Sylvia and Laura did the canoe race together. They were in the 14 and under division, and had hoped to capture first place. They did well the year before, and thought it was possible. How the evening really turned out was a bit different. Below is Sylvia's write-up of the race from her viewpoint. (Warning: She did throw in a paragraph with a dragon 2/3 way down.) With the exception of the dragon, I think this is pretty close to the truth. Enjoy the drama!
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| The girls before heading to the race start. |
I looked at Laura’s stressed face as she and I held the paddles in the canoe. I had never seen her look this nervous before. The water shimmered and sparkled as we bobbed up and down on the current. I looked down at my watch. I saw it was about 6:35pm. The race would start any minute.
“Ready, Get Set… GO!” someone yelled. Since I go to public school for a few hours a week, I thought for a second that it was completely possible that a middle schooler was just yelling that to see what the reaction would be, but when everyone else started to paddle, I began as well. I hadn’t had the sensation of paddling for nearly a year. I nearly forgot what it felt like to push the wooden paddle through the fluid, clear water. I tried remembering back to when my mom and I watched youtube videos about the correct posture of canoeing nearly a year before.
After lots of “Sorry’s” and listening to others say “Sorry”, we got to a good start with only about fifteen canoes in front of us. I noticed that Laura was stroking hard, but not fast, and wanted to say something to her, but didn’t want to be rude, so I continued to paddle my best to make up for both of us. I remembered an episode in “My Little Pony” about not telling truths that could hurt friends. (Don’t judge me! This is actually how my train of thought went!). The canoe was not tippy at all and everything was going well so far.
I was paddling harder than Laura, so the canoe turned to the left quite a few times. I felt Laura’s excitement starting into her long, hard strokes, speeding them up slightly.
“We have a chance at winning!” Laura said happily, gazing into the light orange sunset below the thick, gray clouds.
The clouds were making it rain slightly but it wasn’t as bad as one year that my brother, Asher, had done it previously. I counted myself fairly lucky. Today it was only lightly raining. You could see the gray outline of the bridge ahead, but nothing past that.
I rolled my eyes as we drifted past a canoe with girls in our age division, blasting out rock music. I didn’t know what the song was, but I was sure that all public-schoolers knew it because… well… they’re public-schoolers.
I saw two male ducks drifting through the wavy water and thought of the Wii canoeing game to capture the ducks, and remembered how impossible it was. I realized that I could very easily steer us toward the ducks. They were really only around ten feet away from our green canoe, and Laura couldn’t do anything about it. But I only smiled with the thought, and paddled on.
The racers were very spread out now. I knew that Laura’s brother, Jason was probably near the front, though I couldn’t make them out in the rain. Suddenly, there was a flash of thunder.
I heard the girls blasting out music behind us scream then laugh.
I looked back and to the side to see that the girls were being trailed by a dark gray dog, and in front of their music blasting canoe, was a light brown, shaggy dog nosing at the black haired girl in the front. Then, I knew we had just entered the dog park. There were a few other dogs standing on the shoreline watching confused, but not in the water. There were people cheering at the shore as well, and calling for their two dogs to come back to the land.
Laura and I continued to canoe until we were passed the dog park and in the middle of a large part of the lake. I was pretty much soaked by now. It was raining slightly harder now with occasional lighting in the far off distance.
Suddenly, Laura tilted slightly in front of me, I didn’t have time to balance the canoe, so we flipped. The rain water was only slightly colder than the air, which was hot and muggy, so the river water was a big surprise. It felt like icy daggers. I closed my eyes as the boat tipped and put both of us in the water. Along with the paddles. I tried to hold onto the paddle, but I couldn’t hold onto it and propel myself to the surface at the same time, so I let go out of instinct.
“Are you okay?” I asked coughing a few drops of water up.
“Ya.” Laura replied.
She grabbed the canoe and tried to tip the water out, but only got more water in it.
I realized how slimy and muddy it was in the water. It was probably four feet of mud that my legs were stuck in. The water itself was shallow enough, but half of my legs were in the muck at the bottom of the lake. There was nothing solid below me, so I couldn’t just stand.
