rookie a sings psalm 37.4

Here's Rookie A, minutes after completing a 50-mile kayak/canoe race on the Kansas River from Lawrence, KS to Kansas City. That's the confluence of the Missouri and Kansas Rivers and the skyline of Kansas City in the background (photo by Andrea Zanatta, Americorps via the Blue River Watershed Association). Dubbed the Gritty Fifty: 50 miles of sun, sand, and sorrow, the inagural race would have been more aptly subtitled: 50 miles of rain, wind, and sorrow as it was held in a steady downpour and headwind, the sorrow still applicable as a certain degree of suffering was inflicted on everyone who entered and raced.

Why do something like this? For the serious ultra-marathoner, which Rookie A is decidedly not, it is to win, to test the bounds of human endurance and physical prowess. The winner of this race, West Hansen, an ultra-marathon paddler from Austin, TX finished in 7 hours and 4 minutes. The official race distance is 50 miles. Another racer, who logged the meandering, sinuous Kansas River route showed 52 miles. So West, who claimed not to be in top form this day, was moving at 7.2 miles per hour. By contrast, Rookie A, estimated his speed to be about 5 miles an hour. Rookie A is clearly in the cruiser category. Cruiser reasons for ultramarathoning are quite different than winning, which is not an option. Dawn Stewart, aka Sandy Bottom, articulates some of the cruiser reasons for ultramarathoning on her web site http://sandybottomkayaker.blogspot.com/ .

Rookie A would tend to disagree with her contention that to not finish is total failure, that failure is not an option. Failure is always an option, just not the preferred one. Unless you are setting a world record you are failing, and even then as soon as your record falls you will have failed again. Since everything we do is failed in some sense, in order to view any competion as a successful one, we only have to set goals, work hard to try and achieve those goals, and then live with the results. This includes living with the goals that we meet, and the goals that we fail to meet.

Rookie A's goals for this race were in order of most to least important.

1) Finish the race (has medal and photo to prove it!).

2) Finish the race in under 10 hours. (Don't have the official time yet, but believe it to be ~10 hours 30 minutes. BETTER LUCK NEXT TIME SUCKA.

3) Win. In truth, Rookie A expected to finish in the middle of the pack (26th out of 50 overall), but if for some reason everyone except Rookie A punched a hole in their kayak, then Rookie A might make the podium come sundown. This did not happen.

Of the 3 goals, only one was met. Rookie A is ok with that.

suck on a willow root

The beavers were out today, looking for freshly flood scoured succulent black willow roots on which to snack. Water levels on the Kaw (Kansas) River have dropped precipitously although they are just now peaking on the lower Missouri River below Booneville. The Mo River will remain above flood stage for at least a week to ten days barring no more rain. More precipitation, especially anything nearing a repeat of the rains from last weekend would spell major disaster from Kansas City to St. Louis.

Here's a high water mark in a tree upstream approximately 2 miles from Eudora Kansas. That's a 230 cm paddle for scale and it's resting approximately 75 cm off the ground. Although difficult to see, debris was lodged approximately another blade length (~75 cm) higher in the tree. However, given the size of this tree it was likely bent over some during the flood so the actual flood elevation was likely about the end of the paddle or about 400 cm above the current water surface. 400 cm = 13.1 ft for les Americains. Access to the Kaw River at Eudora is via a 1 mile stretch of the Wakarusa River. If all streams had a riparian corridor that looks like the lower Wakarusa River the world would be a very different and better place. Fifty to 70 percent tree canopy along there. Very nice.