The MR 340 2010, Part 2

Day One

Aside from the part where I had to get up at 5:00 am I have to say the start of this year's MR 340 was very smooth. So smooth as to be uneventful in fact. The weather was perfect, the ramp wasn't crowded, we hadn't forgotten anything. We checked the radios while they were paddling around waiting for the start. At 8:00 am there was the singing of the national anthem, a countdown and a cannon shot and there they all went. I drove away feeling like this was going to be a relatively easy race. I later heard that as many as 5 boats had flipped during the start but saw nothing of the sort.

Before they make it to the first checkpoint, I get a text. Mike has dropped the radio into the river. Twice. The second time was fatal. That's going to be a problem when we get out in the boonies where the phones don't work. We're going to need a plan B.

2:16 pm. The boys don't even stop at the Lexington checkpoint. I sign them in as they cruise past, 3rd in the team division and only 1 minute behind the second place boat. Things are running like clockwork.

In Waverly, I get a great parking spot right near the ramp and set up to feed the guys. Julie and Stacy, who left Kansas City a little later in the day, catch up there just minutes before the guys pull in at 5:19 pm. Everybody eats and we chat a bit about the night one plan. To meet our goals of shaving 24 hours off of last year's time and placing in the top 3 we absolutely have to make it to Miami tonight and Glasgow would be better. While we are talking it over we lose a spot as the fourth place boat does not stop at Waverly. Patrick is starting to favor his right wrist a bit. It's been causing him problems since a training run months earlier and may need surgery. He's opted to put that off and go ahead with the race. We load the wrist up with tape and Patrick up with Ibuprofen and kick them back into boat. At 5:53 they're heading to Miami. That stop was a little too long but overall things are going very well.

Thankfully I have the girls to help me pack up now so there's a lot less rushing around. We get to Miami and set up for another meal and stake out a camp site that we may or may not need. I get a text, Patrick's wrist is getting bad. Bad enough he's thinking of pulling out at Miami. If that happens, Mike and Jeff can go on, but are officially disqualified. It seems very clear to all of us on the ground that they need to stop here in Miami and sleep on it. We try to get a decision from the boat so we can set up camp before they get there. They are determined to press on to Glasgow against our better judgement.

Waiting in Miami

When they arrive at 10:15 Patrick's forearm is so swolllen Popeye would give it a double take. Again we suggest they stay, but still in fourth place, they opt to press on. More tape, more ibuprofen and at 11:03 they leave for Glasgow. I tell them we'll be sleeping and to call when they get close so I can get up and go bring them in.

We're going to need more tape.

What I had forgotten from last year is that cellular technology has yet to reach Glasgow Missouri. Too bad their radio is at the bottom of the river. There isn't much we can do other than make camp and pass out. Hopefully they will find the checkpoint and their tents.

4:24 am. They manage to find us and make just enough noise for Stacy to wake up. She gets up and helps get them settled in. She is even sweet enough not to wake Julie and I. Finally, it's lights out on day one.

Day Two

Julie and I are up at 7:30. We let Stacy sleep in since she took the night shift. We get some coals started so we can get breakfast going. I run to the nearby Casey's for 4 cups of coffee and a bottle of Ibuprofen. There is nowhere to buy athletic tape around here.

The guys are up by 8:15 having slept maybe 3 1/2 hours. Patrick's right arm looks like a watermelon. Yes it's green. I don't know how much longer he can hold out. They have a nice hot breakfast and take some more food to go. More tape, and this time we send the Ibuprofen bottle with Mike. At 8:50 they put in for Katfish Katy's, still in fourth place.

We take our time breaking camp. We won't need to be at Katfishs Katy's until mid afternoon. Around noon we touch base with the boys, they're going to need more ibuprofen. Mike dropped the bottle in the river.

Katfish Katy's is a long hot wait. It's a nice place, but there isn't a square inch of shade anywhere. Nothing to do but sit and bake.

