll deliver the cart I’ll need to push my boat through Ticonderoga. Guys like Doug – unconditional and generous friends – make things happen!

Peg, thanks again for transcribing my sloppy journal; maybe post this page to remind the people of the magic of techno peasant and computer maven?

Sure thing, Al 

I’m going to pay my tab and go hang out in the park. Wish me luck?

Peace, love, and happiness  

And here's an adorable dog that wanted to join Al in the boat

The home stretch

Schuylerville Marina, Hudson River

26 (hard) miles

Breakfast with Mugsy in Schuylerville

I write an unprecedented early morning blog for a number of reasons:

1. I slept under / next to yet another bridge last night, and such locations don’t encourage rolling over for another 40 winks
2. A major tent malfunction has rendered my habitat into little more than a sleeve, a vinyl envelope, a kind of 70’s leisure suit that, while still effective, does not encourage malingering.
3. Mexican food – even if it was the best Mexican food I’ve ever eaten – does not sit lightly, or long, for me.
4. I’ve got get-home-itis. When the proprietors of this wonderful – and Schuylerville Marina is wonderful – place arrive this A.M., I must pay them before I leave. It’s 5:48, the boat is packed, I’m good to go.

Inspecting the tent

Kate and Rose drove over from Saratoga last night to take me to dinner, and Three Amigos in Schuylerville is worth a row from anywhere – great food! Rosie of course charmed our corner of the restaurant, and I didn’t stop her.

Yesterday’s 26-mile row up the Hudson was a real slog. As son Matt had predicted, all that water that pushed me through the Erie Canal is now bedeviling my every stroke up the Hudson. Yesterday was one of my shortest mileage days …. but also one of the more grueling days as well. Of course, the boat doesn’t know upstream from downstream; it just needs to be rowed, and ya gotta pull the oars to move it. So yesterday I tried not to look at the mach meter or think much about speed – just efficiency, line, and Motown. That I’m a simple man that can channel his few thoughts in tedium is perhaps, in the end, my best suit on this row.

Adverse current aside, this stretch of the Hudson is lovely. Yesterday’s meander past the Saratoga Battlefield, countless graceful herons, and bucolic farms along the banks reminds me yet again of the beauty in the backyard. Facing backwards, at 4 mph for 606 miles along some of the most beautiful waterways in the country (and Canada) gives one the opportunity to consider what a precious environment we have. Wow, what a tacky sentence, even for 6:10 AM. 

      

Rosie, Kate … thanks for the joy of your company last night … and thanks, too, to anyone who has hit the feeder bar at Boys’ Latin? This whole thing is masquerading as a fundraiser, but the truth is the funds make a great experience accessible to kids who would otherwise have to take another path … so, please, participate?

So on that mercenary note, I’m gonna pack up and hit the trail – Lock 5 opens at 7, and I want to be knockin’ at the door when the Canal Crew arrives.

Today’s Thursday … I’m hoping to be on Lake George by Saturday afternoon. Maybe I make it all the way, maybe I’ll have to do a final overnight on a favorite island on my ancestral waters … but the end is in sight!

Big ups,

   Peace, love, and happiness          

More equipment damage - but Al's temporary repair to
his guide boat seems to be holding

Getting close to home

Waterford, on the Hudson!

37 miles

The hills of Troy near the end of the Erie

Gentle reader, much time has elapsed since my last entry, but I’ve been busy … and hopefully, you have, too. The only activity more boring than watching a guy row is watching people waiting for his blog about rowing. In the words of my brave sister Tia, ‘Keep moving.’

Last night – all of yesterday in fact – was dominated by very bad storms …. Lots of heavy rain, lightning, the kind of stuff that pins a rower to the shore, hiding under an overhanging bough, wondering if hiding under a high object is really such a good idea.

I pitched my tent in a driving rainstorm, thus assuring an aquatic nocturnal repose … wet, a little cold, and hey, what’s that smell?

