The Millers River, Take One
So, Adam and I went down the Millers River, from Athol to Orange, on Saturday. It's a six mile paddle. (Here's a Google map of the run.) It took us around an hour, but we weren't really timing from exactly when we put in to when we took out. The other paddlers we saw were all serious racers, training for the River Rat. There was one guy paddling solo and about three other boats that did the course up and back from the landing in Orange. We saw the first boat heading up river while we were paddling down and before we finished, they passed us coming down, too, and had started back up the river.
I came to the conclusion that my Old Town Discovery 16 canoe is like a Ford Econoline Van next to these fancy ultralight kevlar racing canoes that the serious paddlers use. But, it was a nice day to be out on the river. The river was running high and fast, but there wasn't much in the way of rapids along the river, except when we went under the bridges and the river bunched up to squeeze through. Adam and I worked on shortening up our paddle strokes and synchronizing them, like the serious paddlers do, switching every five or six strokes. Thing is, we're not actually paddling together for the race.
Here's a video that Adam sent me, showing the start of the 2008 River Rat race. You can see the crowd of canoes surging toward the bridge right after the start of the race.
I came to the conclusion that my Old Town Discovery 16 canoe is like a Ford Econoline Van next to these fancy ultralight kevlar racing canoes that the serious paddlers use. But, it was a nice day to be out on the river. The river was running high and fast, but there wasn't much in the way of rapids along the river, except when we went under the bridges and the river bunched up to squeeze through. Adam and I worked on shortening up our paddle strokes and synchronizing them, like the serious paddlers do, switching every five or six strokes. Thing is, we're not actually paddling together for the race.
Here's a video that Adam sent me, showing the start of the 2008 River Rat race. You can see the crowd of canoes surging toward the bridge right after the start of the race.
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