Those with a PhD know very much about very little. I do not mean this in a derogatory way. Quite the contrary, they are experts in their field; the best of the best. Often, they can know more about very little than the rest of us know about very much. I also believe professional athletes are the PhD holders of their respective genres. I am not made in the mold of one to have a PhD. I lack the discipline to know everything or close to everything there is to know about very little. I like to know a little about a lot. Once, however, I did believe there was an area of my life that was an exception. One area where I might be able to hold a PhD, I believed, was in the field of Whitewater Kayaking—I even believed I could fall into the arena of professional athlete in this field. I was wrong!
A BRIEF HISTORY
As I was entering my teenage years my father became enamored with whitewater. By enamored I mean fully addicted. It would not be long before he introduced me to the sport. My father briefly flirted with kayaking, however, his whitewater career was primarily experienced from the starboard, stern-side of rubber rafts and in the past ten years behind a pair of oars. I did not have the same instantaneous addiction for whitewater as my dad, rather a love for whitewater would be something that developed over time for me.
In 1988 and 1989, from March to June, my dad and I spent our weekends together guiding rafts for Cheat River Outfitters in Albright, West Virginia. We would make the 4 hour plus drive out there from the Washington DC area each weekend. Some of you familiar with this drive might say that it is only 3 hours, which it is today. However, we were making the trip in the pre-I-68 days, on old two-lane route 40…geez that makes me feel a little old…uh…I mean Old-School! Anyway, during the second year of guiding my dad decided to try kayaking and got us both Perception Mirages. Once I had the kayak it was not long before I decided that rafts just were not my thing. However, as I started college the whole kayaking thing was put on the back-burner. It would not be until several years later after a pretty crappy break-up that I discovered that kayaking would be the hobby that would become my passion. I remember spending every weekend taking my Hydra Dragon Fly out to Mather Gorge. The Dragon Fly was a step up from the Mirage, but still pretty much behind the times. I remember putting in one day and having some cute girls in more modern boats ask me, “hey did you get that boat at the Smithsonian”. Perhaps my first taste of humility with whitewater, however not exactly what I alluded to in the title of this article. As I would paddle up to the chutes with my aircraft-carrier of a boat I became envious of all the New-School kids doing flat spins and other tricks at Maryland Chute. I would have to upgrade and I would need to do it soon!
The Perception 3-D would be first New-School boat. Definitely an upgrade, but perhaps one of the most poorly designed playboats ever, but that is another story. At least it was shorter than my car and it allowed me to fit in with the cool kids. I remember driving to Anglers to sleep in my car to avoid morning traffic only to get Maryland Chute to myself for a couple of hours on weekdays when I did not have to work. At other times, usually after-work paddling and weekend paddling, I started to meet and build community with boaters; if there is one place that I say I experience community more than any other it is with my kayaking friends, I will refrain from heading off onto a boater-community tangent here though. I now had my crappy playboat, but playboat nonetheless, and then I started hearing about creeking. I would be playing at Maryland Chute and see these people in these bulbous boats come floating down with elbow pads on. I soon discovered that they were running Great Falls about a mile upstream. The creek boat would be the next addition to the quiver.
I soon met Bobby Miller, Bryon Dorr and Joe Stumpfel. They would become my kayaking crew. Bobby, Bryon and Joe would instill so much confidence in my ability as a boater—I was just young enough to still believe I was invincible. While driving hours and sometimes days to get to rivers and creeks we would become great friends and paddle really crazy stuff together. We spent many weekends paddling the Upper Blackwater, Red Creek, The North Fork of the Blackwater and other West Virginia and Pennsylvania creeks. We also made a trip or two to the Delaware Water Gap—home of steep creeks made famous in Bobby Miller’s “Sucker Punch”.
One of the most epic days we had was running the Holtwood section of the Susquehanna River at 550,000 plus cfs; the third highest flow on record for this stretch of river. I remember being the first one to put on for this run in a mangle of trees with a lot of current; it was sketchy to say the least! With the Holtwood flood and what seemed like countless other class V runs under my belt I had arrived in the boating world! It would not be long though, before Bryon and Joe moved to other parts of the country. Bobby and I would occasionally paddle on some local creeks after Joe and Bryon moved. However, for the most part my days spent running steep creeks were few and far between.