I met Marco in the maelstrom, a plucky canoer on his way to Brooklyn. He’s kayaking a canoe – the physical demands of which are beyond my comprehension – but Marco looked buff and up to the task. He’d wisely strapped a bike to his canoe; we should all have an escape pod. Godspeed, Marco!

Today dawned grey but turned hot, yet the best good fortune of the day emerged from the very rain that made my night so miserable; the lock crews and dam fellows were letting a lot of water flow downstream, so by pure meteorological serendipity I was seeing 1-2 extra mph on my mach meter, allowing me to get to Waterford today – the end of the Erie – through 8 locks. This felt like a Big Day.

Free propulsion

Tomorrow I turn north on the Champlain Canal … and all the rain water will be coming at me. It all evens out. I’ll lose 1-2 mph, but I’m in my last 100-mile leg, and sheer mad-dog willpower may count for something. I’m finally confident of my conditioning … but I’m itching to get home, too. Could be a bad combo?

I damaged the boat yesterday by ramming a submerged log. The cutwater at the waterline took a real ding, and now the boat yaws to the left with every stroke instead of tracking on rails as is its usual manner. Tonight I’ll try a duct tape repair … and hope for just a bit of improvement.

Tonight, when I pulled into Waterford, I was greeted by Jane and Charles Williamson, the kind of folks who know intuitively that Gator Aid, water, and Vitamin Water can’t take you to places accessible by vodka and tonic. These open hearts along the way are an unchoreographed pleasure of this trip – delightful people taking like at their own speed, generous with their time, curiosity, and libations. Godspeed, Jane and Charles! They are headed north to Champlain as well, so our paths my well cross again.

I’m getting all the food groups in with this Shepherd’s Pie, my first legit meal since lunch yesterday, and as I write this my stuff is strung out on trees and bushes in the park, drying out from last night’s deluge. Life is good.

You get hungry, maybe you get a Shepherd’s Pie.

You get wet and cold, maybe the sun comes out.

You want to talk to nice people unconditionally, you meet Jane and Charles.

You want your boat to track straight again, you find some duct tape.

I’m a simple man of simple needs these past 16 days. And lucky, too.   

Too wet to write tonight

Cranesville, NY - lock 10 of the Erie Canal 
36 miles

Al reported hellacious rain & storms and a tent full of water at the end of the day. It had started out OK:

He promises a blog tomorrow when the wet and winds won't jeopardize his journal.

Either the Nina or the Pinta going through Lock 10

Mugsy

St. Johnsville, NY

36 miles

Today’s theme: heat!  The day started hot and humid and stayed that way, and there is no shade on a guide boat. Covering up helped, but a paucity of wind made today just one long, hot grind. DeWitt Clinton knew that canals are expensive to build, so I guess to control costs and to enable ole Sal to walk a straight line, one can row for miles and miles with nary a turn. The long straightaways make for efficient rowing … but they are, alas, tedious.

But even in the grind there’s excitement if you look for it. I found a world-class malt maker in Ilion, NY; the odometer had just clicked to 17 miles and there, to my left, a malt shop! Sublime.

   

But while I sipped in the shade, trouble was brewing. I returned to the boat with some ice, looking to distribute it between my cooler and ‘Mugsy,’ which I’ve named my big gulp thermos. ‘Mugsy’ was … gone! Had I taken him to the malt shop? The ice vendor? The men’s room? Arrrrgh! Mugsy had been everywhere with me … he’s a fixture on my rows. Why, just the other day, when I drank my fill from him and unscrewed his lid, to see how much fluid was left, I found mold! Lil’ Mugsy was fabricating penicillin to keep me healthy and inoculated! I damn near cried! But now … he was gone!!

I’d lost two shirts and a pair of shorts in my dust-up with Officer Itsillegal back at Mexico Bay … and my favorite Goretex hat to two ladies in Oswego … but now, to lose Mugsy?

