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Tuesday, August 22, 2006
Lemonade from Lemons
Greetings, Gentle Reader.
My heart soars like a hawk; the pledged checks are streaming in, and I am struck by the quality of support this adventure has received. Some checks are from folks who hadn't pledge but who have been swept up in this post-row silliness, many checks exceed the amount pledged (suggesting that my own flawed record-keeping may not, after all, be the worst on the planet), and still others are enquiring how to pledge. All in all, you are making this part of the experience painless...and especially gratifying...and I thank you. After all, it's for the kids, and you are making a difference.
More people than I would have expected continue to tune in to new blog entries, so tonight let me reward your continuing interest with The Tale of My Hardest Day...and encourage you to, soon, get a life. This can't be that interesting.
My Hardest Day actually started start the night before, Monday, 8/17. That morning I had left Stone Harbor, N.J., an idyllic enclave on the Intercoastal. (I have already recounted how Bill Flammer drove himself to Cape May to intercept me in order to deliver my forgotten Wa-Wa-Supreme Roast Beef sandwich...an act of kindness that was to be vital to my well-being that evening.)
I hit the Cape May Canal late in the morning, five hours (and 19 miles) into my day. I transited it with no difficulty, but all the way through I wondered what conditions would prevail at the other end of the Canal: Delaware Bay, the 16 mile-wide mouth of the Delaware River. Much like the dental appointment that you just can't defer, the Delaware had been on my mind since August 5. Last March, in fact, I had stood on the shore of the Cape May Canal jetty and had seen The Big Waters, felt the lash of a strong west wind, and hoped that my emergence in August at that very spot would take place in more benign conditions. It would soon be time to darken the dentist's door.
Alas, Gentle Reader, my hopes of March were answered. I was greeted with a gentle southwesterly wind, delightful rollers headed my way up the bay, and a slack tide. I had a window of opportunity to make some serious headway on the body of water that had concerned me most - indeed, the water that was most oceanic in its proportions and possibilities - and I dug in to make the most of it.
After a few miles of sandy strand and delightful camps, the eastern shore of the Delaware morphs into vast expanses of grassland and swamp; no homes, no beach, no docks, no towns, no boats...no nothin'. As darkness fell after a gratifying 46 mile day, the wind rose sharply and veered from the west, presenting me with the broadside waves that would be the primary challenge throughout the next day. After 12 hours and 30 minutes in the seat, it was time to pull up. A low tide offered a small stretch of sand onto which I fell, exhausted and cramped, and there, Gentle Reader, is where I literally wolfed down the Wa-Wa Supreme Roast beef Sandwich...and blessed Bill Flammer for the umpteenth time that day. Ever see the lions tearing into the gazelle on Animal Planet? You've got the picture of me and my sandwich.
My solitary sandy spot was about four feet square and just above the waterline; the tide was coming in, and I knew that within the hour I would lose it entirely. I used the clean, secure footing of the sand to reconfigure the boat for the night, moving items and hardware fore and aft to make room for my sleeping bag and a tarp in the middle. I pulled the boat up as far as I could into the tall grass, fell into the bag, and was immediately asleep, cradling my oars. Honest. I love those cherry oars.
It was the gentle rocking of the boat that woke me up. I was on my back, and a gorgeous waning amber moon lit the boat and the stalks of grass surrounding me. I could hear waves lapping against the boat...I could feel the flexing of the hull under their pressure...and as lay on my back, stalks of glittering grass slowly marched past the boat in a surreal, stately parade. I was moving, albeit slowly, surrounded by the vegetation, suspended in the water, too tired to do anything but enjoy the spectacle and fight the heavy lids.
I woke before dawn...not a bad night's sleep...and sat up in the boat. I was sitting in a small grassy room with a roof open to the stars. I stood up in the boat and faced the river. I was 75 feet from shore, high in the grass, where the tide had deposited my cradle. It would be a muddy slog to get the boat back to shore, but I thanked my good fortune for the good night's sleep. The strong west wind had kept the bugs down...and yet I anticipated that it would not be my friend in the coming day.
Thus began My Hardest Day, after a night in the boat that was almost magical in its beauty.