My decline in days spent on steep creeks coincided with me moving into a house with three other kayakers…well actually two other kayakers and one C-1er. Yes, a C-1er--one of those crazy boys and girls who prefer to sit on their knees rather than on their butts for their whitewater experience. This C-1er, Alden Bird, happened to be training to make the US Olympic Whitewater Slalom Team. It did not take much coaxing from Alden before I had a Slalom boat and Olympic dreams of my own. I was one bad-ass creek-boater and before long I was going to be one bad-ass slalom racer…so I thought.
HOW RACING WHITEWATER SLALOM CHANGED MY LIFE
The house that I was sharing with three other kayakers was in Brookmont, MD. It was a mere five minute walk to the Feeder Canal which had slalom gates hung year round on class II whitewater. Moreover, it was a 40 minute drive away from the Dickerson Power Plant which had slalom gates on challenging class III-IV whitewater—we even had access to the David Taylor Model Basin, a naval facility that tests ship models which has an indoor pool about a half-mile long—it was great for winter-time workouts when the river froze. Couple that with an ultra-competitive and highly motivated C-1er housemate, I had everything I needed to get in shape and hone my skills to make my mark in the world of whitewater slalom. Alden and I trained together 6 to 7 days a weeks at times. I still remember my first slalom race!
My first race would be the only race that I walked away from with any confidence. The Housatonic Area Canoe and Kayak Squad, HACKS for short, has a really fun Slalom Series in the Connecticut area and it is where Alden learned to C-1 from legend Jamie McEwan. Alden and I decided to make a trek up there for their Covered Bridge Slalom on the Housatonic River. In my first slalom race I would walk away with bronze in the men’s division and also a dubious gold in the recreation boat class, I did not realize it at the time, but this class was made up of mostly pre-teen beginner paddlers—I really felt bad for taking a trophy away from an eight year old.
It would be challenging for anyone to find a more competitive genre in whitewater kayaking than Slalom. In fact whitewater slalom is the only event in its genre that you will find at the Olympics. This makes it quite ironic that HACKS actually has a slalom series, since they maintain and practice a squirtboater mentality with respect to kayaking: beer and having a good time rank much higher on their scale of importance than the competitive spirit. Not knowing this about HACKS helped me have high hopes for the bigger and more official races that I would soon ensconce myself in.
The first of these big races was the Glacier Breaker on the Nantahala River in North Carolina in February of 2007. Although I refused to believe or accept it at the time, this was where I would learn that elite-whitewater-slalom kayakers are in a class that I would never belong to. Whitewater racers typically use their percentages off the fastest times to gauge their progress in the sport. If you are ten percent off of the fastest time you are not doing bad. That is, with practice and determination there is hope that you can join the ranks of the elite-class. I recall being between 50 and 60 percent off of the fastest time at the Glacier Breaker. I said to myself, “okay next time I will get it down to 40 percent and then work on 30 percent and in a year, several months before the Olympic trials, I would be close to 10”.
A year later, in March of 2008 I would be racing in the Dickerson Open trying to earn a chance to race in the Olympic Trials. During the year leading up to the Dickerson Open I did not improve my percentages off of the fastest times. I often asked myself how I could be so bad at the one thing that I was so good at; the one thing that I knew very much about? I still do not have a great answer for that question. Despite knowing I would not make the Olympic Team, I still wanted to be able to say that one day I raced at the Olympic Trials and gave it everything I had. I earned that opportunity at the Dickerson Open.
It was not easy going to a race I knew I had no chance of winning. Part of me feels like it was a masochistic life decision that I made. However, I learned a great lesson through my slalom racing experience. I realized that I was not a bad-ass racer and also that I was not a bad-ass creek-boater as well. Just an aside here: not all slalom racers run creeks, but the ones that do…yeah they are bad-ass creek boaters too. Me, I tended to run things a little bit above my skill level—I think because it made me feel big, sometimes even better than the local folks I saw on the Potomac. Slalom racing showed me that I am not better than anyone.
While I do not see anything wrong in having kayaking define at least part of who I am, racing whitewater slalom showed me that I don’t need to be defined by how good I am at it. In fact, how good or bad we are at something should never define who we are. Unless, perhaps, you are bad at saying “Please.” and “Thank you.” Kayaking remains one of three things in my life that never grow old (in case you are wondering the other two are God and my relationship with my wife). Kayaking is something “very little” that I am comfortable knowing very much about. While not holding a PhD, particularly in the athletic sense, perhaps you could say I hold a Masters Degree. However, it was not until racing slalom that I learned that on the water I am just another boater…nothing more, nothing less. And I am okay with that!
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