Cursed With Ambition

Texas Water Safari 2008: Staples to Luling

The stretch of the San Marcos river between Staples and Luling is dreaded by most Safari racers.  Reason being, the river is narrow with lots of sharp twists and turns.  Worst of all, it is choked with downed trees and barely-submerged stumps, gravel bars and boulders.  In a low water year like this year, the number of exposed obstacles increases dramatically.  This leg, more than any other, claims more boats and ends more races than any other section.  We would have to be cautious.

We had run this section a few times before the Safari, but we never felt like we'd mastered it.  We always managed to have at least one mishap.  Robo lost his wedding ring in a sweeper a couple of miles down from Staples.  The first time we ever ran the section we flipped out of the boat and let it get crossways in the current and got as close as we'd ever been to wrapping the boat.

The action starts immediately when you leave the Staples Dam area.  There was one sweeper in particular, not 200 yards downstream, that gave us fits every time.  Before, we would thread through some large diameter stumps only to get taken by the current and pushed into a tangle of sharp dry branches.  This time, though, we managed to thread the stumps at a sharper angle and get the nose into the eddy pool to avoid being swept by the current.  We made it by with several feet to spare between us and the gnarl.  This was the second or third time that we had easily managed an obstacle that had given us trouble each time before.  Because of that I knew we were having a good run.  Plus, it built confidence that we were now experienced rivermen and could handle just about anything the river threw at us.  In fact, we developed a saying after every time we come through a difficulty - "That was no problem; for a Man of the River."

And so it went along the entire 24 miles.  We would come around a bend and see current pushing into a corner and a waiting sweeper.  Sometimes there'd be a gravel bar at the head of the tight turn, making it even more difficult.  We passed "Wedding Band Sweeper" and I called it out as we went through.  I don't think Robb thought any of it was amusing.  We came upon familiar obstacles where we knew it was best to simply jump out of the boat and portage around, instead of through, the junk.  All of our training and practice was paying off bigtime.  Things that only a few months before would have dumped us out of the boat easily, we whipped around and through like we'd been doing it for years.  Before, I'd be apprehensive at every obstacle, wondering if we were going to spill out and wreck the boat this time.  I dreaded turning over and chasing all of our gear floating downriver.  But now, I looked forward to obstacles - each one different and requiring different approaches and skills.  It had become fun.

We saw our TC at Fentress and told her we were doing fine.  A couple of hours later, we rolled into the checkpoint at Hwy 90 outside of Luling.  We had survived the worst leg of the Safari and our split was 4:29 - 15 minutes faster than my pre-race projection.  We had a bit of a hairy water exchange with our TC because she had no one to help her at this point and some of our jugs and bottles got away from us and were floating downriver.  Fortunately, some local kids who were swimming there scooped them up and gave them to her.  Still, it was a pretty quick exchange and we were off again toward Luling proper and Zedler's Mill.

It was the shortest leg of the Safari at a little over an hour, or about 6 river miles.  The obstacles were fewer and further between and we made it within 5 minutes of my projected split.  Our portage over Luling Dam was a bit awkward, but we made it through without any major mishap.  We climbed back in and we were off to face the most difficult portage at Ottine Dam and then the checkpoint at Palmetto State Park.  We had planned to arrive at Ottine before dark, but we were going to be cutting it close.

Texas Water Safari 2008: The Start and Aquarena Springs to Staples

We sat parked in our starting position, dipping our paddles into the water every now and then to keep the boat pointed downstream.  We made small talk with the teams nearest us.  They announced one minute to go.  We got our game faces on.  I reset the GPS to zeros, did some last minute stretching and went over the first portion of the course in my mind.  Finally, I closed my eyes and breathed deep, trying to take it all in.  I was relaxed under the circumstances, but I couldn't stop thinking that it was finally here and we were really about to do this.  "30 Seconds!!" the race director called out.  "Let's get a hard sprint to the dam; we'll follow the big boats into the slot," I reminded Robb.  "10! 9! 8! 7! 6! 5! 4! 3! 2! 1! BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!"  The airhorn sounded and we dug in.  The crowd that had gathered at the rails erupted.  The Safari had begun.

