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 and my wife Amber in the stern. The freedom was a grind with tons of wind but we paddled well and felt good about our boat setup for the 340. 

We woke at 4 and had coffee and started final touches on loading the car. We got waters and everything filled and cold food for Kaw point loaded into our lunch boxes. Mom and Randy got to our house around 5:15 and we finished stuffing ourselves in the car with all three boys and the 4 adults. On the way to Kaw point we saw this car with a carry all behind it and there were sparks coming off of it when it would hit a bump. When we got past that car my brother Joe calls and goes “were we throwing a lot of sparks?” I had no idea it was him! We cracked up and said we would see each other shortly. We pulled into Kaw point at 6:15 and it was obvious it was a different year. Not nearly the number of cars of a normal years. We loaded the cart with all our stuff and went to the boat. Outrigging the boat for 3 people took longer than I thought. We were still rigging when the National anthem started and the solos took off. It looked like a clean start I didn’t see any one flip. While I was putting the lights on I went to tighten the zip tie on the rear light I ripped the rear cap off. I duck taped it back on and it worked for the moment. The Sipes came to see us off so we were able to shoot the breeze a little. The boat was ready. We walked down to the point that we were closer to try see if we could put in there. The boat was just just too long. We headed to the ramp with everybody helping carry the boat. I couldn’t use the rear handle because I didn’t want to jostle the rear light. It was a long wait in line to get down the ramp. We were lucky to have Aaron there for help, I think he was taking the most weight of the boat. We finally made it down to the water and had to take the whole ramp to get loaded. We were really close to the Kracken. We finally got in the boat and wandered downstream to where the water was pretty static. We waited there until it was 5 minutes to go and turned to go upstream. We turned out and headed up. I misjudged how hard it would be to turn around with how fast the Kaw was running. We were sideways when they called 30 seconds and had to keep paddling hard to get it turned and ended up  barely downstream of the ramp unfortunately when the start happened. We just went ahead and paddled out. There were maybe 10 boats ahead of us at the confluence where we went into right middle. We came out in pretty good shape running singles. There were a lot of boats around us. Most everyone had good control of their boats up front. There was one 4 person boat that was all over the place with a really small rudder that really wasn’t doing anything for them. Even though they were all over the place they were faster than us. We just kept running our race knowing that was the name of the game this year. All the bridge crossings were uneventful with everyone giving the pillars a good wide berth. A few people asked how old grady was including Jericho who was paddling with Mike Dey in a Beaver trying to get the cup. We heard someone say they saw the paddlehawks pull over and wondered about them. We talked to them later when they passed us and they said the broke the rudder cable at the confluence. We were being passed by some pretty good boats. We weren’t doing a lot of passing since we started so close to the front. We had talked to a boat with another young man in the boat that was 10. Their team name was reLAX bro. We ended up talking to them quite a bit. At this time their boat had the dad as the bowman, Cooper as the midshipman and his sister Laura as the stern paddler. She had done the race when she was 12 in 2012. The 1st solo we passed was at 11:11 which was a little farther than we expected. He was in a decent sea kayak, I expected it to be one of the really short boats. There was a little bit of time before the next solo but then they started coming more often. Through here we were running 7.5-7.7 as an average and all three of us feeling pretty good. Grady kept exclaiming that he couldn’t believe he was doing the 340. The river of course got kind of slow wide and windy before Lexington. I have no idea what time we went by which is kind of disappointing but mom was paying attention to it and said it was 1:38. We talked to a couple guys for a bit and they were faster than us so we had to pick it up a bit to talk with them. They were local guys and their team name was funny called “we were faster in 2019.”  