Decisions decisions

3:40 pm. The guys finally make it in a bit later than expected. They are slowing down due to Patrick's arm, which is now black and starting to smell, and have slid back to 5th place. Quite a bit of dead flesh and a couple of fingers come off with the old tape. We re-wrap it and give him a handful of ibuprofen. Stacy and Julie give the boys a lunch to go and I confiscate everything of Mike's that isn't tied down. The fourth place boat is still sitting on the ramp so we shove them back in with only a 15 minute break to reclaim 4th and head on to Jefferson City.

At this point in the story, I should clarify something. It wasn't so clear during the race what place we were in. As I write this up now, I have the benefit of the official race results. At the time, we thought we may well be battling for 3rd instead of 4th as we had lost track of one of the teams and thought they may be behind us. In reality, as the boys left Katfish Katy's with the 5th place boat still on the ramp, they were 2 hours and 7 minutes behind the third place boat. That is not an amount of time you realistically make up in a race like this. Especially when one of your paddler's has a mild case of zombieism. As I said, however, we didn't know that. So we still felt quite a sense of urgency about staying ahead of that one boat we could see.

Living in Kansas City, I often lose site of just how rural Missouri can be. After two days of backwoods boat ramps the Jefferson City checkpoint is quite an oasis of civilization. It's like pulling up to the Wilshire in Beverly Hills.

We pulled up to the valet station and handed over the keys to both cars. Half a dozen bellhops pull our gear out and start hauling it over toward the beach. I slip the Maitre d' a twenty and ask him to put us some place shady.

While the bellhops are setting up our gear, I take a stroll down to the ramp to check out the tiki bar. The girls opt for the massage tent.

Julie and Stacy embracing the luxury

By the time we meet back up, the live music is starting and the sun is setting and you can tell that it's going to be one fantastic party. We have to get the guys to stop here for camp instead of pressing on to Hermann. We camped in Hermann last year and it's right next to the world's busiest, (and loudest) train tracks. We wouldn't sleep a wink there.

So the texting begins. We plead with them to camp here instead of Hermann. Logically, sleeping four hours now and paddling six hours later puts you ultimately at the same place at the same time as paddling six more hours now and sleeping four hours later. If anything, a little rest before that paddling will put you farther. More importantly, good sleep has to be better than bad railroad sleep, right? While this may sound like a no brainer, you try explaining it to boat full of dazed paddlers. Their brains get overheated out there and logic is lost on them. All they can do is fixate on simple concepts like MUST PADDLE ON. So we'll just give them dinner here and get them back in the water.

It's 9:09 pm when they arrive. Now the only thing left of Patrick's right forearm is about 8 inches of bone protruding from the elbow. The wrist and hand are completely gone and I'm pretty sure there is usually another bone in the forearm. We no longer have any choice. We'll have to tape a paddle to it.

"What do you mean we're out of tape?" We're going to need a plan... uhh, what plan are we up to now? Plan L or something.

Luckily, Jeff's backpack has a workbench, generator and several power tools in it. Luckier than that, Patrick is too out of it to know what's going on. I grab a belt sander and flatten two sides of the protruding bone to give it as much of a paddle shape as possible. Stacy makes a last plea for them to stay and sleep a bit but they aren't having it. They eat quickly and pull out for Hermann. It looks like Patrick's arm bone paddle is too narrow to be of any real use but it's SUPER funny to watch. Maybe that will at least help keep Mike and Jeff going.

Julie gives a quick nod to the Maitre d' and with a snap of his fingers camp is packed and the valets are pulling up. Tonight, we sleep with the trains.

Driving from Jefferson City to Hermann at night is a lot like riding Space Mountain at the end of a long day at Disney World when you were a kid. You're in the dark being violently tossed around by hills and curves. You can't see a thing and you're so exhausted you can hardly keep your eyes open. Terror is the only thing keeping you awake. The only thing separating this drive from Space Mountain is that it lasts an hour and I manage not to throw up.

