The guy who posted the report is, as far as I can tell, quite the outdoors type. He owns a sporting goods store, Sunrise Mountain Sports, he climbs mountains (mountain mountains. Not like Mt. Tamalpais) and does expeditiony padding trips to places like Patagonia. From where I'm sitting (in a chair, usually with a beer) that's outdoorsy. YMMV.
Anyway, I'm reading this trip report and for some reason I'm intrigued. And for some reason I start thinking this would make a nice day trip. The whole 26 miles. On a river. In a sea boat. I've never paddled 26 miles in a single day before, not even close really (about 16 is the most I've done), but here I am thinking about doing, in a single day, something I've never done and something that an outdoorsy guy with, presumably, reasonable outdoor experience and judgement decided to do in 2 days. And it occurs to me that this is kind of a stupid idea. Not impossible mind you just, well, stupid.
As it turns out there are some few things I do well. I suspect it's much like everyone. You sort of muddle through life doing a decent job at most things but really hang your hat on those relatively few things you sort of feel ok being something of a reference standard at. Sometimes it's your profession, sometimes not. Sometime it's hard won skill, sometimes not. But pretty much everyone seems to operate like that. Better at this, worse at that. For myself there are, as I say, somethings I do pretty well. Among them is stupid. I can do stupid pretty much as well as anyone I can think of, something which many will attest to.
Now if you're going to go stupid I'm of the opinion that you go full stupid (thanks Tropic Thunder). So I promptly posted my interest in doing this paddle on the club mailing list asking if anyone was interested. I decided, for reasons I think now obvious, to call it the Stupid is as Stupid does paddle. Several people responded and things were starting to jell.
Fast forward a couple of weeks and the day of the paddle is approaching and the weather forecasts are starting to get really interesting. Rain. Record cold. Snow down to sea level for the first time in decades. For someone who dislikes the cold and snow (I'm ok with rain usually) this was not good news. But in terms of the paddle it was spectacular. Suddenly this whole thing is getting pushed out of the realm of stupid and into the realm of imbecilic. Perfect. So the day arrives and I wake up early. The sky is blue and the sun is shining. It's chilly but not cold. Damn. Well, it can still be stupid, if not imbecilic, right?
A shuttle and carpool had been organized. One of the participants was Keith who owns one of our local Kayak Shops. Keith offered to lend everyone a fast boat to paddle, and 4 of the 5 other paddlers took him up on it. I did not, partially because the boat I was paddling wasn't that slow. Others however would have been paddling Romany's and Chathams, not boats noted for their speed and hence distance covering ability. On the one hand this was really excellent. People would have boats that would make completing the trip more likely. On the other hand it diminished the stupid rather a lot.
Paddlesport shop owners have, usually, all the best toys so in addition to boats Keith also brought a giant trailer and a van that could carry all of us. So we were able to set up a shuttle with just two vehicles. Again this was an enormous help that diminished the stupid. Conflict is a fact of life I suppose.
We dropped a car off at Mossdale (the take out) and shuttled our way over to Caswell. There's a beach there and that's where we put in. Here's a picture:
Notice please the sky. Nice and rain-threatening grey. The weather had changed in the 30 minute drive from my house to here. Things were looking up in the stupid department.
We ended up getting on the water an hour late. Keith, who went to park his van and trailer while the rest of us wrangled boats, spent some time dealing with park staff. There was some confusion about where to park and other stuff. I didn't really get all the details but I think the staff might have fit right in with the theme of this paddle.
While we were waiting for the park staff to figure out the parking situation and let Keith go the rest of us kicked around on the beach. Here's a raccoon print, demonstrating that we were in fact somewhere naturey:
To be honest I only think it's a raccoon print. Could be a really tiny Bigfoot.
Here's one of the paddlers working on his bird watching skills:
Possibly the largest set of binoculars I've seen outside the military.
Finally we got on the water. After about 10 minutes we were here:
The current was a leisurely 1 mile per hour or so and the sun was out. The sun was out. In fact it was terribly pleasant. But we still had 26 miles to go and there was no trumping that stupid.
We stopped for a quick break about 90 minutes into the paddle. Just for 20 minutes since we had a heck of a long way left. In the event it was our only stop. It would have probably been smarter to stop one more time but, you know.
Paddle, paddle, paddle.
Paddle, paddle, paddle.
The stupid was starting to become really apparent now. We had hours of this to do. Hours and hours. On flat basically uneventful water. What were we doing here? It was stupid.
Eventually our little river terminated in a much bigger river. Here's a picture:
Notice anything? Not the blue sky with the lovely and dramatic clouds. No. It's actually a little hard to make out in this picture but the current in the big river was about 3 MPH. We were moving about 6 MPH while we paddled, which was pretty much the entire time.
We finished the trip in about 5 hours paddling time. The sun was out, it was chilly but not cold. It was, all in all, and I think everyone agreed, a very nice day on the water.
I think it's hard to make getting on the water a stupid thing to do.
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