the best part about paddling

I wrote this a few months ago. It was published in Silent Sports Magazine but I’m allowed to put it here too, and I can add more pictures than I can in their publication.  DB

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I’m sitting in an airport in Shanghai, about to fly home from a week of work. By “work,” I mean attending an international outdoor trade show where I was invited to speak. I added a few days on before the show for my wife and I to become tourists.

We spent most of our time off the beaten path, trying to stay away from areas where people spoke English. Shanghai is an international city, but when you get away from the business district and main drags, we stuck out. In particular, I stood out as a tall, bald thumb.

One of the highlights of my week was paddling a canoe, Canadian style, in a 30×50 foot swimming pool. This was the first time many Chinese people had ever seen a canoe actually in the water. China is kayak-centric, and a canoe is an object from a book, paddled by Indians (wearing Sioux headdresses to the sound of tom-toms).

After the demonstration, wherein my paddling partner Peter dumped me unceremoniously in the water playing what he called a “game,” I paddled over to the side and invited, in my worst Chinese (all of it), some kids to jump in too. PFDs were procured and two tentative volunteers came forward, parents taking gigabytes of pictures and movies.

Just a few laps around the tank, that’s all. Soon there was a line of kids, all wanting to try, and most speaking excellent English. They had their turns, laughing and waving to their parents.  One jumped out, paused, turned around and reached down into the canoe to give me a hug.

I noticed a young boy, eight at most, watching from poolside. He was clearly enchanted, and every time I paddled past him he watched with fascination. I walked over to him while Peter took some kids for a spin. I asked him if he wanted to paddle too. I reached my hand out to him, and he took it. I hoisted him up to the walkway around the pool and we walked, hand in hand back to the loading area.

He said nothing as we spun around the pool, sitting as still as a statue.  I wondered what he was thinking, this little guy, sitting in the bow of a canoe as I knelt in the center.

I unloaded him and he climbed out, and took off his PFD, and that was the last I saw of him. My wife was watching him, though, and she told me later his skipped and jumped back to his parents as if he just won the lottery, which he had, in a sense.  In a nation of over 1.3 billion, he was one of a dozen kids, maybe, who had ever paddled in a canoe.

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Autumn is coming soon, and for me that means day trips. Day trips don’t require packing food or cooking, so there’s a certain liberation in terms of gustatory delights available to you based on your destination.  For me, it’s always the search of pie.

Most chain restaurants have pie, of course, but its crust has the texture of Play-Doh and the flavor of nothing. The filling is purchased by the 55-gallon drum and is more cornstarch than fruit. If it’s a cream pie, the topic is a barely edible cream-like substance. As a cause of my wife’s baking, I have become a serious pie snob.

When paddling a new river I always look for pie for my late afternoon snack. No chains, of course. I seem to have the most luck in medium-sized towns. The very small hamlets, often unincorporated, don’t have much to choose from, and the bigger towns are usually devoid of interesting Mom and Pop restaurants.

A few years ago, after paddling the Lower Sugar River, I pulled out and headed west into Green County. Dominated by dairy farms and cheese makers, it’s a prosperous little county in a very Midwestern sort of way. Nothing flashy, of course, but you can tell things are good because the barns aren’t ten years past the point where they needed a coat of paint. A well-painted barn is a source of pride for its owner.

I found myself in Monticello, where I had been before but never in search of pie. I saw a place called the M&M Café and pulled over immediately. It was 1:50 p.m.

The M&M is a tiny place that opens early and closes after lunch, in this case at 2:00 p.m. My guess is that a lot of dairy farmers come in after first milking to have coffee and hang out with the other farmers after their first milking. It was late and the place was empty. I asked if they had pie.  Yes, they did have pie. I asked if it was made there on site. They replied that they made it fresh daily. “She makes the crust,” one woman said, indicating the other.

I said I would try the banana crème. If the crust pasts muster, the filling has to as well, and I find banana crème an easy one to screw up. Too much custard, not enough bananas; the bananas can be too green, the filling too runny and saturating the crust. The topping has to be whipped cream.

