What a Great Day to Quit

Thursday, May 24. What a great day to quit.

It only took an hour to get to Cody Park in North Platte, where a cluster of friends were waiting to welcome me. We had a fun time asking and answering questions, and I left an hour later feeling re-energized. Meaning that I didn't sleep well, what with numb arms and hands, so hadn't started off very energized. Just before I left, a gentleman whispered to me that he would send $1,000 to the shelter if I made it to the Missouri River.

I poled like a machine, past the airport bridge, past where the North Platte and the South Platte join to form the Platte (someone lacked imagination), and got my first look at the diversion dam for the Tri-County Canal. This has been one of the spots that I have "worried about" ever since "my skeptics" starting telling me why I'd never be able to do this trip. "No water," they said. I'd thought of it as a watershed spot in my journey, which is a bit ironic if it has no water to shed.

This time, the skeptics were right. When I got boat and baggage across the dam, all I could see was sand and weeds, clear across the broad riverbed. Now what? I could cheat and ask Tammy for a ride. I could sit and pray for rain. I could give up, which had a lot of appeal. Or I could press on, the $1,000 offer in the forefront of my mind.

I did some scouting to verify the obvious, that there wasn't any water, then went back for the boat. Determined to push on, I grabbed ahold of the bow rope and started dragging Plattepus I across the sand, into the high weeds. My legs wobbled, the rope gouged my hands, I instantly developed a raging thirst, and the worst of it was that I had no idea how long I might have to do this. I commited to five miles, figuring that if I had to, I could do that much in the next eight hours.

I'm not even going to try to make this sound like fun. I followed a sort of a trail, sometimes facing forward and sometimes backwards so my leg muscles could get tired and sore on both sides. Quarter mile. Half mile. Three quarters of a mile. At that point I was dismayed to find that things had fallen off of the boat, so I had to go all the way back and retrieve them.

Another thought kept niggling at me. I have several friends at the homeless shelter where I work, who came to see me at Cody Park. Chris, Dennis, Marie and Norm all have abundant reasons to quit any day, but they hang in there, pulling hard, looking for better circumstances. Surely it must be difficult not knowing how long this stage of their lives will last, but they haven't quit. If they can keep going, surely I could.

Eventually I left the boat to do some more scouting, sniffing back and forth like a dog looking for pheasants. I contemplated climbing a tree, since I couldn't see over the seven-foot grass, but I didn't relish falling to my doom without anyone around to take a picture.

Then I found it. A trickle of moss and algae. I don't know where it came from, and didn't care. It was cool on my feet and the boat would float in it. For the next while I still pulled, but finally it grew big enough that I hopped aboard and started poling, getting on and off in the shallows.

Suddenly a river of clear water gushed in from the left. I turned momentarily Pentecostal, shouting Halleluya! and calling Tammy to scream "I HAVE WATER!" I climbed aboard, thanked the universe and was off for Maxwell in a steady current. Made it to Brady by 7:00 PM, where Tammy informed me she had learned that I only have seven more diversion dams between Brady and Kearney, and then I am done with them. Seven sounds like a lot to me, but then I've already been over 15 or so. Piece of cake.

Tammy brought me back to our own house for T-bone steaks and potatoes and fried cooking bananas. If I don't sleep better tonight, it's not her fault. Although I don't have a schedule on this trip, if I did I'd now be way behind. But hey, Chris and Dennis and Norm and Marie and Mr. $1,000 and all of you who came to cheer me on, I didn't quit.