Although there were no celebratory banners, brightly colored balloons, or Procol Harum tribute bands to commemorate the 10th running of the Narrow River Race, the mood among the 20 participants seemed particularly festive.  I had spent the drive down alternating between honing the delivery of my twelve hundred stanza memorial poem (“Depth Be Not Proud”) and being told that if I didn’t shut the hell up, so help me God, there’d truly be something to memorialize at the 11th annual race.  Ha!  Like Homer, I expect it’d take a few hundred years before anyone realized my true genius.  Unfortunately, we’ll never find out who was right.  Within seconds of starting my oration, Kirk Olsen jammed a sugar-bomb donut in my mouth and thus impoverished future generations.

The good thing about the New England surfski crowd is that you can count on everyone getting the Procol Harum reference.  Heck, half the field probably saw them in concert on their first American tour.  The bad thing is that their biggest hit is an alarmingly apt description of our group, especially in March.

As part of his initiation, Ryan eats a heaping spoonful of “Narragansett Relish”. As of this writing, he hasn’t yet sprouted swimmerets.

Usually the New England racing season kicks off earlier in March at the Snow Row.  This year, however, the surfskis were unceremoniously booted from that competition for violating the dress code.  Our colorful onesies drew sneers from the cotton-clad rowers, but I expect it was the unfashionable vests that ultimately got us barred.  Or perhaps our superior rough water skill and self-rescue abilities?  In any event, the joke was on them as the paddlers got dibs on the majestic soup and chowder spread.

Many of the top finishers from the 2017 race returned for an encore performance on the Narrow River, including Mike Florio, Jan Lupinski, Chris Chappell, Chris Laughlin, and Chris Quinn.  With Chris Sherwood also racing, you couldn’t swing a cat without some Chris or another calling the SPCA on you.  To prevent confusion in future races, I’m recommending a strict three-Chris limit.  Some will argue that even this is more Chrises than anyone really needs, but we can always start calling one of them “Buddy” or “Old-Timer” (not saying which).  Let’s instead focus on preventing another lamentable Mike or Tim bloom.  In addition to the usual crew, we were joined by newcomers Ryan Bardsley, Scott Samuel, and Jim Tomes (in a kayak).  Sorry guys – no take backsies.  You’re in.  I assume someone taught you the secret signs.

Once again, nobody took up Chris’ challenge to “settle this, right here, right now.”

After a couple years of experimenting with alternative courses, we’d be reverting to the classic route.  More or less.  We’d head up the river for 2.75 miles, return back past the start (casting wistful glances at Kirk’s box of donuts), head downstream an additional couple of miles to a turn near the mouth of the river, then finally hustle back to those donuts.  The rowing club at the northern end of the course, apparently having grown irritated at the swarms of paddlers buzzing ceaselessly around their floating markers in search of the wrong one to turn on, took their buoys and went home.  As a reprisal, the upstream turn was moved to just off the end of their launch dock.  Not exactly a horse head in their bed, but I think they got the message.

I’ve spent the better part of my adult life attending captain’s meetings run by Wesley or Tim, but this is the first I remember that featured a hand-drawn (and colored!) map that would evoke pity from the other parents should it be posted on a kindergarten wall.  And now, thanks to my smart mouth, we’ll never again know where to turn in a Rhode Island race.  Based on the number of on-the-fly course adjustments made by paddlers in the past, however, I’m really just doing my part to preserve a time-honored tradition.

Before we had too much time to contemplate the forthcoming discomfort, Wesley thoughtfully counted us down to a rolling start.  To a person, we had each taken advantage of the pre-race mingle to disparage our conditioning, provide graphic details about chronic injuries (can we all agree to avoid the word “suppurating” in the future?), and off-handedly mention that we hadn’t actually paddled a boat since the Carter administration.  Jan went so far as to claim that he had only awoken from a six-month coma just that morning.  So the almost aggressive torpor of the field at the start came as no surprise.  With only modest exaggeration, Chris C and Chris L could be said to have jumped to an early lead.  The rest of us languished our way into the race, creaking and groaning as befitted our advanced stage of alleged deterioration.

After drawing the short straw, new guy Scott was suited up as our official “seal proxy” in case of a shark sighting.

A couple of minutes into the race, I started remembering the four key elements to a fluid and powerful stroke, but by centering myself mentally and using advanced breathing techniques (known colloquially as “gasping”), I was able to tamp down these intrusive thoughts and get down to flailing the water with abandon.  This effort paid off as I soon caught Chris L.  As I like to think the Romans liked to say, however, “L is less than halfway to C”.  In my imagination, they could never quite figure out those crazy numbers.  Or Latin.  In any event, the other Chris (you know, the XL one) was still forging ahead with a III length lead.