About halfway there we hit the fog. We're lucky, it isn't really on the road. It's creeping up from the river and the guys are heading straight into it. We need to warn them but, of course, no signal. By the time we get to Hermann and our phones are working they are already well aware. We make a quick camp and get some sleep.

Out on the river the guys have hit the serious fog. The kind of movie fog that no one leaves alive. They can't see the water or the ends of their paddles and the screams are getting louder, drawing near. They are going so slow now that it's pointless to continue. This time would be better spent sleeping, plus Mike has to poop. It's time to pull off. How they managed to find a suitable mud bank in that soup we'll never know, but they did. Mike was able to trundle up a few feet and do his business and Patrick started doodling bunnies in the mud with his arm bone paddle while Jeff felt around on his hands and knees for firewood. It was 2:30 in the morning when my phone rang.

"We're socked in halfway to Hermann and had to pull off."

Well, we told you to camp at Jeff city. I get up and head down to the ramp to see if I can get any information about the fog. As it turns out, there isn't really a lot of information about fog to get. It's fog. A couple of boats had been by and reported that yes, there is fog. Helpful. I call Mike back and tell him there really isn't anything I can do for him other than send a safety boat but that will likely result in a disqualification. They're going to have to deal with it and sleep where they are. I'm going back to bed.

It's getting cold and wet out there on the mud bank. Luckily, the boys had packed emergency blankets, rain ponchos and fire starters for just such an occaision. Unluckily, they didn't think they'd need them and left them all in the truck. It's no small miracle that Mike and Jeff get a fire going by rubbing a stick and Patrick's arm bone paddle together.

In these conditions a campfire will draw paddlers as easily as moths and soon they are joined by a tandem and a single. I'm omitting their names here because on that cold night in the fog there was a lot of man-spooning for warmth. The kind of snuggling that most men never dare speak of again.

Then, as everyone else is fading into fitful sleep, Jeff notices an awful smell right next to his head.

"Damnit Mike!"

"Sorrrrry"

Day Three

They say every cloud has a silver lining and this fog, being essentially a cloud, is no different. Aside from the one brief interruption, it allowed the ground crew a full night's sleep. We were so tired the trains didn't wake us.

The boys leave their muddy home at daybreak but the fog is slow to yield. It's 9:47 when they finally make the ramp at Hermann. Here we have hot breakfasts and hose showers for all. Mike and Patrick catch another hour of sleep while Jeff paces impatiently. At 11:45 the boys put in for Klondike, the last checkpoint before the finish. We're now bringing up the rear in the team division, but not by much.

The boat ramp at Klondike turns out to be under 10 feet of mud. It's barely suitable as a checkpoint at all. There are few spots to land a boat and the only way to service the crew is going to involve trudging up and down a slippery mud mountain. I don't want them to stop here. After a few texts it's clear that they want very much to stop, so now the tables are turned. I don't blame them, it's a very long stretch from Hermann to Klondike and if you're out of water you're out of water. It's too bad though because the 4th place boat is just sitting here and if they had the juice to skip this stop they could pick up a spot. At least that's what I thought before I realized how much they were slowing down. They didn't make it in until 6:17, 12 minutes after the 4th place boat departed. Dinner, water. We'll see you at the finish line.

In St Charles, Jeff's wife Sarah has checked in to the hotel and there are showers waiting for us. Wonderful showers. We get cleaned up and have a real dinner at the local brew pub.

Ha, those poor bastards are still out there paddling.

Sheri arrives to surprise Patrick at the finish. As the boys draw closer we load up a cooler with beer and Jager and head down to the finish line to greet them.

Left to Right; Sheri, Sarah, Julie and Stacy

In their continuing efforts to foil good finish line video by finishing in the dark, they cruise in at 10:35. We're already half drunk. They catch up with us quickly.

Ok, I may have embellished a bit about the arm.