My search was fruitless. I was mortified. Who takes a man’s thermos, really?

Resigned to my loss, I climbed into the boat and headed east in the heat. About a mile downstream I spied … Mugsy! Floating face down close to the southern shore, he made no sign of recognition when I called him; I looped around, captured him by his robust handle, and hauled him in the boat – muddy, skanky, but ready to soldier on. He must have fallen in back at the malt shop dock … I never heard a splash or a scream. But he’s safe now, freshly sanitized and ready for another week.    

It’s a stupid story, but today was a pretty uneventful and tedious day. I cracked 500 miles today, and I’m feeling it. When Brian and I did our 502 miles a few years ago, Buzz Lamb, writing for the Lake George Mirror, asked us if we could have kept going. As I recall, Brian and I looked at one another and just laughed; we probably could have, but we were spent.

Tomorrow, I’ll find out what’s left in the tank. As I peruse the chart, it looks like 2 more full days on the Erie, 2 days on the Champlain Canal, and a day or two to Ticonderoga, portage the boat, and float home on our own halcyon waters. So next Saturday if I push, Sunday would be a better bet, or even Monday if a boat or body part crashed. I just gotta keep plugging, heat and tedium aside … I miss all of you guys! I’m not bad company for myself, but I’m getting into terrible arguments now and then and my stubbornness on some topics is appalling.

                 xxoo,

                   Peace, love, and happiness  

A short blog after a long row

Marcy NY – Lock 20, Erie Canal

46 miles

Not much of human interest today, until the end. Up at 5, rowing at 6 to get across 22 miles of open water on Oneida Lake, a shallow lake with a nasty reputation for big waves when the wind blows.

By 7:30, I was in it, big – 4’ rollers, heavy wind and rain … but the wind was from the stern and all I had to do was keep the boat upright, square in to the advancing waves, and surfing straight. The mach meter GPS chimed 8 mph at times … too, too much speed in a guide boat … so my wish yesterday for a following wind today was granted in spades. Completing the crossing in under 4 hours, I collapsed on a dock, ate a bag of Raisinettes, and thanked my lucky stars I was in an Adirondack guide boat.

24 miles of placid canal rowing delivered me to Lock 20 and to the delightful company of Jack Banks, who is 3 months into a circumnavigation of The Great Loop aboard his charmingly salty 21’ Ranger Tug.  He’s blogging too, of course, at travelerswake.blogspot.com, his boat being ‘Traveler.’ Is blogging the new Elvis impersonation?

Jack’s a delightful fellow – worldly wise, widely traveled, and deeply knowledgeable about politics, boats, aircraft, and social justice. We knocked of the better part of a box of wine while we discovered how much we had in common … and while mosquitoes feasted.

    

This afternoon’s 24 miles ‘sprint’ to get to Lock 20 before closing time is a harbinger of the coming week lots of flat, in-line rowing, no open water excitement – just reeling in the miles to Waterford before the run north to Ticonderoga and the final sprint home. My rough calculus suggests 471 miles done, 209 +/- to go. At least I’m getting in shape for the final 100.

Tucking in amid tall grass and high cotton –

Peace, love, and happiness

Dinner at Lock 20

The Erie Canal

Kindness and Consideration

Brewerton, west shore of Oneida Lake

Teachers learn a lot about bullying behavior, about the pressures and temperaments that bring it on, and about the attention, honesty, and empathy that can help to mend psyches and emotions. These thoughts accompany me today as I bask in the unconditional kindness of the crew here at the marina in Brewerton, especially retired-teacher-now-marina-maven Patty. Our teacherly spirits have prompted her to invite me to dinner tonight ‘to tell her my story,’ and I look forward to a home-cooked meal and riffing about teaching … and life.

