Well, did you hear the fat lady singing about 7:30 Monday morning ?!

It was a real pleasure to be associated with this team in the 1999 Texas Water Safari. The Safari is a marathon canoe race, 260 miles from the city of San Marcos, down the San Marcos river to the confluence with the Guadalupe River, then on to the Gulf of Mexico and the town of Sea Drift. I had, along with John Alexander and Mary Wilson, done the race back in '92. That year my brother, Bill, was our team captain. This year it was my turn to captain. The captain is the ground support for the actual boat out on the river. He follows along traveling by car and meeting his team at road crossings to give them water, ice and moral encouragement. My team was composed of Rob Wytaske (who had finished the race once before), Dave Reichel (a novice), and Wade Binion. Wade came from a long line of Safari veterans. His father had completed the race several times, and Wade himself had completed 5 Safaris.

The team called me only a couple of weeks before the Safari to ask if I could captain for them. I happened to be at work and Kathleen, excitedly, volunteered me. She thought it would give me something to do while she was up in Utah.... I've already told Kathleen NEVER to volunteer me again ! This was serious work. I got up about 5:30 Saturday morning... time to pack up and drive up to San Marcos for a morning meeting with the team and last minute organizing before the 8:00 a.m. check in. At 9:00 the race was off !

I immediately drove straight to Westfield crossing (passing up 2 possible contact points at Rio Vista Dam & Thompson's Island). My team was fresh, they had plenty of water and I was hoping to get ahead of the mass of cars and other support vehicles demanded by 82 teams & boats. The plan was that my guys would be pulling well ahead of the pack by this crossing 6 miles into the race. There are a total of 33 possible contact points from San Marcos to Sea Drift. Of these, 10 are 'Official' checkpoints. The Official checkpoints are mandatory stops... Or maybe 'stops' isn't the correct word. Actually, it is required that the team captain see their team pass through each of these points and sign them through with a race official who is stationed there. All together, from San Marcos to Sea Drift I met my team at 29 of the 33 possible crossings. At each point I took a hand-off of empty water and food bottles (they drank out of 1/2 gallon thermos jugs and 'ate' out of pint bicycle bottles). I also had long socks filled with ice for them at every daylight crossing which they could drape around their necks to cool off.

It was well over halfway into the race before I saw my boat stop, or even slow down appreciably at a checkpoint. Normally, I would be treading water or standing waist deep in the river.... sometimes I was actually sitting on a log in the current, when they flashed past. I would simply throw the new containers into the boat as they passed.... Meaning I had to have a full set of containers, water jugs, bicycle bottles and socks, ready at every crossing. I got really good at hitting a moving target with a full half gallon jug of ice water !

Down around Victoria, the team started to slow down a bit. This was 200 miles into the race and they actually came to a full stop for the first time at a crossing. (previous to this they had only stopped occasionally at log jams and dams to portage the boat) They would jump out of the boat and wet themselves in the river to try desperately to cool off. I would have a chance to try to talk to them... Ask what they thought they would need at the next checkpoint, try as quickly as I could to evaluate their physical and mental state.... It wasn't easy to do considering the boat was always back underway in less than 4 minutes ! I did see that one of my guys wasn't eating nearly enough. I was keeping track of how many food bottles were being returned to me dirty, so I knew that he was drinking straight water and not mixing up the high calorie goo they were all carrying. Though he seemed strong enough, he was very disoriented and not completely coherent. After I jumped on him to eat more, he improved somewhat. Bottom line was that it was so hot and they were working so hard that you simply didn't feel like eating.... quite often anything you did eat came right back up. There were lots of stories at the finish line about vomiting contests among the partners in a boat.

There were a few injuries in my boat and others. Several boats dropped out of the race fairly early due to equipment malfunctions or injuries. There were several sprained ankles, one person cut a huge gash in his hand and was unable to hold a paddle. Several rudders broke on boats, there were a few holes bashed in the sides of boats and at least one report of a boat being wrapped around a tree and broken in two. My guys punched a small hole in the stern of their boat at Cottonseed rapid after only an hour on the river the first day ! They were lucky in that they could patch it up with Duct Tape. Once, near Victoria, they actually came to a full stop where I was waiting for them under a bridge. David jumped out of the boat and landed hard on his back side on a piling that was submerged just inches below the surface of the water. He hurt himself badly enough that it was really questionable when he insisted on climbing back in the boat and continuing on. Rob did basically the same thing while portaging the boat around a log jam. He slipped on a log and fell hard on his back side. In both cases, it could easily have caused a person to drop out of the race... but they stayed in ! The first night our boat was a serious threat to one of the most experienced boats in the race. John Bugge has always been associated with the race, having done it more times than you can count and winning virtually every category except 'women's' (and the rumor is that he may decide on elective surgery to finish that class). At Palmetto State Park there is a low water crossing that is a mandatory portage. Both my and Booge's 4 man boat were on the crossing at the same time. We saw them battling off around the corner and wondered who would be ahead at the next crossing. Later that night my team experience a catastrophic loss. They broke the main headlight on their boat. It is difficult to navigate at speed through a twisty, turny river and across log jams on a cloud covered night with no lights. By morning not only had my team dropped substantially behind the Bugge boat, but two other 5 man boats had passed them. Injuries and equipment malfunctions can easily cripple a team.

