2004-06-07 Bill Kremer at Rookie Night

2004-06-07 Bill Kremer at Rookie Night

Chuck Ryan announced his retirement as Racing Director for the Minnesota Canoe Association without giving a reason and also said he would not be at Monday night Rookies. Someone said "Thank you for your work" and we gave him a round of applause. Some may not have cared and some may have assumed it was because Chuck was frustrated with racers, or frustrated with the Minnesota Canoe Association board members, or both. No one asked why and he wasn’t volunteering an explanation. Hopefully, time would heal the problems.

Bill Kremer has been coming to Rookie Nights for at least two years, but had not spent much time in the back of a racing canoe. So when I gave him the choice, he wanted to paddle stern for the practice. I outweighed him by 35 pounds so we added some rocks to the back of my pro-am wood strip racing canoe to balance it so it ran level. Ed & Ole went into the high waves and took on water each wave. They managed to get back out of the waves before the canoe sunk. We all decided to stay on the east shoreline to avoid crossing the big waves blowing upstream in the high wind.

Stopping to rest and collect the pack, Marsh Jones and his bow paddler, Mark, flipped over while just sitting still. Mark grabbed Stephanie Larsen and Dave Dahl’s canoe as he went over and tipped them over too. Stephanie just had time to say “Don’t grab our can….” before she was underwater. Once they got back into their canoes, we continued paddling downstream towards the Ford dam. Bill and I worked on staying in sync and riding the stern wakes of the other canoes. Ed Arenz and I continued our ongoing friendly rivalry by alternately insulting each other and splashing each other with our paddles whenever our canoes were close enough for that. I liked Ed and that’s why I like to pick on him.

Al Dubois had ridden his bike beforehand training for the AuSable canoe race and, on the way back upstream, he joined us paddling his C1 racing canoe. Jason Larsen and his partner were the only ones who had gone to the west shoreline of the river and they had rejoined us as well.