I had expected the churning and waves from so many paddles thrashing from the boats all around us, but it was not as bad as I thought it was going to be.  We got up top speed very quickly.  Larger gaps than I expected formed between our boats and the others.  I expected gunnel-to-gunnel banging at the start, but we had open water for at least six feet all around us.  I could hear hollering coming from the back of the pack where no doubt the melee was worse.  Faster boats were trying to make their way up to the front to beat the traffic to the first portage 300 yards into the race.  We rounded the bend in the lake and I could see the first portage up ahead.  I heard a loud crack and cursing behind us, I turned briefly to see a kevlar canoe capsized and a six man boat coming up fast 20 yards back.  It was boat 314 - the Las Animas team made up of two young attorneys and four Belizians - they figured to compete for first overall with Bugge and the Mynars and I knew they'd be coming up aggressive and fast to get to the first portage.  I'd received an email from Andrew Stephens, their bowman, about a week before the Safari alerting me to their strategy of going balls out to get to the first portage.  The reason was a good one - after Aquarena Springs the river narrowed for several miles and good places to pass were few.  If they got behind a lot of slower traffic they could easily lose half an hour to their competition.

"Big boat coming up on our left!" I shouted to Robb.  I eased us over a little to the right to signal our intentions to get out of their way.  I called over my shoulder, "Pass on the left!  Pass on the left!"  "On your left!" they shouted as they came up behind us.  They burned past us six feet off to starboard, clean and clear.  My first major concern of the race was over.  Just ahead, though, Boat 314 was wreaking more havoc - they got over the stern of Gaston Jones in Boat #4, a strong solo paddler who figured to go for the solo title, and spun him out to the left.  It looked like his stern had been dunked and he took on some water, but he didn't capsize.  He yelled, "I'll get you back" as they went past.  Gaston recovered and continued on to the slot - a narrow path on an island that made up part of the dam.  It was slightly left of center and the preferred portage path.  A couple of boats, including Bugge's team, broke right and headed for the slot right of center.  We followed our plan and followed boats into the slot.  Robb jumped out of the boat when we grounded the nose and grabbed onto the carrying handle.  I was still 24' behind in my stern seat and I never quit paddling.  Robb had to wait for other boats to clear through the slot; Gaston was immediately in front of us.  Once there was space, Robb carried the bow down the path and I jumped out of the boat and grabbed my own handle.  We had never done this portage, although we had scouted the area and I had learned from other racers how to approach it.  I was apprehensive about any unkown, but as it turned out, the portage was easy.  Any vegetation has been stripped clean by the twenty or so other bodies running through the slot before us.  The ground was somewhat uneven, but much better than most portage spots we'd experienced on our training runs.  We carried the boat down below the dam, a distance of about ten yards.  The water was running fast and there were concrete and metal things sticking out of the water where we put back in, but we climbed in the boat without any mishaps and continued on in the smoother water of the river channel.

We maintained a strong pace through the Texas State campus and into City Park so that we could get to Rio Vista before a lot of the traffic.  Rio Vista is a little over a mile into the course and is one of the major portages of the first leg.  It is a whitewater park, essentially.  There is an old dam there with a five foot wide slot cut into it where the water flows through.  That's the first drop.  After that are two other smaller drops, evenly spaced.  It is possible to run the slot and the first drop, even in a skinny racing boat, but your odds of staying upright are about ten percent, from my experience.  Most people portage the first drop and that was our plan as well.  We were also going to portage the second drop because there was a fairly large wave at the bottom that was likely to put a lot of water in the boat as we went through.  We pulled around in view of Rio Vista and we could see several hundred spectators lining all sides.  People were already hollering and cheering as the first boats went through.  We pulled up on river left over the dam, Robb jumped out and started dragging the boat forward.  I jumped out when the stern got over shallow enough water where I could stand and picked up the rear of the boat.  We carried it over the dam and into the water above the second drop.  Several other boats were running the second drop; most successfully.  We ran through the waist-deep swirling water as fast as we could and carried the boat over the second drop.  We put back in and climbed back in the boat.  I laid the rudder over as far right as I could to get into position to run the last drop.  There was a lot of confusion as other boats were putting back in right beside us.  We straightened up and made the last drop cleanly and we were away.  As we were pulling out I saw my mom and my brother on the bank.  They were watching all the carnage and hadn't even seen us until that moment.  They cheered and I waved as we sped off.