So how did we do? Well, we didn't place. The Paddlephiles came in 5th out of 5 teams, 44 minutes out of fourth place and 3 hours 24 minutes from placing in the top 3. We also didn't' quite take a full 24 hours off of last year's time of 83 hours 3 minutes. We got pretty close though, finishing in 62 hours 35 minutes. That's still 20 hours and 28 minutes faster than last year. It's a bittersweet realization that had we met the goal to cut 24 hours, we would have placed 3rd by 6 minutes.

Now of course we've recovered from the whole ordeal and Patrick is adjusting nicely to his new robot hand. I can only assume we'll be back next year in one form or another. I'm not sure what the rules say about robot hands.

Stay tuned for a whole bunch of photos and even a few movies as the Paddlephiles adventure continues.

The MR 340 2010 Part One

What constitutes a successful MR 340 is unique to each team. In fact, it is often unique to different paddlers on the same team.

Last year, being our first, the measure for Paddlephiles success was simply to finish the race in the allotted 88 hours. This is a proper goal for any first time entrants in this race and when Mike and Patrick finally beached the water pig Jim at the finish line after 83 hours and 3 minutes, 2 hours after the awards ceremony and 4 hours after the complimentary dinner, none of us were disappointed. It was a total success.

That, however, was last year. To repeat that finish in our second run would be a total failure. We needed new goals.

So let's see if we can shave a full 24 hours off of that time. How do we make that happen?

If you said train harder, you're absolutely right! You're also absolutely NOT a Paddlephile. If anything, we trained a lot less. We needed simpler solutions.

Paddlephiles 2.0

The Paddlers

Spoiler alert.

This year we've got 3 paddlers instead of 2, with Jeff opting to ride to St. Charles in the boat instead of the truck. This decision was simply based on Jeff's desire to paddle, but it had some interesting consequences. This year's race started 79 tandem teams. Many of them are very experienced, very fast and very hard-core paddlers. Placing in the top 3 in the tandem division was never so much as a passing fancy. No Paddlephile dared even whisper the possibility.

Having that third paddler put us in the team division, which started only 5 boats. When you only have to beat 2 boats to place, you can't help but think about it. When you start thinking about it, you can't help but obsess over it. So now there is a secondary goal. Let the name Paddlephiles ring out loud and clear at that ceremony! Let us hear the approving groans of exhausted paddlers and the muffled fapping of hands too blistered and sore for real applause!

Los Humungos Blisteros

The Boat

How about putting coasters under those beers fellas?

The biggest lesson learned from our first run is that the boat makes all the difference in the world. Jim was no racer. It was a lot like paddling a downed oak tree up Niagra Falls. So the boys all pitched in and ordered a 3 man kayak. It was like Christmas morning when the box arrived with the boys all standing out in front of the house with their PFDs on ready for a test paddle. Boy were we surprised when all that was in the box was a bunch of strips of wood and a few buckets of smelly goop. That's totally not how the boat looked in the picture on the internet. Apparently there is some assembly required. I say apparently because all the instructions were in Swahili and the drawings were crudely chiseled on flat stones. Frankly there was no way to be sure this was even our package.

Knowing only enough Swahili between us to ask which way to the diamond mines, we were just going to have to figure it out. And by 'we' I mean 'they' as my delicate typing fingers are far too valuable to risk any contact with tools or labor. And by figure it out I mean lounge around the Paddlephiles Skunkworks drinking beer and sniffing epoxy for 3 months.

Many attempts were made to arrange the pieces into something boat shaped. We later realized that you get the same box of random wood pieces no matter what kit you order and they just put in different instructions.

They say that a million monkeys with a million typerwriters would eventually write Shakespeare and the same must be true of Paddlephiles and inhalants because eventually, Morning Wood was born.

The Crew

What boat?

It was a lot of work last year for Jeff and I to support 2 paddlers. Now I've got 3 paddlers and no Jeff. I'm going to need help! Luckily, Mike's fabulous wife Julie and my lovely girlfriend Stacy volunteered to come along and provide some much needed assistance and even a few good ideas.

