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Calico Moon 2021 MR340

 This year Amber and I decided we  were going to tandem again. We wanted to be able to double blade our outrigger. The aikos were way too close. So I had to dream up a way to modify them. I made a big hoop in the back and made a z shaped bar in the front. We took it to smithville lake and gave it a try. We decided it would work so the week before the race we took it to Kaw point     and ran to La Benite. That was our only double blading before the big dance. We sat in the boat Sunday night to make sure our lights weren’t going to give us any fits. We decided then and there we were going to take both double and singles in the boat.   We got ready over Saturday, Sunday, Monday but somehow still worked until around 9 getting stuff together. Car was mostly packed and we were ready. We got up at 4am and mom and Randy showed up at 5. We did the final food prep and packed the rest of the car. The only way to fit us all in there was to put the kids in the back and pile gear on them. We got Kaw
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Calico Moon and Son 2020

  This is a bit different than my usual write up. This plan started a few years back probably four years ago. Amber and I came back from the race and said there was an 11 year old who did the race. Our middle son Grady immediately said when I’m 11 I want to do the race. We asked him often and he never wavered he wanted to race so in 2019 he turned 11 and we rented a 3 man boat and planned to race. But the river stayed high and we pretty much never practiced due to our realization that the race probably wasn’t going to happen. We talked to our friend Joe Mann and asked to rent his 3 man that Amber and her river sisters Gina and Susan and raced in 2018. We got the boat and brought it home. We did some training and Joe ended up needing the boat back to have it refinished. It came back a few weeks later really slick and much improved. We did some more paddling and ran the freedom race. We felt really good in the boat with me in the bow running the rudder our 12yr old Grady in the middle an
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Rusty Coons first solo run 2018 MR340

We left the house at 4:30 to get to Kaw point early enough for me to put in for the solo start. We started putting together both Amber's boat and mine. We got light and seats set up. We got it all together and there was a huge line to the ramp. Aaron came down to see us off with one of his coworkers. He said we put in on the point last year and it was easy. There was a couple boats putting in there but only on the exact point. We carried my boat down to the right of the point and I got in the water up to about my waist. I hopped in and then sponged out the water I carried into the boat with me. I paddled up stream a bit and talked to a few paddlers. Backpaddling upstream was weird with the rudder. When they announced 5 minutes there was a bunch of paddlers downstream of the ramp sideways, a couple were still there when they started counting down from 10 seconds. I didn't really make a hard plan for my start I just wanted to get paddling. When I hit the confluence I was just rig
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Calico Moon 2017 Mr340

  We got in the water shortly after the solos went. We hung out on the side of the Kaw until they said 3 minutes. Then we started staging for the confluence. Our original plan was to go fairly early in the pack on the left side. Since Scott talked about it at the safety meeting it was where about two thirds of the pack were headed. We went right in the center and really didn't have many boats to near us. We paddled out at what we thought was was a decent race pace. Somewhere around 55 strokes a minute. We were passing quite a few of the pack but some boats were pulling away from us pretty well. We caught up to Donald and Aaron around broadway bridge. We paddled around each other for quite awhile. We started taking our breaks right on time. I took mine at a quarter to the hour and Amber took hers on the hour. We took about a 3 minute break while eating. I drank every 15 minutes to the minute. We passed the first solo at 9:45 he was a stand up paddle board. We started passing solos p
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Calico Moon 2016 MR340 a DNF story

  Our 2016 MR340 story We got ourselves to the start just before 6AM. The day was warm and humid already but with a few clouds in the sky. We had the boat outfitted before the solo start. We went down and watched the solos and it went off without a hitch, nobody took a swim. We got on the water about 7:30 and went across the Kaw and hung out by the bank. We spent our time talking to Brian and Marilyn. When the countdown started we moved to the middle of the pack. We took the confluence a little right of center. There were some tight spots where boats almost sandwiched us in. I told Amber to dig and we pushed hard to stay out of trouble. For a girl who had been vocal about how nervous she was to get through the confluence you wouldn't know. She stayed poised and didn't concern herself looking around for trouble. We were in decent shape by the second bridge and were settled in to a quick pace. We decided we were going to race our own race but we were still able to see Brian and M
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