I launched from the sandy spit that had blessedly reappeared from under the tide. It was a tough launch into the surf, but with some good timing and moves absorbed from watching Mary Lou Retton in the Olympics, I was underway before 7.
Thus began My Hardest Day. But, importantly, my Most Rewarding (hence the hackneyed but catchy title to this blog).
The eastern shore of the southern Delaware River is very shallow...vast stretches of two-to-three foot depths are typical. In water so shallow, a strong wind will build a special kind of wave. Gentle Reader, before this trip I thought waves that capped had certain rhythms...rise, cap, subside, rise, cap, subside. Lady Delaware presented me her version of a Kiddie Water Park from Hell. The waves came at me broadside in steady, predictable rows about three feet high, but the crests didn't break; the shallow depths, I think, sustained the crests and they just kept on coming, continuously breaking without breaking down. Perfect for the kid at the waterpark, bad for a boat which, fully loaded, presents at most six inches of freeboard.
I made only 3 miles in my first two hours, and that was accomplished only through total concentration in the timing of my strokes and the constant adjustment of the heading of the boat. The inevitable momentary lapse in concentration cost me dearly; I was hit by a cascade that exceeded the length of the boat and was immediately sitting in a water tub full to the gunwales...with fish. Yes, fish. I'm about to lose everything in the boat and I'm focused on...the fish. See, I don't especially like fish, unless it's a properly prepared Chilean Sea Bass with some nice buttered asparagus on the side. I saw no such fish in the boat.
It's a credit to the boat that it didn't roll. I climbed into the Wave Pool, dragged the boat to the swamp, and bailed. The fish found their own way out. I didn't lose anything, but it would be a while 'till I slept in anything dry. Only Kathy's transistor radio, my constant companion, was dealt a fatal blow; for the rest of the trip it would emit frequent farting sounds which, truth be told, rivaled in breadth and depth of thought much of the talk radio I had been listening to.
Back on the water, I resolved to call it a day at 20 miles, even if it meant another night in the swamp. Within another hour (only a mile later), another lapse, another swamping (same fish?), another slog to the swamp...and even by noon, 20 miles looked foolishly optimistic.
"So Al, where is the lemonade in this story? I can see the "hardest day" part, but where is the sweet?"
Ah, Gentle Reader, you lead me to recount The Biggest Lesson Learned on my row. Distance rowing is physically challenging, to be sure, but it's every bit as much a head game. It's cerebral. It's great physical exertion that happens in slow motion, giving one plenty of time to contemplate self and situation and surroundings. But it was the periodic audit of self that would tip the day.
At some point around noon, I got angry. Not angry at the river, which astounded me with its size and variability, nor at my circumstance, which was purely elective, but rather with myself. I was angry at having set a 20 mile goal that would put me in the swamp for another night (no more Wa-Wa Supreme Roast Beef Sandwiches, and running low on fluids) before I had reached the end of my endurance. I determined that I would row that day until I could row no more. It was time to reach down to see what was there. At that moment I became capability-oriented, not time or distance oriented. Screw the GPS. Put it away. Just keep rowing.
To make a grueling story short, I kept at it. The wind abated a bit by late afternoon, and soon, for the first time, the Delaware shore emerged in the west. I made a six-mile dash into the wind (at last, no more demonic firemen trying to fill the boat with firehouses!)for the promise of the shelter its lee might provide, and I was rewarded for this gamble by glassy water at sunset.
I arrived at the mouth of the C&D Canal after dark, utterly exhausted. I saw no spot to pull in for the night, and I knew that the Coast Guard might have qualms about letting a row boat through the canal the next day. No one was around, the tide was again slack, and I knew there was a place to pull in 13 miles into the canal. At this point I was experiencing a kind of euphoria (exhaustion? dehydration?) at having exceeded my 20 mile goal by 29 miles, the waters of greatest concern now blessedly behind me. But a nighttime passage of the C&D? It sounded stupid even at the time, but sometimes the stupidity in front of you looks like the optimal path. Gentle Reader, if you ever find yourself rationalizing any of your future options in this way, give me a call. Let's talk.