They paddled well and finished in 49:37. We kept paddling with Grady still paddling every other stroke on the same side as Amber. Sometimes he would paddle every stroke just to see what it feels like. We would be doing 8.5+ when he did paddle like that. Just before we got to our Waverly ramp we saw a great river person getting resupplied. Dana Kee, one of the finest people you will ever meet. He must have taken off while we were there. We continued on like that until we pulled in to Waverly. We actually pulled just upstream of the second ramp on the rocks. Everyone of our ground crew took care of their business as we were out in under 4 minutes according to my GPS. We were eating and drinking as we should and we were all feeling pretty good. I was starting to get some pain in the tendon on my right forearm which was pretty early to start getting pains like that. We caught up to Dana again and paddled with him. He and I have had lots of conversations about rudders on canoes. He is a purest who doesn’t want rudders on true canoes. So of course as we approached I said “man you know what would make that boat better? A rudder!” We shot the breeze for a bit and then I guess he decided he was tired of waiting for us and then he zoomed away! The sun started dipping down and it was obvious that it was gonna cool off quite a bit. We knew before the moon came up it was gonna be cold and foggy. Grady was chilling quick and started in on getting cold weather gear on. He asked if he could catch a little sleep and we told him we wanted to get to Miami and then he could catch some rest. He almost made it but laid back just before we went past. We past Miami at 10:00 on the dot. We had seen a few wisps of fog but weren’t too nervous about it. We were still waiting for the moon to make its appearance. It was just Amber and I on the paddles and we were still moving at a decent clip but my GPS was weird and saying we were doing like 25mph. When the moon finally did begin to show it was amazing! Big orange and beautiful. Night one moonrise for me was probably the coolest site on the whole race. As with every year night one feels like you are getting places and accomplishing things and then all of a sudden you’re tired. The fog was growing but was still mostly light. We passed Daltons bottoms. There was a safety boat there and a fire. Two turns after that we ran into some pretty thick fog. We started discussing what it would be like if we found a place. How we would have to just put on our cold weather paddling gear, wrap up in our emergency blankets and lay down on our tyvek tarp and fold it over all three of us like a burrito. Every time it would thicken enough to make me think we may need to start looking for a bank it would clear a bit. At one point we were crossing right to left and when we made it to the left side it was almost clear with the fog stacked on the inside of the curve. We got a text from the race info texted saying dense thick fog downstream of Glasgow and saying do not paddle into thick fog. So our plan A was out. We were planning to gas and go at Glasgow and get out and stand at Franklin island with possible sleep. So far no buoys. last year they had a pile of them and Amber and her River sisters hit or more like were hit by one just up from Glasgow. There were only a couple boats ahead of us and we were spread out fairly far. It is always a real concern how to approach ramps in a 27’boat. Trying to keep all three of us dry is an ordeal. We stayed relatively dry with the help of some volunteers and our ground crew we got out and got our boat up to the top of the ramp. We were checked in at Glasgow at 3:33am. They had our tent (first time having one) and three sleeping bags ready to go. I swapped out batteries in the spot tracker and my dead GPS lithium batteries usually make it to Glasgow but apparently it’s too much for alkaline.  I had a breakfast burrito before going to sleep and it was a good thing. Amber had a couple bites too.  Took off our shoes and laid down. Mom asked if I wanted up at 5am to assess the fog. I think Grady was already asleep when I got to the tent. Only took a couple minutes to fall asleep and felt like it only took a couple minutes for mom to say “it’s 5 here are your shoes.” I asked what the fog was like and she said there wasn’t any. I was dreading putting on those cold wet shoes. I told mom I’d take a few more minutes and she said 15. I pulled my shoes into the sleeping bag and put my head under to help warm it up. I was putting them on when mom popped here head in. Turns out Amber felt the same way dreading the shoes. We decided if shoes were gonna hold us back 15 minutes then Next year we’d have spare shoes. We started getting ourselves together and all used the bathroom with a small degree of comfort. The ramp was packed with boats with a tiny lane down the center. We had to wait far a couple paddlers they were just coming in to get out and get their gear up the ramp before we could lug our heavy boat down. We finally managed to get in the boat and I think we got lucky with only getting our feet wet. The time was 5:55am. We should have taken breakfast burritos with us. How did it take 40 minutes from the time I was putting my shoes on to get on the water?We were just starting to paddle out when a safety boat person said we are getting reports of very heavy fog downstream still. I said good morning mister Schnarr! We’re just planning to wander downstream until the fog gets thick then we’ll just bank it and wait. We were going easy knowing the fog was downstream. While going through Lisbon we met a solo double blading a canoe. He was pretty quick and said he had 9 kids!  