Mid-American Canoe Race - The practice edition

    The Mid-American canoe race is one that I have wanted to do for a long time.  My Dad has told a few stories of when he did it when he was younger and I always thought it sounded like fun.  A few years ago, Casey mentioned that he thought it would be fun to do.  Fast-forward a few years and here we are registered and ready to go.
    Yesterday right after church, Casey and I decided to take our first practice run.  The water is running relatively fast so we did pretty well.  We didn't exactly go in a straight line the whole way but we never had much of a problem correcting our flaws. The difference will come when there are hundreds of canoes out there to navigate along with.  I'm just hoping that we don't turn the race into a demolition derby. If that happened though it would be memorable.  I'm sure Charlie would like to hear about that story growing up.  It might even push him to want to do the race or one similar to it when he gets older. We did have a couple of instances where things got interesting.  The first one was when we boated right into someone's fishing line.  It's funny at first, then panic sets in when you realize that there is a hook on the end of the string that is quickly moving up to the surface.  Luckily I had a life jacket on when the hook hit me.  No damage done!  The second issue was in the last 30 feet of our trip.  I'm not going to give details (no we didn't tip), but Casey did say, "This is embarassing, I'm glad this is happening under a bridge."  He was right on both parts.  Luckily we figured it out and finished our trip with few flaws.
    I am really looking forward to the race.  We're not expecting to win or place, we just don't want to be the last guys coming in at the end winning the perseverance award.