Mission II: It Was A No Brainer

Mission Date Sunday, 8 February 2015
IN: 1, 2, 4 and 5.
OUT: 3 and 6

Of course it was a “no brainer”.  Sunday. A beautiful day forecast. A canoe hanging outside on it’s rack, waiting to do what canoes do. 800 plus miles of free river to run.  And good friends.  Oh, and a 12 pack of beer.

I don’t know where you come from, but around these parts when you mix the above, it’s a no-brainer. You get, of course, a great 16 (17 if you don’t stop your garmin for portages, lunch, or ceremoniously claiming an island by urinating on it) mile run down the Colorado on an Old Town Tripper XL who has earned her keep in the quiver of canoes.  You also get more laughs per mile than any show you could be watching on tv while couch surfing. Just watch the video, it’s a no-brainer.

North camp showed down south at the shipyard about 7:45. Espresso was had, and the laughs began. We retrieved Tink from the quiver and mounted her atop the transporter, loaded up the gear and off we went. Der Commodore did his usual circuitous routine around the Circle C hood. It wasn’t too surprising, therefore, that we had to fill up with gas soon thereafter. We arrived at the AHS boat ramp with stars aligned and got an open spot, freshly created by a leaving vehicle. It was cloudy and a bit windy, not the day originally forecast. Who cares when you’re with Team 456 and a full cooler of beer, right?

We were out on the water just before 9:30 am and made no time to Longhorn Dam (about an hour). It was an easy portage through the pedestrian tunnel running through the raised dike. The put-in was a bit steep and rocky, but Tink did fine. We took a quick turn towards the dam and checked her out, then took off down a new (for us) part of the Colorado River. Around mile 8 we stopped for lunch. Out came the beers, old MRE’s, some fancy cheese (3 kept us civilized) and whatever snackies the guys brought on their own. The sun also decided to come out. What a beautiful day it had become.

The concept of earning badges was discussed ad nauseum. It was simple: earn a badge during the odyssey for various noteworthy feats of skill, experiences and accomplishments. Badges discussed included: find a dead carcass, find human remains, drink a beer on the river, drink a sixer on the river, catch a fish, eat a fish, find treasure, portage without wheels (1 was resistant to this idea), hallucinate on the river, defy a portage (by boldly running a scary section), etc. Some other ideas I’ve had since include: Paddle 25 miles, paddle 50 miles, paddle 100/250/500/entire river, run a mission in a canoe/sailboat/raft/etc, camp overnight on the river, do a mission without food (living off the river and the land), etc. The ideas are endless.

Mile 10 featured our next challenge. To portage or not to portage? The answer to this question was obviously a no-brainer for Johannes. And he was right. We ran the middle of the dam and it was most uneventful. 3 secured his extratesticle (ET) status, while some of us jeopardized shrinkage by inactivity. 4 later wrote:

“While the rest of us were quivering and desperately looking for something that we could turn into wheels to allow us to get around what Don was calling “Eternal DAMnation,” Johannes was adjusting his pants, cinching the draw string up on his floppy hat and getting ready to ride Tinkerbell into history, or at least into the downstream section of the Colorado. He bent that dam over, and over it we went — like we were on a cloud. Legends are forged out of brave decisions. [also, it was a really small dam]”

(note about the video: a few minutes before the video rolls, I had thrown a girthy stick upstream to see how it managed the dam. It was a lame and short throw. Midway through the video, you see #1 point to the water and we all look over in amazement to see the stick hitting dead middle over the dam. We laugh as it hits the whitewater and easily remains above the surface (as if riding on a cloud).

Then we did it.

Somewhere near mile 13 we “rested” on a little island which was dubbed “Piss Island”, paddled on to find a new mascot (a duck decoy we named “Pato Sinko”), cracked open our last beers and ended the trek at Tollway 130/TX-45 for a slightly challenging portage (3 out of 10 for difficulty) to the road.

I can tell that this Odyssey will be, like everything else we do, epic and full of laughs, adventure and (best of all) great camaraderie. We missed the company of 3 and 6, but are certain there will be much more adventure left over in future runs. I can’t wait until the next.

— 5 Out