Suddenly, my shoe slipped off as I was trying to battle the mud. I felt around as fast and effectively as I could, starting to panic. Those were my favorite shoes that had lasted me about two or three years. I didn’t want to have to throw the other away just because one got stuck at the bottom of the Yahara River. I thought of diving to get my shoe, but didn’t want to go under water again, so I continued my search.
Meanwhile, Laura had also lost one of her sandals and said so, but I could barely hear because I was so focused on finding my own teal Keen sandal in the mud.
Onlookers said, “Are you two okay?” and “You can do it!”, but nothing helpful. They probably didn’t want to give up their place in the race. I suddenly thought of the Good Samaritan parable.
After a few more seconds, I found something solid at the bottom and tried to pick it up without sinking with my foot.“Yes! I found it!” I said as I pulled my mud covered sandal out of the water.
I could barely see the color of the turquoise and white, but I recognized the shape. I was still treading the mud with my other foot. It felt like my other sandal might fall of in a matter of seconds, so I quickly took my other shoe off. I looked up seeing that Laura had found her shoe, as well. We were now close to the back of the race pack. A canoe pulled up by us, the sun shining off their silver canoe.
“We’ll help you get the water out of your canoe!” came a voice from a red haired girl, her hair in two tight buns. The two girls were probably in our division with blue and purple tye-dye shirts on.
We didn’t have time to refuse the help, because the girl with red hair slipped of her canoe and swam over to ours. Somehow, we managed to get the mud filled water out of it. There was still about one gallon at the bottom of the canoe, but it was better than being full.
“Thank you so much!” I said gratefully trying to keep my head above water. Though I didn’t notice, I was very, very tired. My feet and fingers were beginning to become numb and my feet I could barely move. Like Laura, I probably also had a few spots of mud on my face.
“We were probably going to be last anyway,” said the brown haired girl on the canoe looking down at us with a cross between sympathy and slightly sad.
“Let me help you get into the canoe,” the red haired girl said. I braced the boat while she helped Laura up. There was no one to brace the boat for me, so it was harder, especially with my bulky life jacket on. I quickly took it off and put it in the canoe. I somewhat easily got into the canoe.
“Thank you again.” Laura said, picking up her paddle. I picked up my own and started to paddle, but the water splashed so much that we tipped, yet again. The familiar feeling of the mud came back. Luckily, I somehow managed to grab my shoes as the canoe flipped.
“Oh no!” said one of the girls. I wasn’t sure which because I was trying to get the water out of my mouth, and eyes.
“You can go. The rescue boat is right there!” I said to the girls.
“Okay. good luck!” said the red haired girl.
Sure enough, there was a motorboat with two people on it. It looked like a father and a daughter.
“How about you swim over by the log. We can tow the boat over to get all the water out,” the man on the motorboat pointed to a log over by the shore.
The two girls started to paddle away once the red haired girl got back in their canoe. So Laura and I started to swim. I held onto my lifejacket with one hand and swam with the other.
“It’ll be memorable.” I said swimming. I could hear the motor boat trailing behind us.
I was faster than Laura in the water, even though she is faster than me on land, so I got to the log on the shore first. I watched Laura and the motorboat come as I caught my breath. It was nice to feel something other than watery mud underneath my feet. The jagged rocks poked at my bare feet, and it didn’t help that my feet were already freezing from the ice water.
Laura got to the shore, and not long after, the boat towing the canoe came to shore. Laura and I carefully helped get the water out of the canoe. It was much easier now that we were on solid ground and not swimming knee high in mud.
“Should we tow you to the bridge up there?” the father of the girl asked.
“Yes please.” Laura said.
We were far behind everyone else, so we didn’t think it could do much harm.
“Alright. Hop on the canoe and we’ll tow you,” he said. He steadied the canoe and we got in. He started the boat while his daughter held the string attached to our canoe.
“Well, don’t hop on the canoe, just get in the canoe,” the daughter said smiling.
Laura and I got in the green canoe and we started to get towed to the bridge up ahead. There were no other canoes in view, and the rain had stopped. We could now see the pale gray clouds as far as the eye could see. There were a few birds swooping over our heads from one side of the river to the other. Starlings mostly. The motorboat was surprisingly slow. I watched as the propeller irritated the mud at the bottom of the river.