I’ve pulled in early today – 12 noon – after 13 miles. I face a 22 mile open water crossing of Oneida Lake … after a stiff headwind and predicted (and increasingly evident) thunderstorms. I just don’t think I have it in me to push off for a minimum five hour maximum effort with one eye to the sky … the proverbial ‘weather eye.’ So I’ve pulled into this marina to dry out, rest up, and to launch at 5 AM tomorrow when, hopefully, all will be glass. I’ll have to be attentive to Patty’s possibly heavy hand on the cab, vodka, or gin.

Marinas don’t especially cotton to rowers; we don’t buy gas or need mechanical services, we don’t hook up to utilities, and we require no purging of our (boat’s) holding tanks. And they don’t like the vagabond look of tents and laundry and coolers and scraggy guys sitting at picnic tables writing in soggy journals.

That’s where Patty comes in.

Did I mention she’s a retired teacher?

Anyway, for no personal gain she pitched high and inside to her boss to allow me to stay here … so here I am.

Compare this largesse to the draconian, inflexible, insensitive ‘enforcement’ official at Mexico Bay State Park two nights ago. Late in the afternoon, after a good but grueling 37 miles along the east rim of Lake Ontario, I was beat … and found a secluded State Park launch ramp … with a rest room facility – gold! The place was deserted and no official manned the little booth at the perimeter parking lot, so I pitched my tent, washed some shirts, ate an early dinner, and was just about to climb in for the night, when an officer of Parks arrived in a patrol car and, with no questions of me, told me that ‘It is illegal to camp here; you have to leave.’  

    

I appealed to common sense and expediency, explaining that  I’d just come in after 10 hours on the water, I’d be packed up and gone by 6 AM, and that I’d be happy to pay a fee for the privilege if an attendant were at the gate. As I said, there wasn’t a soul around.

‘It’s illegal. You must leave.’

I lamented to her th at through ten days and three hundred miles of rowing in Canada, not once had anyone refused a gentle request for a campsite; in fact, all I met was welcoming encouragement.  

‘This isn’t Canada. You must leave.’

So at 7 PM, as the sun was plummeting into Lake Ontario – a restless Lake Ontario – I packed up my kit and under Officer Itsillegal’s watchful eye, I pushed off … furious, but polite. Seething, but calm. Incredulous … but recognizing that ‘it’s illegal’ is a safe call for someone who will accept no risk for variance, for judgement, for consideration. Put the 65-year-old teacher back in his boat at dusk on Lake Ontario … the park is now secure, the law has been upheld. After all, it’s all about the law.   

So, Patty pushes against a tough boss and gets me in … Officer Itsillegal applies institutional bullying to a situation that hinted for a higher interpretation.

So … three miles out of Mexico Bay Park, fuming, ‘rowing angry’ with no clue of where I’d put in … and with cresting waves at the beam causing some concern … I spy a couple on a deck high above the rocky shore. I’m close enough to see them lift their glasses (as if to a doomed mariner?), and he shouted, ‘Nice canoe!’  I shamelessly grabbed at his overture like a life buoy, responding, ‘Actually, it’s not a canoe; it’s an Adirondack Guide Boat. And, may I ask, do you know of a place I might pull up for the night?’

‘Meet me at the next point, about a quarter mile up,’ he called, and he was gone.

To make a long story short (here), Ness and Joan, my unwitting but well-timed benefactors, gave me their trust and consideration, unconditionally and without hesitation, in a way that the law of our land and an agent of that law would not an hour earlier.  

As I curled up in my tent in a howling gale that night, I contemplated that often, as ‘an organized society,’ we struggle mightily to be able to do the right things with compassion, common sense, and empathy.

But one-on-one, we usually do fine.

Life on a scale of one. Sweet.           

The Oswego Canal

Phoenix NY - the 'nicest town in the world'

Today saw a lot of rowing and no writing. By mid-day, Al had completed the 12-mile slog to the town of Oswego and the end of the Lake Ontario portion of the row, battling wild winds and huge rollers. He rowed past a nuclear power plant, all the while hearing the message 'You are in a restricted area. You are being targeted by armed security.' Apparently there were buoys much further out in the lake that marked the boundaries. Having no choice, Al decided that they wouldn't see him as a threat and maintained his course, and luckily, that worked.