As far as I was concerned.... I was having trouble keeping up with the team. At each crossing I would be waiting, waist deep in the river for their arrival. As soon as they passed and I had negotiated the hand-off, I had to swim around and pickup all the empty jugs they had thrown out. They would try to throw them out way above me in the current, but I often found myself swimming 100 yards after a jug that got by me. After gathering everything up I would carry it back to the truck. I had a couple of milk cartons that made carrying these empties easier. I would then very carefully clean out all the jugs. (one of the rules is that you can pass your team ONLY water and ice in a non edible container. If there is enough juice or Gatorade, whatever, in the container to smell, you could be disqualified) After everything was cleaned out, I would hop in the car and follow my co-captains, Josie (Rob's wife) and her sister, Robin, to the next crossing. Normally I would have between 30 minutes and an hour to plan my hand-off point, carry all the jugs down to the river, fill them with ice 15 minutes before the team was scheduled to come through and position myself. Sometimes it was a tight thing. At one checkpoint, we arrived just after a serious thunderstorm. The banks were very steep and the wet clay made them like ice. I had brought a rope and threw it down to allow myself to half climb half repel down the slope. I was crashing through weeds and saplings, trying like mad to get down the slope while carrying a box full of 4 half gallon containers full of water. I was within 40 feet of the shoreline when, looking back over my shoulder, I saw my team speed past ! I had missed them and it was almost 20 miles to the next checkpoint ! Luckily, they still had enough water to carry them through, though they were VERY thirsty by the time I next saw them.

I'm proud to say that this was the ONLY time I missed meeting with the boat. All other crossings I was there waiting dutifully. At one point I had to climb about 80 feet down a slick, muddy embankment to a small perch about 2 feet square. It took me two trips to carry my box of jugs as well as my small ice chest full of bicycle bottles and ice socks down the slope. From my perch you still couldn't see the open river, logs and debris had formed a log jam next to shore. I had to climb down into water about 8 feet deep and swim 10 feet to a downed tree trunk. I would balance the first container of jugs on this tree while I went back for the second. I then climbed over the tree and had to repeat the entire process to get out to a second tree that was far enough out in the river that my boat could get within throwing distance of me. I had to reverse the entire process to return to shore while carrying the empties. I won't even go into some of the things I found floating and submerged in these log jams.... but I was very happy to know my tetanus shots were up to date. We encountered Poison Ivy, fire ants, big, BIG spiders, snakes.... at one point I found myself jumping into the water below a bridge very near the coast where we had, not 2 minutes before, seen a 6 foot alligator ! Average daylight temperature was about 92... actually a little cooler than it has been in recent years.

From 5:30 Saturday morning, when I rolled out of bed at my parent's house in San Antonio, until I returned to their place Monday afternoon, I had a total of about 4 1/2 hours of sleep. Saturday night I actually was able to 'sleep' for about 2.5 hours while waiting at a particularly long stretch. Sunday night I got 2 one hour naps in. All in all, by the time I reached Sea Drift, I can't truthfully say that I was all that much more coherent than the members of my team in the boat !

I survived with only minor injuries. I bruised and poked a pretty good hole in one knee.... I have an assortment of smaller cuts and scratches, primarily on my hands & feet. I have only minor sunburn, but am covered with mosquito and chigger bites ! The guys in the boat were suffering from blistered hands and diaper rash.... heat exhaustion and sunburn.... muscles forced way beyond their limits and minds permanently changed. I think the race taught us all a thing or two about limits and how we often set limitations on ourselves which we can easily surpass.

The guys did suffer from some pretty extreme hallucinations toward the end. They all talk about carrying on conversations with the 'tree people'. David spoke to me about the Indians and Leprechauns he kept seeing on the banks. Once off the river and cutting across the three mile stretch of open bay toward Sea Drift, Dave kept hallucinating that he was still on the river surrounded by trees. Until he actually crossed the finish line and was being helped out of the boat he actually wasn't sure if he was in the bay hallucinating the trees, or still back on the river hallucinating the bay !

Out of 82 boats that started the race my team came in 6th overall with a time of 46 hours and 37 minutes ! The winning time was 37 hours 9 minutes and there are at this moment, boats still out trying to finish before the 100 hour cut off. Ours was the first three man boat to cross the finish line, beaten only by two 6 man, two 5 man and a 4 man boat. They actually came in well ahead of several 4 & 5 man boats... an unheard of thing ! All in all, they were the most successful novice team in the field and it was my great pleasure to be a member of their support team ! Still, if they ask me today to do it again next year I would have to say...

NO WAY !!!!

(Still,... I've got a year to reconsider !)