Last year I'd swear I spent nearly half my time washing dishes. This was completely insane and unneccesary and I swore not to do it again. Still, every paddler likes a home cooked meal on a chilly night. This year, Stacy introduced us to the 'bierock'. It's like a homemade hot pocket sandwich. The great thing about them is that you can fill them with anything. A traditional bierock is made with a ground beef and cabbage mixture, but we also made them in pizza, ham and cheese and bbq varieties. She cooked them up the weekend before the race and we wrapped them in foil and froze them. Now all we have to do is bring them along in a cooler and throw them on any heat source for a quick hot home-cooked meal. This inspired further foilage as we added breakfast burritos to the menu along with ready to grill potatoes and corn. We had enough hot meals for 3 days without doing a single dish. We also went through enough aluminum foil to open a hattery in Roswell.

And so the stage was set for race day. The Paddlephiles had good goals and a solid plan to achieve them. We were prepared for any eventuality. Nothing could possibly go wrong.

Coming Soon, The MR 340 2010 Part Deux: Everything Goes Horribly Wrong

Best Shower Ever

Still working on that sponsorship deal.

I'm committed to writing up the full tale for you Paddlephans this weekend but for now I suppose I should at least let you know that the boys finished at 10:35 Thursday night for an official time of 62 hours 35 minutes. Good enough for 5th place* in the team division. This is nearly 24 hours faster than last year. Congratulations Paddlephiles!

Stay tuned for the full story!

*Out of 5 teams

Current Status: Not Dead

...but close.

Only have a minute and I know you've been dying for an update. Day one went pretty well with the Paddlephiles making it to Miami for a brief sleep. For those of you keeping score, that's checkpoint 3.

Night two, we set camp in Hermann. This is exciting as it was last year's night 3 camp so the Paddlephiles were on pace to shave 24 hours off of last year's time. Then, the fog hit. About 2:30 in the morning the boys called to say they couldn't see the water from the boat and had to pull off the river. They managed a couple hours sleep and made it to Hermann around 9:30, then slept a couple more.

We're looking for them to finish around 9 or 10 tonight so there's still a shot at taking a full day off of last year's time.

That's all for now, see you at the end of the race!

b

Gentlemen. It's time.

The MR 340 is now just hours away and final preparations are in full swing. The race launch is set for 8:00 am Tuesday, August 24th.

Thanks to the miracle of modern technology and the Paddlephiles multi-billion dollar defense budget, you will now be able to track our progress online. To follow us in real-time, mash this:

http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0CmgMYzUqAv2yNr33KAFUrA11XO1AzFqg

I will be doing my best to post updates as I am able. Right now, I have to get back to packing.

Here is some boat porn to hold you until Tuesday.

Morning Wood: The Awakening

Feet, not inches. Back to the drawing board.

Black is faster.

The Christening

WHEW! It floats.

Still needs a few tweaks.

The Mighty Misery

Greetings Paddlephans. I know there are a few of you who only get your MR 340 news from this blog. How confusing that must be for you.

For you then, here is a newsy type update: This year's MR 340 has been postponed until August 24th. So if you've been checking this blog 20 times a day and thinking all the Paddlephiles must have drowned, be at ease.

I'm quite confident I speak for 90% of all racers and 100% of all Paddlephiles when I say WHEW! Kudos to Scott and everyone at Rivermiles for making the tough call, it was absolutely the right one.

Let me tell you why:

On a recent weekend we decided it was time to take Morning Wood out for a little shakedown cruise. Just a 30 mile or so jaunt from Kaw Point to the Cooley Lake access ramp. To make it 'fun' we decided to camp there overnight. It seemed like a fine idea as we've camped there before and it's a nice little spot.

