35-30-25 (Day 1)

I realized a couple of things. 1. The post entitled 35-25-20, was originally supposed to be about the Adirondack 90 miler, and the numbers represented the miles paddled/rowed on each day. However, like a good engineer, I got basic addition wrong and only accounted for 80 miles. 2. I never changed this already wrong title to reflect the actual story. We'll take another crack at her then.

Every September, there is a great event called either "The 90-miler" or the "Adirondack Canoe Classic". I think most refer to it as the 90-miler because of the way it rolls off the tounge and is pretty descriptive. "Adirondack Canoe Classic" is a bit prettier. I think 90 miler won out, much like "The Load" won out over "The Well Dressed Waterboy" (Although, it is pretty impressive that both nicknames contained the definite article "The".)

The Adirondack Guideboat was born, not surpisingly, in the Adirondacks. It is a beautiful craft. It combines the sleek lines of a canoe with the mechanical advantage of rowing. I first fell in love with this craft when I was 16 or so. Keene Valley is the gateway for the high peaks of the Adirondacks and there is a lovely store called "the Mountaineer". Although relatively small in size, there is a great deal of gear packed in there. If you need it for the outdoors, particularly backpacking, hiking, rock climbing or ice-climbing, you can get it at the Mountaineer. Most of the gear in the Mountaineer is on the first floor, but there is a small loft where they keep sleeping bags and tents and some other gear. Hanging from the ceiling is an Adirondack Guideboat. Ostensibly, it is for sale, but to my knowledge it has been hanging there for close to 20 years. The price tag, a cool $15,000! It is fashioned out of cedar and beautifully varnished. Completely handmade, it is as much a work of art as a useful craft. Each time we would visit the Mountaineer I would stare at it, but that was all I could do. At that point, I considered bottled beer quite a luxury, so it wasn't like I had $15k laying around.

Time passed, I deployed to Afghanistan and was able to save up a bit of money. Also, a company started to make guideboats in kevlar and fiberglass, rather than cedar. This meant that you could get a guideboat for about 1/5 the cost, which still not cheap, was more reasonable. So, I ordered a guideboat. I didn't tell my wife until it arrived in a large crate, but she was surprisingly understanding about it. I tried to sell it as a family craft, and indeed, we did enjoy taking it out with our daughter.

We haven't tried taking it out with both girls, you really need one adult to watch the kids full time, because the boat is pretty tippy.

At the end of the summer of 2010, I sent Jim an e-mail and asked him if would join me on the next 90-miler.  Even though we had not seen each other for many years, he instantly agreed.  It was a good 14-16 hour drive from Chicago to the Adirondacks, but the girls were troopers and we made it in one shot (mostly by driving at night).  Once we got settled, I got in touch with Jim, who had a much shorter trip.  When we finally met up, it was the evening before the race.  We figured we ought to get at least a little bit of practice in before the big event, so we set off on Lake Flower just as the sun was setting.  

When rowing the craft solo, you sit in the center of the boat.  When rowing with a partner, you row from the bow, and the paddler paddles from the stern.  The paddler provides some extra propulsion, but more importantly steers the boat.  When rowing, you face opposite the direction of travel, so when rowing solo,  you have to keep looking over your shoulder to see where you are going.  With a partner though, you can just focus on rowing.  Since Jim had a fair amount of canoeing experience, he figured it out extremely quickly.  We soon fell into a comfortable rhythm, but noticed that the light was quickly fading.  So we headed back to shore.  

It just so happened that we were staying at a house that was very near the finish of the race.  Consequently, it was a pretty long drive to the start line the next morning.  Luckily, my brother in law is always up for an insanely early start to the day and volunteered to drive us to the start line.  The race started in Old Forge.  This was the only part of the course I had never canoed before, but with hundreds of boats and a straightforward course, there was no real risk of getting lost.  This first day was to be the most challenging, both in terms of miles paddled and there were 4 "carries" where you had to get out of the boat and carry it anywhere between 1/2 a mile to 1 and 1/2 miles to the next lake.

