I asked my Doc about vitamin I because what little I’ve taken really helps. But since I take a blood thinner , the answer was " do you want to bleed to death?"
I-I, Cap’sule!
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And for all those afeared strange accumulations to their liver,
consider many vessels you have tipped down paddled paths of your life’s river.
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DE-LIVER-ANCE
The much-dreamed-of multiday trip by canoe
Ended in more than one lonely brew;
And kayaker chasing group, always at rear,
Consoled himself, sort of, with plenty of beer.
Let’s not forget SUPer standing so fine!
Who drank wine until he was flat-out supine.
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Nice… Another PCom word meister!
Bravo!
sing
So the Doc prescribed an antidepressant! It’s supposed to also work for nerve pain.
He had already given me the best script for most ailments- Paddle On! He highly approves extended gentle exercise. Looks like I need to paddle more.
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Quoth the raven: Paddlemore!
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At 71 years old, my view of paddling hasn’t changed. I still have the desire to paddle and can still pick up my 54 lb boat.
I just came back from a 10 day paddling trip. 2100 miles one way. When I was asked to come along, I gave the idea very little thought and said yes immediately. Had to borrow a boat, since none of mine can carry 10 days worth of gear. Trip was on the Green river in Utah, finishing off on the Colorado river. Both river were high, the Green running at at 6-7 mph. Set ups for campsites were planned 100 yards before we got to the campsite.
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Photos?
At 71 years old, I completed my 26th consecutive Adirondack 90 mile canoe race last fall and am still going strong. The 90 miler is a staged race over 3 days with tranports in between days. Some of us like to do for fun (not an offical race) what is lovingly called the Cannonball-90, which is the entire old tradiitional 90 mile route, including 10 miles of portages, to be completed all within a single calendar day. In two weeks I will paddle in my 13th Cannonball-90, beginning at the stroke of midnight and finishing 19 hours later. At age 57 I paddled my first 440 mile Yukon river Quest (YRQ), and a year later returned, winning the first ever Yukon 1000 mile canoe race within 6 days, then repeated it two years after that. Since then I have raced in the YRQ two more times, and hope to do another. The 1000 is definitely my favorite of all.
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A fine Poe try
at po-e-try
an’ a Bell I hide
behind Ed’s lee
where forgotten moor
swamps me no less
floating on the floor
one raven mess
(a Gently Rapping Production)
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Wow that is super impressive! The Yukon event sounds awesome. I would love to see the Yukon someday.
(Didn’t reply to you the first time 
)
For what its worth, the current Smithsonian Magazine has an article on the Yukon 1000 canoe race in it.
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Thank you for that not entirely correct info from Smithsonian. The race has changed considerably since the first Y1k in 2009, and there are errors in the report. For the first few years, certainly in 2009 and 2011 when I raced it, the entry fee was only $250 US/paddler, not over $2200US/ $3150CDN as it is today. There were sponsors providing a considerable award purse for 1,2,3 place winners in several race/boat classes. My team won as first voyageur canoe to finish, plus “second place finisher overall”, as well as first mixed gender team, with those being awarded enough cash to substantially pay for our trip. Should also have been awarded first finisher as I will explain below. The article indicates the winner was a kayak. However they (a K2 british brothers team) were technically disqualified according to strict rules previously established and understood by all racers in pre-race published rules and in a rules meeting well known to all.
The rules clearly stated that failure to continuously transmit SPOT location information as required would result in a 30 minute finish time penalty for each infraction. We also had to manually send our SPOT location data when we stopped for the rules required “night” (it never got dark) before six hours of mandatory primitive random location camping “rest” and to manually transmit SPOT again from the same location when returning to paddle not less than six hours later. Officials had stressed that the SPOT device must be mounted correctly with antenna patch pointed upward to the sky for it to operate properly. Mine was mounted on the voyageur bow deck and correctly auto-transmitted our location every 10 minutes on schedule. Some paddlers simply carried their SPOT in a pocket without an open view to the sky and it did not operate as required. SPOT information was uploaded in near real time to the internet so that anyone with the published or team private access code could see the progress of every racer. I used each year’s data to update and to improve my map routing for future races. Today, the new race officials keep that information secret for some reason.
The official rules required every team to have their own map of the river to follow before starting. I had spent literally months studying old historical and new river maps and other information to create my own best informed guess of our fastest possible route down the river, including any potential shortcuts a canoe could paddle out of the main historical longer deep water riverboat route channel. We made use of several of those shortcuts in segments of the braided river channel areas to save many miles and hours of time. I printed the series of dozens of waterproof maps which we followed and on my GPS included almost 800 waypoints around the thousands of river bends, islands and known shoals.
However, A few miles after re-entering the river beyond Lake Laberge, that “winning” kayak team was seen soon riding our wake, claiming they had “lost” their map and needed to follow us. Oh well, sucks to be you. Try as we might we could not shake them as they sucked energy and best route information from us. They finally moved on when we made our required night stop but returned to draft behind us after we soon passed their camp the next morning. Eventually they tired of us and moved on past to another team with a map and with our improved map route we never saw that other map team again until well after our finish. I later learned that this international brothers kayak team had a history of doing this in races, wake riding (drafting) to save energy and paddling with ease until sprinting around to pass the leader when nearing the finish. We issued a formal protest. and a later addition to the rules prevented dissimilar “species” in differing boat classes from wake riding without permission from the lead boat.
In the end, the offending “winning” kayak had accumulated as much as nine (9) hours of penalties, which before the race started, race officials said would be added to the offender’s finish time. But they excused it this time as this was the first 1000 mile race. Even though I have on video the pre-race meeting official clearly stating “there is no greater sin than to fail to transmit your SPOT location data as required”. The officials did, however print any accumulated penalty time on the reverse of the winning award medals. Or so they said.
So after this long story, the official winning time in the 2009 first Yukon 1000 race was not in fact by a K2 sea kayak in 6 days, 2 hours 11 minutes. Their official finish time was more than 9 hours later, including time violation penalties. Therefore, by the official stated rules the winner was a voyageur canoe that crossed the finish line in 6 days, 6 hours, 52 minutes with zero time penalties.
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I have been on vacation and won’t be home until 6/12, so please excuse the delay in my response. I’m actually going kayaking this morning. I’m visiting my youngest who is currently living in Big Bear Lake in SoCal and the lake is full and very pretty after so much snow this winter.
I remember your username from the old pnet message boards but I am not sure if you are one of the pnetters who joined us on the Topock Gorge paddle. Someone from your neck of the woods did and I can’t remember her name or pnet username.
I will actually be paddling Horseshoe Bend in September. I am going to rent an inflatable and use Cliff Dweller’s backhaul service. Have you paddled this stretch of the Colorado before? I’ve been on float trips through the area multiple times and rafted the Colorado River with an outfitter in 2007. I love this area.
I hope to paddle with you sometime!
In every 60…70…80 year old there is a 30 year old saying what happened?
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Big Bear lake was the most expensive place we’ve paddled so far. Don’t think we’re going to do that again anytime soon.
We were hoping to hit the coast before heading back to the `Zona but that may be out so a day on the Colorado below Parker may be the best option we have for hitting water on our return.