Lake Ontario

He discovered that the Oswego Canal is really a river with locks (8 of 'em), flowing into Lake Ontario, and that he had traded a battle with wind for one with current. (For those of you who followed 'Row Canada,' it was reminiscent of the Richelieu River.)  Al discovered that the locks on the Oswego are open until 10:30 vs the 6 PM closing on the Trent-Severn. He took full advantage and spent the rest of the day rowing 25 miles uphill to the town of Phoenix.

Al stopped in the town of Phoenix on the recommendation of a couple of guys he met on the canal who are attempting to pilot a solar-powered cabin cruiser to Chicago. They filmed a short video of Al which hopefully will eventually end up on their website, piratesofthesun.com. I'll post a link on the blog when and if that happens. 

Tomorrow Al will turn left at the Erie Canal and be on familiar waters.

Rowing Lake Ontario

Another early finish today; Al had set up camp, sent this report in, and was ready to climb into his tent, when a ranger came by and told him he wasn't allowed to spend the night in the park and had to move on. Al's argument that he had just spent 10 days rowing and camping in Canada, and was welcomed everywhere, was countered with 'We're not Canada.'  

After breaking camp, reloading everything back in the boat, and rowing a few more miles, Al was rescued by a couple vacationing from North Carolina. They admired his 'canoe', and upon learning that he needed a place to spend the night, waved him over to their dock and directed him to a good campsite. Thank you Joan and Ness!

Mexico Bay Park - Lake Ontario

37 miles

The early start-early finish looks to be the key to passing through this lake. I was in the boat at 5:10 AM, a bit creaky and groggy but determined to make some serious mileage before the midday winds arrived with their formidable waves.

Indeed, 5-10 AM was glassy … eerie, even, as fog met water met sky in a monochromatic grey to pink sheet that gave way to hot, hazy sun.

I’m not a science teacher and couldn’t play one on TV, but one could teach meteorology from a boat just by watching and experiencing the effect of solar energy on air and water. Glassy pre-dawn calm gave way to the slightest watery feathers as the sun peeked out, and feathers gave way to ruffles, then to diminutive white caps which themselves built one on top of the other. More direct rays added more wood to the fire as rollers swelled under the cresting waves … all before lunch! See, kids? Heat makes trouble!

Happily, my route today made it easy to bail out; the 30+ miles from Stony Point to Mexico Bay are sprinkled with many lovely beaches – New York State’s west coast, replete with charming bungalows … no McMansions yet in the Empire State’s Malibu!

During my 30-mile run with building cross-winds I ‘rewarded’ myself with a pull-out and a swim every 5 miles or so. Few activities motivate spirited rowing on a hot day like the prospect of a refreshing swim at a secluded beach. Just delightful … and an amenity I’ll miss when I get back to canal rowing tomorrow afternoon!

Big-water rowing commands 100% of one’s attention when the waves come up, and as I fought to stay focused and upright, I’d find myself pining for the efficient drudgery of canal rowing. Yet the hours pass quickly when you’re staying upright with adjustments to body, balance, oars, and thrust … the hours on the canal will tick by more slowly. I like chocolate … and I like vanilla, too.  

Tonight’s menu includes pouch tuna (but no mayo or bread), Chef Boyardee lasagna, Hormel chili, or, of course, the Emergency Pack Dinty Moore Beef Stew. I think I’ll keep it light with the tuna, pretend it’s sushi, and hold onto the Dinty Moore for darker days.

The blog source document - sent in a text

Peace and love  …

Camping at Mexico Beach

Al's route on Lake Ontario
Circles mark beginning and end points
Campsites are underlined
 (Al's actually a few miles beyond Mexico Point thanks to an officious park ranger.)