I’ll have to look at raceowl to figure out who he was. Then we got through Lisbon bottoms without incident but I can’t say the same for a safety boat.  There was one on that beautiful sandbar at the end of the Lisbon on the right they apparently pulled up on bar and the level dropped overnight. They had all their coolers and gas cans out of the boat and were trying to push it off. I told Amber I wasn’t gonna stop and help them and Grady goes “they’d help you if you needed it”. He was right but I still wasn’t stopping we knew we were headed Franklin island. We were hoping to get some breakfast burritos there because in 2018 Trevor Tilton had a bunch of different stuff there. This year he had hot dogs and all kinds of packaged stuff Grady and I had hotdogs and they hit the spot. Amber got chips and M&Ms. long after the race she realized she had no ideas where the M&Ms went. We were kind of rushing to head out because some other boats were coming in. Trevor told us we were in the lead for the Tilton cup. That’s something we had been wondering about knowing we couldn’t podium against all the 4 man teams and the Kraken a three man pedal drive being powered by 3 strong river men, Joe Mann, Matt Walters (mad genius) and A-Dog. We rolled out of there before 11am which was of course behind schedule but plan A was gone.  When we were coming to Rocheport and Amber said she wanted to take a quick break and enjoy the bluffs. No sooner than she said that we saw a barge coming upstream. It was a weird spot to meet one. He was on river right and would be switching to river left so we were thinking about going to the right. There was a safety boat ahead of him and he came and told us he was going to stop and tie up on river right so we stayed to the left. He was still motoring though a little slower than full tilt. We were watching and the waves were big rollers with some big enough to curl and break.  We stayed on the inside of the curve giving the wing dikes some room. We were on double blades for Amber and I so we discussed our plan and went to the channel. The first couple sets were easy then for the next 30 minutes or so the water was pretty confused. We had the front of the boat go under some waves but nothing too bad. For a barge wake it wasn’t too bad. We usually get Thai food at our next stop which is Hartsburg but the Thai food truck was gone from Coopers. They were gonna have a Mexican truck which we decided wasn’t a good idea and they had fancy expensive sit down Cajun food.  We asked if they could find us cheeseburgers because package food was getting old. They didn’t know where they could find one but a local pointed them how to get to McD’s. They got all three of quarter pounders. We didn’t know at the time though just that they thought they could find some. About three miles up from Hartsburg we came around the corner and low and behold another barge. This one coming full tilt but sitting high in the water looking empty. We gave him some space and went on at it. None of the waver were as big as the first one and we cruised on through. We were still disappointed that if we were faster we could have had cheeseburgers on the ramp watching him go by. Hartsburg was pretty open pulling in but it was muddy. We got into the ramp and saw Bill Rasco for the first time mom said they ran around him a lot. I asked him about Stacy and he said she was doing well but a little slower than she hoped. Which I think happened to a lot of us. We peeled out of there in pretty decent time only costing us a few minutes. Next stop plan was Chamois at mile marker 117 another 43 miles to go. We knew we wouldn’t see it in the daylight as we hoped and it is always a weird ramp. There were buoys  here and there but they seemed to be where they were supposed to be. Our next checkpoint was Jeff city but we never stop because of how far off channel it is. Coming to Jeff City we remarked that after this it was all new river for Grady who had only done races that finished at Wilson’s serenity point. There was a lot of equipment downstream of the bridge with a dredge and a couple barges. All sitting still so we wandered through them saw a racer who’s name I recognized Mark Fingerhut. I said hello sir to him but I don’t think he heard me. He was listening to a podcast. We passed each other back and forth a few times. When sun was going down it was obvious it was gonna be very dark for the next couple of hours before