I had been warned of the tidal effect of the C&D canal. When the tide gets moving, its effects are dramatically amplified in the Canal...far exceeding the over-the-ground speed I could sustain, even when fresh, in my boat. That night, when it started to move after slack, it would be building against me. In a perverse pilot to a game show entitled "Beat the Tide," I headed in, slinking past the Coast Guard station like a U-Boat leaving Brest in 1944, knowing that my window of opportunity was short. The prospect of investing hours and scarce calories only to be flushed out of the Canal loomed large. It would be a race.
Suffice to say that as the tide began to build, my over-the-ground progress became absurdly slow and very, very painful. I knew that if I lagged before 13 miles, there would come that moment when my maximum effort would yield less speed than the building current. The alternative of The Flush was too awful to contemplate. The miles passed in slow motion; I'd by now placed the GPS back in sight and furtive flashes of light showed my speed declining despite maximum effort...2.8 mph...1.9 mph...all the while the illusion of the current going the other way making it seem that I was flying. The freighters making nighttime passages through the canal beheld the image of an idiot in an unlit boat rowing madly against the tide, a sight as amusing as it must have been cause for concern; weren't we at Amber Alert? But I hugged the side of the canal where the heavier traffic could not go and where the current was less strong. My fatigue was overwhelming, yet I had no choice but to continue. I sang every Tommy James and the Shondells song I knew, and I have no idea why. "My Baby Does the Hanky Panky" got me thinking about what I must have thought hanky panky was when I was 13, or what Tommy meant us to think. It was enough to get me through. In retrospect, I wish I'd summoned Portia's "mercy" speech from "The Merchant of Venice" or Wordsworth's "The World is Too Much With Us." It would have made better copy for the blog; after all, I'm an English teacher, and you'd think I'd have summoned something a little more profound than Tommy James and the Shondells in this time of stress. Sheeesh.
Anyway, I reached the Chesapeake Marina at 12:45 AM. I drank a gallon of water from the first hose I could find, climbed into my wet sleeping bag on the dock next to the boat, and slept the sleep of the dead.
62 miles, 17 hours. Not bad for a 20-mile day.
It was my Hardest Day...and, I think, my best.
More later? Let me know, 'K? If you keep reading, I'll keep writing. In the parlance of pop psychology, I'm what's known as "a pleaser."
xxoo
Mr. Frei
My heart soars like a hawk; the pledged checks are streaming in, and I am struck by the quality of support this adventure has received. Some checks are from folks who hadn't pledge but who have been swept up in this post-row silliness, many checks exceed the amount pledged (suggesting that my own flawed record-keeping may not, after all, be the worst on the planet), and still others are enquiring how to pledge. All in all, you are making this part of the experience painless...and especially gratifying...and I thank you. After all, it's for the kids, and you are making a difference.
More people than I would have expected continue to tune in to new blog entries, so tonight let me reward your continuing interest with The Tale of My Hardest Day...and encourage you to, soon, get a life. This can't be that interesting.
My Hardest Day actually started start the night before, Monday, 8/17. That morning I had left Stone Harbor, N.J., an idyllic enclave on the Intercoastal. (I have already recounted how Bill Flammer drove himself to Cape May to intercept me in order to deliver my forgotten Wa-Wa-Supreme Roast Beef sandwich...an act of kindness that was to be vital to my well-being that evening.)
I hit the Cape May Canal late in the morning, five hours (and 19 miles) into my day. I transited it with no difficulty, but all the way through I wondered what conditions would prevail at the other end of the Canal: Delaware Bay, the 16 mile-wide mouth of the Delaware River. Much like the dental appointment that you just can't defer, the Delaware had been on my mind since August 5. Last March, in fact, I had stood on the shore of the Cape May Canal jetty and had seen The Big Waters, felt the lash of a strong west wind, and hoped that my emergence in August at that very spot would take place in more benign conditions. It would soon be time to darken the dentist's door.
Alas, Gentle Reader, my hopes of March were answered. I was greeted with a gentle southwesterly wind, delightful rollers headed my way up the bay, and a slack tide. I had a window of opportunity to make some serious headway on the body of water that had concerned me most - indeed, the water that was most oceanic in its proportions and possibilities - and I dug in to make the most of it.
