Ten Years After

The blog went live about the same time that Al started rowing on July 2, but he had started writing entries for it as far back as May. I'll post these from time to time, and I also hope that Al will send in some thoughts from the field.  Here's what was supposed to be the first entry.  Peg            

May 27, 2017                                          

Greetings, Gentle Reader. Another summer, another row, ten years after it started….

I’ve been urged to write a bit before I get going and since writing is a wonderful surrogate for actually working out and training for the trip, welcome to my blog.

Here’s the plan: Sometime on or about June 30^th, I’ll place my Adirondack Guideboat into Lake Huron on the Canadian side, gather and store a commemorative vial of water from Georgian Bay, and start rowing towards my mom’s dock on Lake George, roughly 680 miles away. The rising tension in this story (if it’s even a “story” at all) emerges from the very implausibility of success. Circumstance, sloth, and the hands of time conspire against me. The initial “Big Row” (from Troy to Baltimore, 452 miles) took place ten years ago; I was a boyish 56 back then, this journey is 230 miles longer, I’ve yet to row a stroke this summer, and the 2015 Sojourn to Saguenay delivered a resounding real-world lesson about what can happen when the one’s eyes are bigger than one’s stomach, so to speak. I got hammered on that one after 425 miles.

And yet….and yet…Professor Harold Hill’s “Think System” has served me well in the past and may well again this summer.

You see, I think about this trip a lot. In fact, I’m there on the water right now…the cherry oars flexing under load, the boat carrying its speed nicely between pulls, the body relaxed, my breathing a rhythm, and oh! Look! ….see the friendly Canadians tossing me lightly buttered croissants from the locks, opening up their hearts and hearths to me as the sun sets late over a mosquito-free waterside porch and a saucy Merlot? Enchante’!

Oh, yes…I’m ready. The more I think about this journey, the readier I become. Some may call it delusion. I call it preparation.

To my defense, I do have some experience in this work. After close to 3,000 miles over the last ten years, I know what the early blisters will feel and look like and how they’ll evolve and will eventually become my friends. I know about the cramps and the knots and the need for stretching and hydration. And after Saguenay, I know more about when to pull up, I think, and I know what it means to press on. And I know that while I won’t be in very good shape when I start, I’ll certainly be in better shape when I finish…wherever that finish may be.

So here I sit on Memorial Day weekend. With about three weeks to go, I’m living somewhere between pessimism and boyish optimism, if not overconfidence. Maybe that’s not a bad place to start?

The logistics around this trip speak yet again to the extraordinary generosity of time and spirit of Peg and her buddies Kathy and Jane. They’ll drive my boat and me up to Lake Huron, track me for a day or so just to make sure that I’m actually rowing, and then they’ll take off for a well-deserved cavort through the Canadian lakes region and Toronto before heading home to Baltimore. I thought about rowing this trip in the opposite direction, obviating the need for front-end logistics, but the motivational effect of pulling for home with every stroke is irresistible. Thanks, ladies, for one more round of adventure and fun; you guys rock!!

The route of this row presents a nice mix of sheltered waterways and open water; after the largely ceremonial splash into Lake Huron, I’ll head straight into the 240 mile Trent-Severn Canal, an apparently lovely serpentine of riverine and lake rowing through more than forty locks. This waterway carries a lot of history, is dotted with charming towns and some uniquely configured locks, and should afford me plenty of options for camping and hunting for food with my credit card.

After 240 miles, the T-S Canal will spill me out into Lake Ontario, the serious open water of the trip. With a week to ten days under my hopefully-shrinking belt, I should be ready to sprint to shore at the first sign of meteorological trouble. I’ll transit Lake Ontario clockwise, northwest to southeast, past the mouth of the Saint Lawrence, down to Oswego, New York, and onto the Erie Canal.

From there it’ll be familiar waters: the Erie Canal east to Troy, then north to Ticonderoga and Lake Champlain on the Champlain Canal, then a two-mile portage to the headwaters of Lake George and then, badda-bing badda-boom, the final sprint to Cleverdale.

All of this is well in front of me; as of this writing I still have to administer English exams to my plucky, long-suffering students, write the end-of-year comments, celebrate a few retiring colleagues, plan some curriculum for a new course next year, grab some bits and gear for the row, retrieve my boat from Adirondack Guide Boat up in Vermont where it’s been receiving a few long-overdue repairs, and perhaps even row a stroke or two before we sling the boat on top of the car for the trip to Canada. And if any of my students writes a long sentence such as that on his final exam, I’ll enter a margin note to the effect of, “Not a run-on but close…maybe too close.”

And there is the question of fundraising for financial aid assistance at Boys’ Latin School, where I teach. A penny a mile? A nickel? A dime, a dollar? I’m not doing this for the money, but it would perhaps be nice if anyone was so moved to see some Common Good stem from this row-about. More on this later, yes?

I’m told that some of you may want to hear more about the preparations or progress, and of course my favorite training is at the keyboard, so let’s make it happen. Drop me a note, let me know.

Big ups!!