2000

Adventures With Uncle Wally (Tandum) (a72)

by Uncle Wally

Paddling a tandem canoe in whitewater requires admirable teamwork. It’s a thing of beauty when it’s done right. But finding an admirable teammate for this sorta venture can be harder than tryin’ to catch Last Chance Eddy above Death Grip Falls.

Really good tandem paddlers have an enviable ease and elegance about ‘em. They move in an almost melodic synchrony. They run drops, catch eddies, and surf waves with such an aura of effortlessness, it seems they’re readin’ each others’ minds. Looks easy.

For the other 99% of us who paddle tandem, that illusion of mutual telepathy invariably leads to bitter disappointment. We just presume the other guy is thinkin’ what we’re thinkin’ ‘cause we never bother to ask. More often, our paddling partner has just decided to go to the left of that big, undercut rock at the head of Half Mile Swim Cascades while we’ve decided to go to the right. Splittin’ the difference is usually a really bad idea. So this sorta presumption tends to bruise and break relationships faster than it does bodies and boats. But we keep on doin’ it, don’t we?

For most of us, the ugly reality is that paddling tandem is a little like drivin’ a car where your back seat driver has his own steering wheel: you get nowhere fast and nobody enjoys the ride. On the river, this leads to lengthy, mid-eddy discussions of line and form just packed with mutual incrimination and employing language that would melt your grandma’s hearing aid. It isn’t pretty.

Yep, good communication, however subtle, is the key to paddling tandem with finesse. And that is precisely why I usually paddle solo. That way I don’t have anybody not listenin’ when I’m tellin’ ‘em what to do. And if I do something stupid and mess up on my own, I can usually come up with a plausible excuse before I even come up for air. I never have to endure a public dissection of my own culpability.

But one fine, spring Saturday when I was headed up to the St. Louis, I got snookered into paddling tandem with a guy I didn’t even know. He was a friend of a friend of mine who figured I owed him a favor. Well, I did owe him a favor, but not that big a one. And now I figure he owes me.

Now, there are any number of perfectly valid reasons why a guy might not be able to dredge up a paddling partner on a fine, spring Saturday, reasons another guy might even be able to sympathize with. But none of them seemed to apply to Buck. As the day dragged on, it became increasingly clear that here was a guy who had worn out his welcome with every paddler he knew and had to throw himself on the merciful ignorance of strangers.

We started off our day on the St. Louis doin’ the I35 bridge pylon slalom. Seemed we might be able to warm up to each other while warmin’ up the ol’ paddling muscles that way. And we did get better acquainted. For example, I soon discovered that Buck possessed neither a working knowledge of hydraulics nor an even casual understanding of his place in the cause and effect relationship of paddle stroke to boat movement. He learned the extent of my vocabulary and the limits of my patience. In the process, my old Legend nearly became a permanent addition to the infrastructure of our interstate highway system. And I concluded it was goin’ to be a long day.

At First Wave, I was aimin’ to hit that river left eddy high and dry and make it look snappy into the bargain. Buck had other ideas. The more I tried to drive toward that eddy on the left, the more Buck pulled us back to the right. Tryin’ to catch an eddy your partner doesn’t want is like fishin’ without a hook: better luck next time. We ended up plowin’ right through the hole and blastin’ most of the way down the wave train before we managed something vaguely like a turn. I wasn’t happy.

Then it was Buck’s turn to be unhappy, ‘cause I made him paddle back upriver to surf. But surfin’ with Buck was a wash out. He just didn’t get it. He was still miffed that he had to paddle in the bow. Bein’ the custodial paddler, I had stood firm by my rights to the stern position in my own boat. Not that it helped me much. Buck still tried to do all the steering from the bow anyway. That isn’t the most efficient way to surf. Couple that with Buck’s trademark, windmill lean and we were soon goin’ for a swim. After our third, consecutive, out-of-boat experience, I gave up on surfin’ and headed down river.

Now, by this time, I shoulda known better. But I really wanted to run Thread the Needle. So I patiently explained to Buck, in painstaking detail, how we were gonna slip sleekly between those two big boulders in the middle of the river. And I thought we had an agreement in principle to do just that. But when we got there, Buck again drew us to the right and off around the object of my desire.

Bomber Buck then took us all the way through Boatsmear without even pausin’ to admire the view. You can’t catch eddies when your bow partner won’t even cast for ‘em. And what’s the use of paddling whitewater if you just blitz right by all the best parts?

I tried to impress this outlook onto my (temporary) paddling partner as we once again paddled back upriver, this time to rejoin our companions for lunch at Swimmer’s Beach. Eddies are nice places to visit, I argued. They are friendly, comforting, sometimes even life-saving places to visit. He should get to know them better. And there’d be no better place to meet eddies than in the next rapids.

Hidden Hole has a whole string of friendly, welcoming eddies down the right side. And since Buck had been favoring river right all morning, I figured this’d be tailor-made for him. We’d try to tour each and every eddy on the way down and see if we couldn’t change Buck’s single-minded devotion to a straight line of travel.

Well, that was the idea, anyway. The reality was, when we were set to catch the first eddy, Buck proved that he did, indeed, have a vague notion of how to do a cross draw - enough to make us veer back to the left and deflect off the eddy line. We blew past the first eddy, the second, the third. If our seats had been any closer together, there woulda been physical violence done.

Then, at the very last eddy, he did it. He went for the turn. Our angle was bad and his paddle plant was a bit premature. But he actually reached out and planted his paddle in the eddy in a half-hearted attempt at an eddy turn.
Well, I know it was an evil thing to do. And I shouldn’ta done it. But I was pretty peeved at the guy by then. So when I saw him committin’ himself to the eddy even before the boat was across the eddy line, my worst nature asserted itself. At the last minute, I executed a decisive pry, slidin’ the boat down the eddy line instead of into the eddy and catapulting my bow paddler over the gunwale like a pole vaulter comin’ down from a failed attempt at 181/2 feet. Revenge may be an ugly business, but the moment sure is gratifying while it lasts.
Well, I always said I prefer to paddle solo anyway. And all day long Buck had been showin’ this decided preference for swimming. So I guess we were each back in our own, proper element. But I don’t think we’ll do it again any time soon.
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Well, ’til next time, keep your paddle wet. And keep in touch. Drop me a line c/o Rich Furman and Morgan MacBain, 901 East Geranium Ave., St. Paul MN 55106 or editor@canoe-kayak.org. Let me know how you’ve resolved your tandem river rage. Remember, Uncle Wally promises to 1) tell the truth so no one would ever believe it anyway and 2) never reveal your true identity to anyone, not even the sheriff’s water patrol.