A few minutes later, I had bridged the gap and was challenging Ole 100 for the lead.  Chris, I mean.  Not the Danish rapper.  After resting for a few seconds on his draft, I optimistically thought I could cruise by him with a quick interval.  Apparently being more of a glass half-empty kind of guy, however, Chris wasn’t playing along.  For the next mile or so, we paddled side by side.  Only as we approached the bridge leading us into the lake-like portion of the race did I manage to break free.  I’m not sure how much the wake of the random motorboat that had been jockeying to pass us for the previous couple of minutes had to do with it, but I’ll ask cousin Roger at the next family reunion.

The incoming tide had been giving us a boost in the protected river, but in the wider lake we had to push against a northerly wind.  Minutes stretched to what seemed like, I dunno, a quarter of an hour?  It was actually only 12 minutes, so you can imagine how unpleasant it was.  Despite the wind’s best efforts, I arrived at the rowing dock in relatively high spirits.  Here we were nearly half-way through the race and… hold on… 2.75 divided by 9.5… Could it possibly be that after all that effort we had only completed 28.947% of the race?  I knew bringing that slide rule was a mistake.  Although I tried to enjoy the subsequent downwind paddle back to the river, I couldn’t help but keep coming back to that one key question – how could we make Wesley’s and Tim’s grisly deaths look accidental?

Back in the river proper, I was acutely aware of the incoming tide.  A reliable staple of the Narrow River Race report has been jokes about just how shallow the river is.  I had been crafting a variant on the old one about two guys relieving themselves from a bridge (A: “Water’s cold.”, B: “Yeah.  Deep too.”, A: “You’ve revealed yourself as both a liar and as someone poorly endowed.  Aaargh!  Plover!” – still working on it), but I must admit that depth was a limited factor in this year’s race.  In fact, I was often able to find a sweet spot in the shallows where the eddy current was strong enough to offset the drag from the bottom.  Regardless of whether that’s actually true, I plan on sticking with that retroactive justification for my line.

I know everyone – even non-paddlers – will be able to relate to this.  I’m minding my own business when an improperly velcroed pogie threatens to derail my day.  While I see now that stopping to adjust the now-dangling pogie in a composed manner might have been the wiser course of action, I went a slightly different route – tearing rabidly at the offending pogie to detach the blasted thing.  Once I had thrown the inevitable last-second brace to keep from capsizing, I placidly resumed my course.

My request that the guys make another pass for a better composition were met with surprisingly strong remarks about my parentage.

The downstream turn on the Narrow River is on a small American flag positioned inexplicably 10 feet off the sandy shore.  Getting around it gracefully in a 21 foot boat isn’t really a viable option, but with an incoming tide helping to push the bow around, my ungainly maneuver only drew mild snickers from people walking on the beach.  Since I’d had them rolling in the sand in previous years, I count 2018 as a great success.

From a quick glance backwards after the first bridge heading downstream, I was aware that Chris Q was chasing me down.  I hadn’t been able to summon the courage to check his progress on that endeavor, but heading back to the finish I couldn’t help but notice that he was having some success.  My lead was perhaps 90 seconds, but this felt less than safe with a tough upwind paddle against the tide ahead of me.  As other paddlers flew by heading downstream, I frantically asked each how far the scourge was behind me.  A little too frantically, apparently, since nobody seemed to understand what I was spluttering.

It’s this… excuse me, I’m tearing up a little… it’s this kind of thing that make all those hours of training worth it.

I was left with no choice but to imagine the worst, which explains all the screaming as I repeatedly heard phantom splashes just behind me.  My fears probably also sparked just enough fire to keep my tired arms pumping for the remaining trip back to the start.  Chris Q, who had some fatigue issues of his own in the final stretch, came in shortly after, followed at an equal interval by Chris C.   The next three spots were hotly contested, as Chris L fought off Mike and a surging Tim.  Wesley, Jan, Kirk, and Bob Wright completed the top ten, with Mary Beth taking the women’s top spot.

As per custom, after joyfully hoisting the boats on our shoulders in celebration/stowage, we retired to the Oak Hill Tavern.  We had some trouble working out the bill, so regardless of whether you were there or not, just give Mary Beth everything in your wallet the next time you see her and we should all be square.  Thanks to Tim and Wesley for a fine day on the water.

Having been appropriately chastised by the Narrow River, we now have a month to address our individual deficiencies before the Run of the Charles.  That’s not a lot of time to correct a lifetime’s worth of pettiness, egotism, and mispronunciation of the word “enmity”, but I’m willing to give it a shot.