The Runyaker's Journey

CHAPTER ONE

April 27, 2009. That was the day I began the grandest adventure of my life — one that would become known as my Horseshoe-to-Horseshoe Expedition. The date is also when I made up the word "runyaking." When you kayak from point to point, you must have a way of getting back to where you started. Before this day, whenever kayaking I used whatever methods were available: run, cycle, hitchhike, or (when kayaking with others) plant a return vehicle. Although I may have "runyaked" before, I have to say the word for the activity was not conjured up until the date mentioned.

Running is the more physically demanding of the four listed, so it makes sense that I, for lack of brains and being stubborn, would choose the hardest method. One runyak segment consists of dropping off the kayak, planting the vehicle downstream, running back to my kayak, then paddling to the vehicle. I must begin the next segment wherever I ended paddling during the last. On occasion, I reverse the order and paddle first and then run back to my vehicle. By doing this, I hope someday to arrive at my final destination.

 Horseshoe Lake is a source of the Flint River, my home watershed. The plan is to start there. The opposite end of my journey would be Horseshoe Falls, which is part of the Niagara Falls (the Canadian part).

The voyage commenced on Horseshoe Lake while sitting in my kayak. It was there that I dipped a small bottle into the lake, filled it with water and then capped it. The expedition would end when I poured the bottled water from Horseshoe Lake into the Horseshoe Falls.

I estimated the voyage to be fourteen-hundred miles. Half of which I'd be using my arms to paddle Swiftee, my trusty kayak. The other seven hundred miles I'd be using my legs and running.

What makes this runyaking expedition unique? For one, at nine-and-a-half-feet long, Swiftee is very small, the smallest adult-sized kayak on the market that I know. But most unique because running is added to the mix. You hear of paddlers doing trips of thousands of miles, but they usually sleep nearby and continue the next day. When runyaking, tired legs make it nearly impossible to paddle great distances day after day.    My expedition won’t worry about how many days it takes. I’ll get there when I get there.

People will ask why? Why I am I doing this? Even at a young age, I felt the urge to be different. I've conformed when needed but always looked to be creative. When I was a youngster, I'd dream up many things but seldom did I follow through since I lacked determination. If you dream of things but never act them out, then you're nothing but a daydreamer.

I surely did my share of daydreaming back when I was young. One thing I daydreamed about (being from Michigan: the Water Wonderland) was someday exploring the waters about me. As far back as I can remember, I was filled with a deep yearning to explore that can only be defined as wanderlust. In grade school, geography was my favorite subject, and one of my favorite books was "Paddle to the Sea." It was a book our third-grade teacher, Mrs. Cole, read to the class. Maybe I can blame her for the wanderlust that’s in me?

***

“Part one. How “Paddle-to-the-Sea," came to be.” Mrs. Cole began reading, “The Canadian wilderness was white with snow…”

I sat at my desk listening, at first thinking, "boring," but I soon became engrossed in the tale of a tiny foot-long canoe and paddler. They weren't real; an Algonquin boy carved them out of wood. When the carving was complete, he sat it upon the snowy banks of a frozen Ontario river, north of Lake Superior.

Before the voyage, the boy tells the carved paddler, "I made you, Paddle Person, because I had a dream." Supposedly, the little wooden man smiled back at him.

The unnamed Algonquin continued, "The time has come for you to sit on this snow bank and wait for the Sun Spirit to set you free. Then you will be a real Paddle Person, a real Paddle-to-the-Sea."

The carved canoe, "Paddle-to-the-Sea," eventually followed the waters of all five Great Lakes and the Saint Lawrence Seaway, all the way to the "Great Salt Water."

It was several days before Mrs. Cole finished the book, and it seemed like quite an odyssey. I did not want the story to end, and it inspired me to gather two neighborhood friends and a brother. We went to Dead Creek, the stream that flowed through our family's twenty-acre property, for an ill-fated boat race.

***

“C’mon Seabiscuit! C’mon Seabiscuit!”

It was early April, and I was a nine-year old yelling at a floating piece of wood in Dead Creek. My brother, Ervin, and our neighbors, Mark and Vernon Gifford, also hollered at their entries. We pretended they were real boats. Mark's boat was no more than a stick he'd found near the creek’s bank. Seabiscuit, the finest of the four entries, was a mere two-by-four, and less than a foot long.

"Barney went beneath the bank. I can't find him," Ervin, the youngest of us, cried over his lost boat.

"Tuff. What do you want me to do, stop guiding Stick Tracy and help you?" Mark squawked back at him.

We stood near the bank and guided our boats with long sticks we'd found nearby. Leads changed when a boat got hung up on snags in the creek.

Vernon cleverly used a knothole in his boat. Placing the guide stick in the hole, he hurled the boat out of the water and downstream.

"Ya big cheater!" I yelled at him. His brother and mine also screamed indignities at the low-life scoundrel.

Vernon, a freckled-faced eleven-year old and the oldest entrant of our little regatta, only laughed and said, "We never said they couldn't leave the water."

"Well if that's legal, so is this!" I hollered to the other boat pilots. I jumped into the thawed but still icy spring waters of Dead Creek and proceeded to carry Seabiscuit downstream in my hand.

Clearly, we had not established any rules before the start other than the finish line would be the bridge at Arbela Road, a half-mile away.

"I quit." Ervin cried, "It ain’t fun no more." He never did find Barney, the boat he lost beneath the bank. He replaced it with an unnamed stick, which couldn't cut the mustard against Seabiscuit, who undoubtedly would have won if not for all the cheating.

After Ervin quit I yelled, "Me too, I quit," and became the second dropout even though I was in second place behind Vernon's "flingboat" he’d named, "My Pal." I had to quit. I was freezing from wading in the cold water and had to get home and into some dry clothes. Nobody made it to the bridge at Arbela Road.