The Put In
We didn't pick Kaw Point at random. We start there because the race starts there. The first thing we noticed was that long beautiful boat ramp that held over a hundred boats in queue before the launch last year is now all but completely submerged. Had there been 100 more boats there we would have been backed up to the highway. Now at the time, the race had not been postponed. We could see the impending clusterf!#k and immediately starting disussing alternate put in options. We could lower the boat and crew from a nearby bridge over the Kaw with some sort of pulley contraption or rent a helicopter from the nearby downtown airport perhaps.

Here is a detailed schematic of the plan we settled on.

We are currently awaiting approval from race coordinators but I don't foresee any issues there.

The Water:
Well, technically I don't think you can even call this stuff water anymore. It's so muddy that any point under 8 feet deep is just gelatinous goop. It looks like water, but when you step in it it becomes instant setting cement and you'll be lucky to get your foot back, let alone any shoes or boots you may have been wearing. It's also so toxic you'll probably just be pulling back a bloody stump. You see when the river is as high as it is right now, it floods numerous toxic waste dumps, chemical plants, haunted Indian burial grounds and twinkie factories along it's winding path to Missouri and all that muck ends up in the water. It makes your skin, eyes and nose burn just to get within a mile of it. Prolonged exposure to the fumes has been known to cause everything from alzheimer's to zombieism. River rash is the least of our worries out here.

The Heat: It's a wet heat.
Any qualified rocket scientist will tell you that when you get this much rain in the summer it's going to be f'n humid. I know, I'm a rocket scientist. It was so hot and so humid that your clothes become instantly drenched in sweat the second you get out of the car. Had the water conditions been better I would have jumped in the river to dry off a bit.

Super Bugs:
It's a river, there are going to be bugs. Fine. That's why they make insect repellent. Last year a can of 40% deet was enough to keep me pretty well bite free the entire race. This year, they've mutated. These wet conditions have no doubt increased the numbers of pesky bugs tenfold over last year. Combine that with a lack of tasty campers and fishermen since everything sucks and nobody wants to go outside and you've got a lot of very desperate pests. Imagine you are stranded in the middle of the desert, no water for days. You stumble across a small pool of water with a rancid rodent carcass in it and the whole thing is just DRENCHED in people repellent. You are going to drink that water no matter how awful it tastes and probably eat the rodent too. That's exactly how the bugs see you in these conditions. Deet or no Deet, you're getting bit.

And so it went, with the night offering no cooling breeze nor respite of any kind, and definitely no sleep. At dawn we scurried out of there like roaches when the lights come on. Needless to say nobody wanted to hop back in the boat and do another hundred miles that day. This extra month is a blessing in disguise. Conditions can't really do anything but get better at this point.

Coming Soon: The Boat Build - Declassified

Paddlephiles II: The Paddlening

Greetings Paddlephans!

We would like to apologize first of all for keeping everyone in the dark until this late hour with regard to our planning and preparation for this years MR340. Secrecy is of the upmost importance in these matters and security is especially tight here at Paddlephiles Skunkworks. We must be very careful as Los Humongos Paddleos are known to have many spies, (though to be honest the masks make them fairly easy to spot.)

What have we been up to? Well, for the most part I have been sitting on my ass since last August. The rest of the crew however, has been hard at work constructing the mightiest warship ever to glide across the Muddy Mo. Sadly, I am bound by a number of non-disclosure agreements that prevent me from posting any detailed plans or photos of the prototype. However, I did manage to get enough whiskey in the boys to get them to release a few tidbits to the public.

Prototype 1c, Codename: Morning Wood

Displacement	2,000 surfaced, 2,620 submerged
Length	342'
Beam	27' 6"
Draft	15' 9"
Max dive depth	200'
Speed: (in knots)	18.5 surfaced, 9 submerged
Guns	1 - 5" 50 cal. fwd, 1 aft
Tubes	4 - 21" fwd, 2 aft , 20 torpedos
Crew	56

 

I couldn't get a clear answer from the guys about the power source but I believe it to be a non-nuclear vessel, at least in the current prototype form. Hopefully they will allow the release of some photos in the days to come, provided it survives its maiden voyage this week.

That's all for now. Stay tuned!