She cut me a slice the size of a brick, if a brick were a triangle. The strata of bananas were visible, with enough custard to hold the bananas in place. Check. The cream was real. Not surprising, since we were in the dairy capitol of Wisconsin. The crust was flaky. It was a masterpiece of pie.

They had coffee cups with M&M Café printed on the side, and I asked to buy one. They were confused. Why would I want a cup?  “So I can remember the pie when I am drinking something hot.”  They sold me a cup for five bucks, still confused.

I sat at the counter, chatting with these two no-nonsense Midwestern ladies, wearing sensible print dresses, and aprons and looking the part of farmers’ wives. They were chatty, but they were sneaking glances at the clock, and it was twenty after. They would never kick me out, so I decided to do it for them.

As I paid up and got up to leave, I saw the words “Restaurant for Sale. Inquire here” written in chalk on a small chalkboard above the menu.  I asked how long it had been for sale. They said it had for a while. They were hopeful someone who wanted to get up at 3:30 every morning to bake pie and prep the food for the day. You have afternoons off to fish (or paddle), but the restaurant business is a lot like work. Hard work.

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The next time I headed south I hit the Pecatonica down by Darlington. I was with my son but we didn’t have a shuttle vehicle, trusting fate and my thumb, as hitchhiking while holding a canoe paddle is an instant symbol of riparian brotherhood. I always get a lift.

As I was walking off to the road, I heard a voice from a guy angling for catfish as an excuse to drink a beer.

“Where you goin’?”
“Calamine.”
“You’re walking to Calamine?”
“Hopefully I’m getting a ride.”
“No you won’t.”
“I usually do.”
“No traffic on that road.”

He was right, the traffic counts were low, hence the popularity of that road with cyclists.

“Do you have any suggestions?”

He scratched his grizzled face, covered with a little drywall mud and three days of beard.

“I’ll take you.”
“Great.”
“For ten bucks.”
“Deal. What’s your name?”
“Maynard.”

I looked at his lawn chair. Only one beer can next to it. It was early in the day, about ten.

We climbed into his old white work van, which was full of plastering materials and ladders. We cleared a place for me and strapped my son into the front seat.

Maynard chatted about nothing in general, how he was getting close to retirement but still did odd jobs here and there for local contractors. He had a case of Budweiser in the back of the truck, and I think he had intentions to put a serious dent in it.  His Golden Retriever tried to crawl into the front seat and was giving my son a serious face wash. It was, fortunately, a short trip. Maynard was not particularly attentive to the rules of the road.

The paddle was nice, and I remember it being enjoyable, but nothing particular sticks out other than the beginning (Maynard) and the ending (Maynard again).

 

As we paddled up to the take-out we heard an exclamation of joy.

“Darryl!* You made it! Here, let me help you…”

No…nononononono….Maynard grabbed my bow thwart and gave it a good vigorous tug up onto the rocks. I said, “No, no, I got this…” but Maynard was undeterred. The scratches are still there. No harm, no foul. I was fouled.

Near the lawn chair was a fishing pole and half a dozen more beer cans. These Buds were for Maynard, and he had enjoyed all of them to the fullest. He yammered amiably as we carried our boats to the car, and waved and shouted a hearty farewell. But not without taking a picture.  Classic t-shirt.

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When I think about the experiences in my life that really stand out, the most memorable events were interactions with other people, whether on thewater or off.  Paddling has a lot to do with the places I find myself meeting people, whether in a swimming pool in Shanghai New International Exposition Center (SNIEC), in a small café in southwestern Wisconsin, or riding in a rickety old work van with a local connoisseur of malted beverage.

Paddling has made my life unbearably rich. Most of my best friends I made because of paddling, whether it be a customer at my shop, a student in a class I teach, or a local character I run into at the put-in or take-out, or a couple of salt-of-the-earth sensible farm women who sell me a piece of really good pie.

*A common mistake.