the moon comes up. Luckily the clouds that were around in the evening went away before dark. Grady asked to sleep and we said go for it. When I say that Grady slept we really mean he bundled up and laid straight back onto his water jug and looked up at the sky until he fell asleep. He was laying back before moonrise and saw a big shooting star. Amber noticed that it lit the ground a bit and said you could still see the contrail from it. I tried to look up but didn’t want to move my hat and couldn’t see anything. When we were about an hour and 20 minutes out from Chamois Grady started having to use the bathroom. We talked about pulling over but it was impossible to see what the bank looked like. Neither he or Amber wanted to attempt a bank stop so we started to put the hammer down to try to get him there. Things got pretty desperate but we pressed on. We finally rounded the bend and saw the lights but it is still quite a ways out from there. When we finally got close we found the ramp. There was a red blinking light up stream of the ramp and we thought it was it. There were a couple cars with their lights on and they absolutely blinded us. We yelled out asking for the ramp and mom and Randy guided us in. I might as well had my eyes closed. We pulled the boat all the way out of the water and all went to use the restroom that was heated. I don’t know exactly how long we were stopped. My guess with the GPS was 12 minutes.  It was before midnight which was still a solid time for us to roll out. We really thought the little break would help us feel better but I think we dumped the tanks a little too much trying to get Grady there. We were less than 30 minutes back in the boat when Amber said she was still beat I was feeling drained as well. We discussed that we might be in trouble for the non stop run the the finish. We were fighting to stay awake and I drank a five hour energy. It didn’t seem to make a lot of difference as we were still struggling. There were quite a few buoys through here and they helped a bit to keep us awake but also made it more nerve racking. I had really blown myself out trying to get to Chamois with the dark concentrating on not hitting stuff. I believe that I rarely blinked. I was hurting but we were still paddling but stopped every third switch to listen. We dodged buoys and saw them with plenty of Time for the most part. We were finally starting to wake up a bit and catch some rhythm from time to time when I realized I needed to go to the bathroom. We were an hour from Herman so we figured we’d play it by ear. When we were getting close I was sure I was stopping.  I felt bad that I had to slow us down. We pulled into the second Herman ramp pretty easily after seeing the bridge for what seemed like hours. I walked up to the restroom which I was surprised by how well I was getting around still. Walked up used the restroom and came back to the boat and heard we could just lay sleeping bags under the trees. I got nervous but turns out they were talking about the finish line. We got under way again and I think we were all paddling better. Our times into and out of Herman was in at 1:33 and out at 1:44am. The fog was thickening up a bit from time to time but nothing too bad. Going through Berger bend was weird because there was some fog and LOTS of buoys. They were tough to read with the noise reverbing off the rocks when we would approach a buoy. We kept moving and getting after it when we could. We had talked about the possibility of stopping at Washington when we planning the race but now we were planning to skip it. That was until Grady said he was having issues peeing and Amber and I both needed the restroom again. We texted the ground crew to see if they could run for cranberry juice with the fear that Grady was getting a UTI. We paddled on in to Washington knowing the ramp was going to be a problem. It’s channel side and there is a dike down stream of the ramp. We pulled in and I told mom we were all pretty sick. We made our way up the ramp and to the restrooms Grady was able to use the restroom without issue it was just a logistics thing in the boat. That had happened to me in one of my early races. We saw a tandem going by when we were walking down to the boat. We got a little pep in our step hoping to not get passed by anyone else. We got in pulled upstream and cleared the boat ramp easy. We saw the tandem in front of us for quite some time but never closed the gap on them. It was the only time Amber and I have been passed by any boat on day 3. The daylight was there and we were able to stay on the paddles.  