We stayed right as we came under the bridge after Rio Vista to avoid rushing current pushing us into a sweeper on the bank that had eaten us up every time we'd gone through there before.  We powered by it like it wasn't even there.  That was a good sign.  The river is narrow and winding for the first few miles until the confluence with the Blanco River.  And soon after Rio Vista is another portage at Thomson's Island.  There are a couple of different ways to go, but we'd been shown a fast portage by a race veteran and we had a plan.  The Cowboy's six man team passed us right before Rio Vista and we saw them pulled up portaging Thomson's as we went down the left channel to our portage site.  Again, we executed it almost flawlessly and got back in the water in less than 30 seconds.  The Cowboys sped by as we reentered the main channel.

A few other fast boat who started back in the pack past us.  We eased back our pace for the long haul.  The traffic had thinned out and there was plenty of room to run, though we could still see boats in front and behind.  We came to a tree across the river with a narrow slot just wide enough for a boat to get through at an awkward angle.  We made our first mistake of the race and missed the hole and got pinned.  We couldn't get the nose over into the slot and boats stacked up on us quickly.  One even plowed through, raking our boat as it went past.  People started hollering commands, "Push off on the tree!"  "Draw stroke right!"  "Get out of the way, man!"  One of the voices was from Boat 18 - our rivals, who had caught us while we were stalled.  Finally a boat alongside extended his hand out to me to grab onto and pull the rear of the boat over and we were able to line up right and go through.  We were both a little angry and frustrated and slightly shaken as we paddled on.

We reached the Blanco confluence and the lake that extended to Cummins Dam, one of the taller dams and a dangerous portage.  We had a plan here too, but it was predicated on being able to use a preset point on the dam.  Other teams wanted to use the same point and portage, including Boat 18, so it was a race to the dam.  I told Robb that I didn't want to lose our place in line, so we picked up the pace to ensure that we'd arrive there first.  Another boat was portaging our spot right as we pulled up, but they were out of the way in time and never impeded us.  We executed the portage without a hitch, taking care as we scaled down the concrete.  We got back in the water and kept going without losing a position.  So far, things were going really well.

We went through the other hairy spots - Old Mill, Broken Bone - all without incident.  About 9 miles in was Cottonseed Rapid, one of the likeliest places to do damage to the boat.  We had only run it twice before and we'd done well, but any slight error and you could get into trouble really quick.  I went over with Robb again how we needed to run it, "Remember, hard sweeping turn to the right and then line up to go into the slot on river right.  We head right at the right edge of the first rock, draw left of the second rock and the current should carry us through after that."  We had debated right up until the last minute whether to portage it.  A couple of other racers had told us right before the start that they'd run it very recently and because of the lower water they had scraped the bottoms of their boats pretty badly.  We were heavily loaded and the water was lower than the last time we'd run it and we'd scraped even then.  I really, really didn't want to put a rip in the boat at Cottonseed, but I also wanted to test our skill and I was actually pretty confident that we'd make it through with no problems.  I called that we should run it and Robb agreed.

When we came around the bend in the river I laid the rudder over hard right.  We misjudged it slightly and ground out on the rocks to the right of the opening.  I jumped out immediately to keep the rear from continuing downstream and getting sideways.  Robb pushed off as well and we made it into the hole as I hurried to get back in the boat and mash down on the rudder pedals.  We did well past the rocks and we were through the worst of it, but we grounded out again on some rocks below the main chute.  We jumped out and pushed off again and right then another boat came barrelling up behind us and rammed into my elbow and my funny bone.  "Dammit!" I shouted, as much to scare the other guy off us as much as to the pain.

We paddled off again.  Major worry No. 2 of mine was now behind us.  There was another section of fairly open water and we held our position.  Next we came up to Martindale Dam, which is nearly as tall as Cummins, but the portage we chose was overland on a steep and slippery concrete apron.  Again we executed this portage fairly well, although a little awkward at the put-in.  Immediately below the brigde is a 75 yard long stretch of wide water that narrows and rushes under Martindale low water crossing.  Right beneath the bridge is nasty current that pushes right into a sharp set of boulders.  The only time we'd run it before we'd capsized, even though we were lined up nearly perfectly.  There'd been some discussion about whether to run it or not, but we had optioned to portage.  We pulled up right and jumped out of the boat and hauled the boat over the road to the other side.  We put in again and we were off.