After a few miles of sandy strand and delightful camps, the eastern shore of the Delaware morphs into vast expanses of grassland and swamp; no homes, no beach, no docks, no towns, no boats...no nothin'. As darkness fell after a gratifying 46 mile day, the wind rose sharply and veered from the west, presenting me with the broadside waves that would be the primary challenge throughout the next day. After 12 hours and 30 minutes in the seat, it was time to pull up. A low tide offered a small stretch of sand onto which I fell, exhausted and cramped, and there, Gentle Reader, is where I literally wolfed down the Wa-Wa Supreme Roast beef Sandwich...and blessed Bill Flammer for the umpteenth time that day. Ever see the lions tearing into the gazelle on Animal Planet? You've got the picture of me and my sandwich.
My solitary sandy spot was about four feet square and just above the waterline; the tide was coming in, and I knew that within the hour I would lose it entirely. I used the clean, secure footing of the sand to reconfigure the boat for the night, moving items and hardware fore and aft to make room for my sleeping bag and a tarp in the middle. I pulled the boat up as far as I could into the tall grass, fell into the bag, and was immediately asleep, cradling my oars. Honest. I love those cherry oars.
It was the gentle rocking of the boat that woke me up. I was on my back, and a gorgeous waning amber moon lit the boat and the stalks of grass surrounding me. I could hear waves lapping against the boat...I could feel the flexing of the hull under their pressure...and as lay on my back, stalks of glittering grass slowly marched past the boat in a surreal, stately parade. I was moving, albeit slowly, surrounded by the vegetation, suspended in the water, too tired to do anything but enjoy the spectacle and fight the heavy lids.
I woke before dawn...not a bad night's sleep...and sat up in the boat. I was sitting in a small grassy room with a roof open to the stars. I stood up in the boat and faced the river. I was 75 feet from shore, high in the grass, where the tide had deposited my cradle. It would be a muddy slog to get the boat back to shore, but I thanked my good fortune for the good night's sleep. The strong west wind had kept the bugs down...and yet I anticipated that it would not be my friend in the coming day.
Thus began My Hardest Day, after a night in the boat that was almost magical in its beauty.
I launched from the sandy spit that had blessedly reappeared from under the tide. It was a tough launch into the surf, but with some good timing and moves absorbed from watching Mary Lou Retton in the Olympics, I was underway before 7.
Thus began My Hardest Day. But, importantly, my Most Rewarding (hence the hackneyed but catchy title to this blog).
The eastern shore of the southern Delaware River is very shallow...vast stretches of two-to-three foot depths are typical. In water so shallow, a strong wind will build a special kind of wave. Gentle Reader, before this trip I thought waves that capped had certain rhythms...rise, cap, subside, rise, cap, subside. Lady Delaware presented me her version of a Kiddie Water Park from Hell. The waves came at me broadside in steady, predictable rows about three feet high, but the crests didn't break; the shallow depths, I think, sustained the crests and they just kept on coming, continuously breaking without breaking down. Perfect for the kid at the waterpark, bad for a boat which, fully loaded, presents at most six inches of freeboard.
I made only 3 miles in my first two hours, and that was accomplished only through total concentration in the timing of my strokes and the constant adjustment of the heading of the boat. The inevitable momentary lapse in concentration cost me dearly; I was hit by a cascade that exceeded the length of the boat and was immediately sitting in a water tub full to the gunwales...with fish. Yes, fish. I'm about to lose everything in the boat and I'm focused on...the fish. See, I don't especially like fish, unless it's a properly prepared Chilean Sea Bass with some nice buttered asparagus on the side. I saw no such fish in the boat.
It's a credit to the boat that it didn't roll. I climbed into the Wave Pool, dragged the boat to the swamp, and bailed. The fish found their own way out. I didn't lose anything, but it would be a while 'till I slept in anything dry. Only Kathy's transistor radio, my constant companion, was dealt a fatal blow; for the rest of the trip it would emit frequent farting sounds which, truth be told, rivaled in breadth and depth of thought much of the talk radio I had been listening to.
Back on the water, I resolved to call it a day at 20 miles, even if it meant another night in the swamp. Within another hour (only a mile later), another lapse, another swamping (same fish?), another slog to the swamp...and even by noon, 20 miles looked foolishly optimistic.
"So Al, where is the lemonade in this story? I can see the "hardest day" part, but where is the sweet?"
