https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/04/04/a-secret-voyage-across-the-seven-seas-of-central-park
Adventurers don’t need no stinkin PFD.
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I wasn’t sure if this was funny or pathetic. I think most of us got adventures at this scale done by the time we were 14. Glad I don’t live in NYC.
When I was about 12 my friends and I rode our bikes about seven miles and “borrowed” some duck boats from a gun club on the East shore salt marshes of the Great Salt Lake and we paddled to a private Big Game hunting property on Antelope Island, this was about 3 miles of nasty open very briny water. (The water is so low there lately I think you can walk across now.) We hiked around with No Trespassing signs full of 30.06 holes everywhere All of this was quite far from any town and anybody who could have been contacted for rescue, When we got back the sheriff was looking for the stolen boats. Now that was a boyhood adventure.
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My brother and I built a raft out of sticks and paddled it around a small lake when we were kids. It fell apart on the far side so we had to walk back. No floatation of any kind.
Funny or pathetic? I vote for pathetic.
As a kid (13-14) I built a raft from a 4x8 old piece of plywood and two layers of newly invented plastic gallon milk bottles below held in place with a chicken wire cage stapled to the top and then a piece of indoor outdoor carpet nailed on for a deck. We made a couple paddles from broomsticks with a chunk of plywood nailed on.
We pushed it on a homemade wagon about a mile to Lake Erie and set out. We were not foolish to not bring PFDs we had two 14” car tubes just in case. That raft made quite a few trips that summer.
Funny thing was the NewYorker never covered the story.
Our adventure was inspired by Thor Heyerdahl.
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Same here, were were always building rafts and poling or paddling them around until we were in our teens and discovered motor boats. Always glad never to have grown up in NYC as I always thought stick ball was stupid too, but this just adds another reason for thanksgiving.
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Yep like Northface guy worth millions who perished. Experienced but got careless or complacent.
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