We passed through some other minor sweepers and gravel bars and we passed Spencer's campground.  From there we paddled at a pretty good clip through Staples Lake and finally to Staples Dam, the first checkpoint and the first place where we were meeting our TC for our first water handoff.  We arrived at the 3:17 mark, which was only 7 minutes off my projected split of 3:10.  It was also over 30 minutes faster than our previous best run to Staples, so I was pretty pleased.  We had a predetermined plan for the portage and the water handoff on river left in an eddy pool below the dam.  We pulled up to the dam, stowed the paddles and jumped out onto the concrete.  The girls in Boat 18 pulled in right behind us.  Robb hauled the bow down while I held the stern and guided the descent.  Then he slid down the buttress to the eddy pool to catch the bow as I lowered it.  Once the boat was at the bottom I slid down as well.  And all in one motion, our TC/my fiance' grabbed up our used jugs and bottles and replaced them with new.  She was using a bright pink basket to hold the jugs - NOT the one I'd spent money and time making.  I gave her a puzzled look and she said she couldn't find ours in the truck.  She looked a little stressed, but she'd made the exchange quickly and one again we were off.

We had handled the start very well and hadn't even made contact with any other boat.  We'd lost virtually no time at any of the portages and had executed them cleanly.  We'd made it through Cottonseed with barely a scratch and had gotten through all of the other obstacles with no problems.  We had come through Staples in 28th place and right on our projected split.  In my mind, things couldn't have gone any better, although I would've liked to have been further ahead of the girls at that point as I didn't want the stress of racing them for any longer than we had to. 

But now we were entering the Staples to Luling 90 stretch - widely considered the hairiest section of the whole course and the graveyard of Safari dreams.

Texas Water Safari 2008: Check-in and Pre-race

Every team in the Safari has to check their boat in with a race official on the Friday before the start.  We pulled in to Aquarena Springs from Houston around 2:30 in the afternoon.  Check-in runs from noon to 5 or so.  You basically have to set your boat up completely for the race with all of your equipment and gear and food.  You leave your boat there overnight although you don't leave the food in the boat overnight because of the racoons and most people take their paddles and expensive bow lights.

We unloaded our boat and boxes of gear and started loading the boat.  We said 'Hi' to a few people we knew.  Everyone is busy strapping, gluing and tying things into their boats.  There is also somewhat of a social atmosphere as people are milling around - racers are talking to racers and spectators mill around looking at all of the different ways people go about rigging their boats.  I was proud to say that our boat looked great - maybe the best looking boat in the whole Safari.  I had finished clear-coating it a couple of nights before and we had a nice new slick graphite bottom on the boat as well.  The gunnels were freshly stained and clear-coated and our red-inside-white vinly decals looked great.

We loaded all of our stuff and made some last minute decisions about what to take and what to leave.  We lifted the boat fully loaded and it was heavy.  We searched for things to toss out and made a few tough decisions (the toilet paper didn't make the cut).  We agreed that we probably had too much food, but we'd do the calorie calculations that night and toss whatever we could.  When we were ready, we called one of the race officials, Cindy Meurer, over to check us in.  We had a form filled out listing every single last item we were taking with us.  Cindy went down the list with us.  She had her own checklist of things to verify as well.  I asked her a couple of questions about whether certain things we had done were okay or not.  I also asked her opinion on whether we should take a couple of items.  She nixed the water purification tablets but strongly encouraged us to take the spare rudder.  It was the original rudder that came on the boat that I had replaced with a new carbon fiber one of my own design.  The spare rudder was aluminum and bent all to hell and cracked about halfway across.  I had not intended to take it until Cindy told us to.  Cindy signed off on our check-in sheet and we were officially ready to start the Safari.

We did some last minute rigging - Robb needed to finalize his drink tube setup and we tied in some extra bungee cord to hold in one of our dry bags.  I walked around looking at other boats and took a few photos.  I was looking for things that other people did that we had not done or some mistake we had made in our rigging, but I found none.  In fact, our boat was one of the best rigged out there.  You've got a lot of gear and equipment in the boat and obviously the goals are to minimize weight and clutter.  You want the deck fairly clear because there are instances when you need to be able to crawl along the length of the boat.  Our boat was rigged pretty clean and many people told us so.

