We left Cheapside a few minutes after boat 259 and worked hard to catch up to them. I was nervous about Cuero dam because we hadn't ever seen it and I wanted to go through with an experienced team who knew which lines to take. I really worried about making it this far down the river only to make a slight error that would damage the boat too badly to keep going. The locations on the river where damaging the boat was likely were getting fewer and further between, and most we'd seen before, so Cuero dam was especially bothersome.
At some point in the recent past, the river shifted and carved a new channel around Cuero dam. This must have pissed off some engineers, I thought. The dam was about 3 miles downriver from the Cheapside checkpoint, meaning it took us about 40 minutes to get there. We paddled about 50 yards behind the other boat, and struggled to stay close. The sternman from the other boat called some instructions out to us, but we couldn't hear them. In any event, we were at the dam.
As with most other dangerous obstacles on the river, the current picks up and the boat picks up speed. This is bad for obvious reasons: you have less time to make corrections if you are going in a direction you don't want to be going and impacts are harder when you hit something. The river bent sharply to the right around an earthen bluff that stood at least eight feet above the water and blocked our view of the river around the bend. We had to work to stay in the current line next to the bluff and avoid sweepers in the channel to our left. When we came around the bluff, I was horrified by the sight - a forest of sweepers and fast-moving current. I watched the other boat work into the passable channels between the trees and followed their lines. We got pushed close to several of the logs, but we were making it through. The river bent around again to the left then to the right and poured through the last of the sweepers, eventually ending in a wider and slower section of the river. I eased up almost immediately because I knew we were through the dam area. I told Robb that I was going to grab a bite to eat. I unwrapped a Clif bar and chewed it as we watched the other boat pull slowly away from us. Their pace had been faster than we were comfortable with at the time, which was unfortunate because I had hoped to run all the way to the next checkpoint in sight of their boat. Twenty minutes later I told Robb I was going to take a break to piss. Robb was agitated by my two breaks, but I figured it was just because he thought I was taking too many breaks. Every paddler thinks their partner takes too many breaks, so I wasn't bothered. It wasn't until the other boat was disappearing out of sight that he spoke up. "I thought we were following that boat to the dam." "We were. We already passed the dam, man," I replied. Robb thought the dam was another upper river style portage and hadn't known that the river had been carved out around the dam. He had been stewing for half an hour wondering why I was letting our guide boat get away from us!
We paddled on for a while, eventually coming to a confusing section of the river where it broke into several channels over shallow sand. There was little current here, so it was hard to see which channel to take. It was very disorienting, but we picked the right way and continued on. It started getting dark and we waited as long as we could before turning on the light. As soon as we turned the light on the bugs swarmed us as badly as we had ever seen. Robb donned his headnet, which for some reason I found funny. Shortly after we turned the light on we heard turbulence, but we had no idea what it was. We tried to go as slowly as possible and then we came upon the source of the turbulence - a set of rapids that dropped quickly! "This wasn't on any map or description that I'd ever seen" was all I could think. We got a little panicky and braced as we went down the rapids, but we were okay. A short time later we heard more rushing water. "Now what?" I asked. There were sweepers in the water and we couldn't see beyond the branches. We craned our necks and squinted in the dark to try to see the fast-approaching rushing water. All of a sudden, we came around a sweeper and the there was a huge log nearly spanning the river that was blocking the flow. We had no hope of steering around it. We were too close and the current was pushing us into it. I laid the rudder over to try to catch the current and run along the log broadside; I just prayed we didn't capsize because that would have been it. The current took the boat and we scraped along the log until we reached the narrow channel at the end. We steered through it and made it back into open water. "Holy shit that was close!" I said. "This section of the river is crazy. It has it all, man. Rapids, sweepers, confusing channels, bugs..." Robb agreed. This was a crazy little section of the river.
Not long after, the red indicator on the light switch started blinking meaning that the batteries were spent and the light was about to shut off. We were in a fairly wide open part of the river with slow current. Robb was going to try to change out the battery without having to pull over to the bank. We were both exhausted and planning to sleep for 3 hours at Cuero so we just wanted to get there and neither of us wanted to stop the boat. Robb got as far forward as he could in the boat, which makes the boat pretty unstable. He got in a hurry as he was messing with the wires when he lost his balance and bailed out over the side and into the water. He came up sputtering and I asked him if he was okay. He was choking a little bit, but was alright. We clumsily guided the boat to shore so he could finish replacing the battery and get back in.
Robb falling in the water coupled with the fact that he had been saying some strange things made me think that he going a little loopy. I was a little worried. I felt like I was pretty clear-headed, but didn't know how long I could hold it together if Robb started losing it. Delirium is common in the Safari and I worried about one or both of us making poor decisions that would lead to bad things. There is a famous Safari story about a guy losing his mind, stripping off all of his clothes and running off into the woods screaming like a wildman. I didn't think either of us were close to that point, but I knew we were at the beginning stages of it. Getting to the Cuero checkpoint quickly was becoming pretty important. I told Robb to just relax a little bit and that I though he might be suffering from poor judgment brought on by exhaustion. I think he resented the implication, but he did confess that he was pretty tired. I told him to take a caffeinated gel, but he told me that he'd already popped a Vivarin. I thought this, too, was a bad decision because I figured we were only an hour and a half or so out from the checkpoint where we were supposed to stop and sleep.
I just kept telling myself, "Just get there. Just get there." I was worried about our condition. I was at that level of exhaustion where I could no longer trust myself. I might have started seeing things, I don't really know. I do know that I wasn't thinking clearly and I didn't think Robb was either.
After what seemed like an eternity we finally came upon the lights of the checkpoint. We pulled up to the bank and my mom and Audra were there to greet us. They directed us where to go and as we pulled the boat up to the bank I looked Audra dead in the eye and told her, "We're wasted." The checkpoint official, a Safari veteran named Jeff who I had met before, laughed out loud when he heard me. We drug the boat up onto the bank and tried to position it out of the way of other boats coming in. There were a couple of other boats pulled in there and the paddlers were sleeping.
We secured the boat, got our meager sleeping gear out and walked up on the bank to see where Audra and my mom had found for us to bed down. "Okay, Option Number 1 is up here on these concrete footings under the bridge. They say the ants can't get up there." I shone my headlamp on the concrete and saw numerous ants. "What's option two?" I asked, hopeful. They walked us down the hill a little way. "Over here by the port-a-potties is a flat spot in the grass." "So our choices are hard concrete and ants versus relatively soft ground and ants?" "Don't forget we get to smell the port-a-potties at this spot," Robb chimed in. I was too tired to laugh. "I'll take soft ground." I started spreading my space blanket on the ground. "Wake us up in three hours." Then I laid down and peeled off my headlamp and shoes. I called over my shoulder to Audra, who was still standing over us as we got ready to sleep, "You're doing a great job by the way, baby."
I felt an ant bite me on the ear right before I fell asleep, but I was too tired to even reach up to pick the ant off and squeeze it to death.
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