I heard the murmurs of voices from Laura and the other two driving the motorboat, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying because of the motor right by me.
Suddenly, the man looked at me as if he thought that I heard what he just said, and was expecting an answer to a question.
“I couldn’t hear, sorry.” I said, ruddering the boat again to get it to line up with the motorboat direction not to slow it down.
“Right. There was a motor in your ear,” he said as he turned the motor off. “There. I was just asking if you wanted to do the portage. It’s completely fine if you didn’t want to do it.”
“Oh.” I looked at Laura, she looked like she was also trying to decide.
“We’ll probably decide when we get there if we’re just not up to it,” I said.
Laura nodded and the man said, “Alright, alright. We’ll just be tailing you by the portage.”
“Okay.” Laura said. He turned the motor back on and I again, could only make out a few words of their conversation.
The wind started to get stronger and my blonde hair blew in the breeze. Once I blinked a few times to clear my vision from the sudden gust of wind, I saw it wasn’t wind at all. It was a dragon flapping it’s dark gray wings. This particular dragon looked larger than any I had ever seen with dark red spines covering the top of his tail, back, and part of it’s massive head. There were quite a few dragons in Wisconsin, so we didn’t think it was too weird. We just wished it would stop flapping so much so we could go faster without the air pushing us back against the current.
When we passed under the red metal bridge, the father of the girl said, “Good luck!” Laura and I said thank you and started to paddle.
In the distance, we saw a red canoe. Laura suddenly got very competitive and said, “Sylvia, we’ve got to beat that canoe. I don’t want to be completely last.”
I nodded then remembered that she was in front of me and couldn’t see me nodding, so I said, “Right! Let’s do it. Laura, I think you might need to paddle a little faster.”
“Okay.” she said started to paddle at the right speed.
I smiled and paddled as hard as I could. I didn’t want to be last either.
My arms were sore from the night before when I had to do a scout physical fitness test and I didn’t want to overdo my arms for the WYSO concert the next day. I would have to rehearse for two hours and then play a concert. But, I really wanted to win, so I paddled until my arms were even sorer than they already were.
We were gaining on them quickly. I didn’t think they knew that there was someone behind them.
Suddenly, I heard tons of cheering, then realized that I was so focused on not being in last place that I didn’t see that we were already at the portage area.
“If we’re going to portage, we’d better turn now,” Laura said sounding stressed, and slowing her paddling slightly. “What should we do?”
I thought for a few seconds then said, Let’s not. I’m not up to it. If you really want to we definitely can.”
“Okay. Let’s skip it. That’s what I was hoping that you would say,” Laura said, continuing to paddle.
“What are you doing?” “ You need to portage!” “Portage!” “You’ve gotta portage right here!”, came yells from the crowd.
“We flipped! We’re not up to it!” I yelled.
On the bridge above, I saw a Siri and Reagan. On the shore, I saw Thijs dancing and yelling, “Go Sylvia and Laura!” That made me smile and chuckle a bit.
I saw Reagan waving happily, ignoring the fact that we weren’t portaging.
This was all happening at once and I was very confused and excited to go to the last stretch where there wouldn’t be so many people yelling at us that we weren’t portaging.
“No! You’ve got to portage so I can take pictures!” my mom’s distinct voice yelled over the clapping and cheering.
I gave them my explanation of why we weren’t portaging, now it was time to ignore them and just keep going.
Once we got passed the crowds, it was lots quieter and I could paddle without feeling like everyone in the world was watching me, though there were a few people on docks still watching and cheering. We gained our speed again, and we caught up with the red boat.
“No! There’s someone behind us!” yelled the boy in the back of the red canoe.
“Come on! Faster!” the other boy yelled.
Laura and I tried to keep from smiling or laughing, because we were in Lego League together, so we knew what “gracious professionalism” was, and we passed them with ease.
They yelled angrily and we kept going.
The red haired girl and her partner were there and she yelled, “I’m so proud of you both! You aren't last!”
I looked at Laura’s grandpa who was pointing to the red balls you had to pass through to be officially done with the canoe race. I wondered what would happen if we didn’t pass through them.
But, we did pass through them quickly, and came to shore, and so ended the canoe race that I will remember probably at least for another ten years.
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| The girls as they skipped the portage. |