The orientation seminar lasting about 30 minutes went off at 5 o'clock or so.  After that we went back to the boat to make sure there wasn't anything else that needed doing.  I looked the boat over hard and there was nothing left to obsess about - it was all done and ready to go.  We loaded the food, paddles and light and headed back to Austin.  We had to make a couple of stops to pick up water and to try to find a new plastic case for one of our light batteries.  One of them had been dropped and the waterproof housing broke.  We searched at every sporting goods store we could think of for the right sized plastic bottle, but none were wide enough.  Eventually we decided to look for a platic container that some product was sold in.  At the grocery store we found a bottle holding moistened cleaning towels in a roll that was the right size.

We got back to Robb's place and I started preparing and dividing the food.  Calculating the calories we needed was a fairly complicated deal.  For starters, there is conflicting scientific information about the caloric needs during ultra-distance athletic events.  The basic problem is that your body cannot process as many calories as you are burning when you are exercising at a moderate to high level for hours on end.  We were going to burn roughly 500-600 calories an hour and the body can only convert around 300 calories an hour.  The deficit adds up pretty quickly.  Our goal was to take in 250-300 calories an hour from a variety of food sources.  I added 100 calories per hour to that for reserve.  So 400 caloies per hour to pack.  I also estimated that we would finish in 62 hours if all went well.  I rounded that up to 70 hours to calculate our food needs so we would have reserve.  So 70 X 400 = 28,000 calories per person.  Half of our calories were to come from an endurance athlete's powdered fuel called Perpetuem.  To me it was like powdered milk with a little orange flavored Gatorade mixed in for taste.  They called the flavor dreamsicle, but that's a bit of a euphemism.  The other half of our calories were to come from a variety of solid foods - Clif bars, Clif Mojo bars, dried fruit, corn chips, beef and turkey jerky and endurance athlete's gels.

You have to be very disciplined about your food, water and electrolyte intake during the Safari.  If you are severly deficient in any one you will get ill and possible have to drop out.  It sounds easy to simply drink and eat a lot, but one of the main problems is that you need to be paddling constantly and stopping paddling or, heaven forbid, stopping the boat are like cardinal sins.  So you resist stopping and you don't eat or drink enough.  We have drink tubes for the water jugs so you can drink and paddle at the same time, but you still have to stop to raise those to your mouth.  Another thing that makes it hard is that there is quite a lot of math involved.  That can get hard when you are severely fatigued.  The water is fairly easy - for our body weights we needed about 18 oz. of water per hour.  Because our containers were easy factors of 16 (48 oz. jugs, 24 oz. bike bottles), I rounded down to 16 oz. per hour and just kept that small deficit in mind as we went.  The electrolytes are pretty easy too.  We had salt pills called Enduralytes that we were taking.  The target was 2 per hour and more as needed.  The food is much more complicated.  The Perpetuem powder has 130 calories per scoop.  We were doing 3-scoops to a serving in one bike bottle.  (We had already separated out the servings into individual baggies.)  That's 390 calories, or not quite 2 hours worth of calories.  Ideally, you memorize the caloric content of each of the other types of food - Clif bar is 250 calories (1 hr.'s worth), Clif Mojo bar is 190, gel is 90.  I don't remember the chips or the dried fruit and the jerky was hard to calculate because we didn't weigh each baggie.  Chances are you are going to be mixing different types of food - 3 swigs on the Perp bottle + 1 gel + half handful of dried fruit = ?  I was a little stressed about us not taking in enough calories, but we were just going to try to stay on top of it as best we could.  In the end, to cut down on weight, we decided to cut our ration to 300 calories/hr for 70 hours, reducing the total to 21,000 calories.  We got rid of 1/3 of the Perpetuem powder, which was probably 5-6 lbs. alone.

Separating the food and fixing the battery case were time-consuming.  I had hoped to get to bed by 10 so I could get a full 8 hours of sleep.  I had been sleep deprived most of the week working into the wee hours on the boat.  I had a full night's sleep on Thursday night so I was catching up, but I was still tired.  10 o'clock came and went, then 10:30.  I finally got to bed around 11 and had no trouble falling asleep even though there were a million things about the Safari going through my mind.