Grady mentioned that he might want some sleep and we told him we needed him on the paddle all day. He didn’t complain one bit. He stayed paddling pretty much the rest of the day. We were doing river math which every paddler knows is complicated by this time. We knew sub 50 fell apart with the extended fog stop at Glasgow and some rough paddling on day two. Our next goal was before noon. We were thinking it was going to be doable but close so we all kept after it. It was full light now and as we were looking at the race as a few small chunks left. 10 miles or so to Klondike and then 28 to finish. We paddled by whatever the plant is just upstream of Klondike and talked about it for a bit. I always think it’s a neat looking place. We paddled on by Klondike at 7:53am. The weather was nice and there wasn’t much in the way of wind so the paddling was decent. We weren’t really eating anything and I was rarely even drinking at this point. Sounds like Amber was doing the same which is normal for her at this point. We kept the hammer down at least for us and paced through at 7.38mph from Klondike to finish. Amber had noticed the tandem that got by us taking really short strokes and decided to try it out. We actually went a little faster but it turns out Amber injured her shoulder doing so. shortly after she could barely paddle on the right side and only do so with joint pain. Grady has often been paddling every other stroke but had to step it up now to every stroke at least on the right side. We kept at it I was digging hard on the left side and regular on the right for probably the last 15 miles. Grady picked it up and started hitting every stroke about the straight away before the bridge of false hope. So the last five miles  we were cruising. He makes a big difference when he got with it. We were in the 8’s the whole time he paddled like that. We saw the I-70 bridge and Grady wanted to try to beat 11:30 now that we were obviously beating noon. We kept hammering and discussing what the time was gonna be. When we were a mile out I was thinking we were just going to miss it. We kept hammering on the channel side and cut across to the finish line nearly too late but we pulled in at 11:32 for a finish time of 51:32. Mom and Randy were there with the boys cheering us in and Dad and Judy had come down to see the finish as well. We were happy to see them and I think Grady was pretty excited knowing they came just to see him. We lounged around the ramp for a bit of recovery but we were wiped. 

We were checking on Joe and Brian because we didn’t want to leave and miss them coming in. We figured their expected finish time allowed for us to get to the hotel and clean up and then hustle back to to see them. We were back in time to see them come in at 57:04. They had some rudder issues right off the bat at the confluence. It was a set back that really taxed them I’m sure. They didn’t train to paddle a boat and steer with paddles only the first 40 miles. 

A couple interesting items of note. I didn’t have much in the way of struggles with hallucinations. I think caffeine in my 5hour energy staves them off. Amber on the other hand had quite a few on the last night. She didn’t mention them while paddling but later let us know about them. She saw me as a gorilla in the boat. She saw Grady and I both turned around backwards facing her. She saw me as a pole she was paddling towards and thought she would hit. She saw a giant limousine bus and more things that she really couldn’t explain. These were all at night where it’s not unusual to see some things. The next morning she asked Grady and I what all the boats were doing on shore on the right. We told her there were no boats on the right and she was sure there was. I told Grady we’ll just keep going up there and it will sort itself out. After a few more minutes she realized they weren’t real. 

We both ended up with a few hot spot/blisters but nothing bad. I do have some sort of eczema on both ring fingers and with my hands swelling it actually made my finger just split all over. It was pretty bad shape and even writing this on Friday and Saturday my hands are swollen and those fingers are split and seeping. 

All in all another quality run in the books. There has been some discussion about next year being a different setup team wise. I hope we can make it come together 

For a 12 year old Grady did amazing. Paddling most all of the First day with very little complaint. Mostly stayed excited about the fact that he was finally getting to race. We had told him beforehand to tell us anything he had going on so we could try to help him stay healthy early. He might say “my wrist hurts a little” or “my back kind of hurts” but in all honesty that was it. He napped off and on day two and didn’t enjoy us double blading while he was on the single but did ok for how bad day 2 sucks. Morning of day three just before dawn he was paddling and said “I might take a nap later” I told him sorry but he has to paddle the rest of the race and he didn’t say anything else about it. Just stayed on the paddle every other stroke until about 5 miles out. Where he started matching us stroke for stroke until the finish line