There was a lot of excitement at the starting line, but since they had been doing it for more than 25 years at this point, it was extremely well organized.  There were various classes of craft, based on the type and number of paddlers.  The start was organized by heats depending on the class of the boat.  The guideboats started pretty late.  There were about 10 boats total, most of them with 2 people in each boat but a few that were paddled solo.  One boat that immediately caught our eye was paddled by a solo female.  She was the only female in the guideboat class at all, even more impressively she was paddling solo.  

Amazingly I was able to find this picture through a google search.  While the boat was fast it was still 70 pounds or so, a lot to carry on your own.

Finally, they sounded the starting horn, and we were off.  It was amazing how fast everyone went for the first 200 yards or so, just tons of adrenaline pumping.  I have never had the boat anywhere close to that fast before or since, but we had a nice little bow wave going and probably could have pulled a very small child on water skis!  Soon though, we settled into our cadence.  Unlike the canoes, Jim and I faced each other so it was very easy to talk to each other.  Additionally, particularly in the beginning of each day, you would either pass or be passed by a number of different boats, so it is pretty exciting.  We soon settled into the middle of the pack of the guideboats.  The fastest ones pulled away pretty early in the day and there were 3 of us that were kind of jockeying back and forth for position.  Similarly, there were a number in the back that were just taking her easy.  

Soon we were coming to the first carry.  Up until now, the experience had been pretty similar to other experiences paddling in the Adirondacks.  Granted, people were pushing harder and we were certainly setting a far quicker pace than I would with trek groups.  In fact, we were scheduled to paddle 35 miles that day, which is about the same distance as we would cover over some of our shorter five day treks.  The carries were a different experience altogether.  

Most of the craft carried wheels that would affix to the center of the craft.  The wheels were pretty large, probably 2-3 feet in diameter and the boats would be perfectly balanced at hip level.  The crew simply needed to run along side the craft and guide it along.  The first few carries in particular were over smooth surfaces.  I had planned that we could use wheels too.  Unfortunately, I had purchased a very small set that went at the very stern of the boat. The wheels were  So our boat was not balanced at all, we had to lift up the front to waist level and fight it along.  About 1/2 way through the first carry we realized that this would not work, our forearms were burning.  But, we pushed on determined that we would change our method for all other carries.  Incidentally, the top performers in the guide-boat category simply took the boat out the water, lifted it up to shoulder height and took off at a jog as if they were carrying a pair of ski-poles.  The first day, particularly the first half of the first day, was about an hour of rowing and then a carry, and so on.  For all the rest of the carries, I carried the boat and Jim took the oars and all the other gear.  Because there was a yoke for carrying the boat it was not too difficult.  It was infinitely easier than that first carry.  We had a good pace and the weather was pretty good.  There was a bit of clouds and rain, but nothing too unpleasant at all.

At the end of the 2nd to last carry of the day, there is a section called Brown's track.  This is a very narrow very windy section.  It sucked.  It was so narrow that there were times when my oars could touch the banks on either side.  Fortunately, by this time, Jim was an expert navigator and he would direct me on which side and how hard to paddle.  This would have been by far the worst section to have done solo.  Once we finished with this,  we had a good amount of rowing to do across some pretty big lakes.  I didn't realize it at the time, but Jim and I had not taken even small breaks to eat or drink.  It caught up to me at the last carry, I tried to eat some food but it immediately came back up.  That carry, although short was a real struggle, I was just running out of gas.  We lost a lot of ground during this last part because I had to take frequent breaks.  The last chain of lakes, eagle lake to Utowana to Blue Mountain I have done many times.  Usually it is the start of our canoe trips and it seems to fly by.  People who passed us could tell that I was drained and they shouted encouragement.  So we pushed on and eventually made it to the takeout.  I sat by the side of the lake for a long time just resting.  

That was the end of day 1, certainly the hardest.  We had fallen a bit in the rankings just because the last few miles were so slow.  But, the hardest day was over, and it felt good.  

(Day 2 - tomorrow)