We were up a little after 6.  I ate my pre-race breakfast of a banana and a giant Payday candy bar with a tall glass of water a little coffee.  I did all of the body prep - Desitin, sunscreen, band-aids on nipples - and donned our long-planned Safari uniforms.  We loaded up the truck and ourselves and pulled out of Austin at 7:30; about 30 minutes behind where I wanted to be.  On the drive down I ran through my mental checklists to make sure I wasn't forgetting anything.  I had forgotten nothing.

I was pretty relaxed all during check-in and even now as we pulled into San Marcos.  I was just so prepared that there was no question in my mind that I had done everything that was required up to this point.

When we got to Aquarena Springs we loaded the food in the boat, secured the light and paddles.  My Mom and Dad walked up as we were doing this, which was a pleasant surprise as I wasn't expecting to see them until way later in the day.  We hugged and chatted with them for a while.  The race directors announced that we could start entering the water.  We lifted the boat (it still felt heavy) and made our way to the water's edge.  We got final well-wishes and I hugged our Team Captain/my fiance for a long time.  We lowered the boat into the water and got in the boat in our "You go, I go" pattern.  We paddled down the length of the lake about 2/3 of the way to survey the course.  We decided not to paddle all the way to the dam, opting instead to get in our starting position and just relax.

We were in Row 3, Position 4 and the banks were marked with numbered signs showing where to line up.  We got roughly where we were supposed to be and other boats slowly did the same.  Our friendly rivals in the She-Ra boat #18, Ginsie and Debbie, pulled up alongside.  We chatted with them and a couple of the other teams around us.  I saw some of the Safari legends getting into position - John Bugge and his Belizians, the Mynar team, solo record holder Carter Johnson and his partner - they were all there.  I started getting excited being among these people and actually feeling like I belonged.  The race announcer was listing off all of the sponsors and saying a bunch of things I couldn't hear.  Then they played the national anthem and I got chills, as I usually do when I hear it.  They announced 5 minutes to race start.

It was finally here - this thing that I had been preparing for and obsessing about for almost a full year.  The Texas Water Safari was about to begin.

The Texas Water Safari: Prelude

Today is the last day I'm going to have internet access until Monday, June 21st, so this is just a short prelude to what is probably going to be a string of long posts about my experience in the Safari.

The Safari starts on Saturday at 9am at Aquarena Springs in San Marcos.  It ends 262 miles later at Seadrift on San Antonio Bay.  I'll be covering that time and distance paddling a 24 ft. Spencer Raptor carbon fiber and kevlar canoe.  I'll be paddling through the night and hopefully nonstop until the end, although we may end up sleeping a couple of hours.  Most of you know that I have spent nearly an entire year preparing for this event.  I have spent an extreme amount of time and effort learning everything I can about anything and everything related to the Safari.  I have also spent a lot of time getting ready physically, having lost 12 lbs. in the last 6 months.  And I am ready.  As ready as I can possibly be while still holding a job and keeping relationships with people, that is.

Some of the pleasures we are going to experience include:  possibly getting rammed by other boats during the crowded start, portaging our boat loaded with supplies over 20ft. tall concrete dams, millions of stumps and rocks any one of which can damage our boat and end our race, logjams covered with ants and snakes that you can fall through and get pinned under and probably drown, extreme fatigue, muscle and joint pain, vomitting, hallucinations, mud, alligator gar that weight over 100 lbs, alligators, mosquitoes, wind and waves in the bay.

I have projected, based on a lot of research and number crunching, that we will finish the race after 62 hours at 11pm on Monday night.  I also project that we will come in 25th place overall out of 106 boats.  These estimates can vary widely, of course.

The link to follow live results is here:  http://www.on3go.com/Competition/display.aspx?id=833

I've been trying to come up with a canned answer for the question of "Why?"  I mean, it's a legitimate question.  Why would someone subject themselves to certain suffering and possible debilitation or even death like this?  So far, the best thing I've come up with is something that sounds like a cliche', but I actually made it up - "Live every day like it is the first day of the rest of your life and there is no tomorrow."  I think I pretty much live like that and does the most to explain "Why?" in the fewest words.

I'd ask you to wish me luck, but I don't believe in it.  I'd ask you to pray for me, but I think there's only a .5% chance that it would do any good.  Instead, hope for the best and get ready for the stories - I think it's going to be epic.