Ah, Gentle Reader, you lead me to recount The Biggest Lesson Learned on my row. Distance rowing is physically challenging, to be sure, but it's every bit as much a head game. It's cerebral. It's great physical exertion that happens in slow motion, giving one plenty of time to contemplate self and situation and surroundings. But it was the periodic audit of self that would tip the day.
At some point around noon, I got angry. Not angry at the river, which astounded me with its size and variability, nor at my circumstance, which was purely elective, but rather with myself. I was angry at having set a 20 mile goal that would put me in the swamp for another night (no more Wa-Wa Supreme Roast Beef Sandwiches, and running low on fluids) before I had reached the end of my endurance. I determined that I would row that day until I could row no more. It was time to reach down to see what was there. At that moment I became capability-oriented, not time or distance oriented. Screw the GPS. Put it away. Just keep rowing.
To make a grueling story short, I kept at it. The wind abated a bit by late afternoon, and soon, for the first time, the Delaware shore emerged in the west. I made a six-mile dash into the wind (at last, no more demonic firemen trying to fill the boat with firehouses!)for the promise of the shelter its lee might provide, and I was rewarded for this gamble by glassy water at sunset.
I arrived at the mouth of the C&D Canal after dark, utterly exhausted. I saw no spot to pull in for the night, and I knew that the Coast Guard might have qualms about letting a row boat through the canal the next day. No one was around, the tide was again slack, and I knew there was a place to pull in 13 miles into the canal. At this point I was experiencing a kind of euphoria (exhaustion? dehydration?) at having exceeded my 20 mile goal by 29 miles, the waters of greatest concern now blessedly behind me. But a nighttime passage of the C&D? It sounded stupid even at the time, but sometimes the stupidity in front of you looks like the optimal path. Gentle Reader, if you ever find yourself rationalizing any of your future options in this way, give me a call. Let's talk.
I had been warned of the tidal effect of the C&D canal. When the tide gets moving, its effects are dramatically amplified in the Canal...far exceeding the over-the-ground speed I could sustain, even when fresh, in my boat. That night, when it started to move after slack, it would be building against me. In a perverse pilot to a game show entitled "Beat the Tide," I headed in, slinking past the Coast Guard station like a U-Boat leaving Brest in 1944, knowing that my window of opportunity was short. The prospect of investing hours and scarce calories only to be flushed out of the Canal loomed large. It would be a race.
Suffice to say that as the tide began to build, my over-the-ground progress became absurdly slow and very, very painful. I knew that if I lagged before 13 miles, there would come that moment when my maximum effort would yield less speed than the building current. The alternative of The Flush was too awful to contemplate. The miles passed in slow motion; I'd by now placed the GPS back in sight and furtive flashes of light showed my speed declining despite maximum effort...2.8 mph...1.9 mph...all the while the illusion of the current going the other way making it seem that I was flying. The freighters making nighttime passages through the canal beheld the image of an idiot in an unlit boat rowing madly against the tide, a sight as amusing as it must have been cause for concern; weren't we at Amber Alert? But I hugged the side of the canal where the heavier traffic could not go and where the current was less strong. My fatigue was overwhelming, yet I had no choice but to continue. I sang every Tommy James and the Shondells song I knew, and I have no idea why. "My Baby Does the Hanky Panky" got me thinking about what I must have thought hanky panky was when I was 13, or what Tommy meant us to think. It was enough to get me through. In retrospect, I wish I'd summoned Portia's "mercy" speech from "The Merchant of Venice" or Wordsworth's "The World is Too Much With Us." It would have made better copy for the blog; after all, I'm an English teacher, and you'd think I'd have summoned something a little more profound than Tommy James and the Shondells in this time of stress. Sheeesh.
Anyway, I reached the Chesapeake Marina at 12:45 AM. I drank a gallon of water from the first hose I could find, climbed into my wet sleeping bag on the dock next to the boat, and slept the sleep of the dead.
62 miles, 17 hours. Not bad for a 20-mile day.
It was my Hardest Day...and, I think, my best.
More later? Let me know, 'K? If you keep reading, I'll keep writing. In the parlance of pop psychology, I'm what's known as "a pleaser."
xxoo
Mr. Frei
