The Kickapoo kicked my butt

Please don’t let me die in Wisconsin: Ron Cunningham

I never again want to hear about how dangerous cycling is.

On Monday, I biked 20 miles on southwest Wisconsin’s Elroy-Sparta Trail – ostensibly the oldest designated rail-trail in the U.S. At one point I had a close encounter with a vicious looking turtle.

And I rode into a spooky, bat-infested former railroad tunnel.

Neither the potentially rabid turtle nor the (for-all-I-knew) blood-sucking vampire bats tried to kill me.

On Tuesday I went kayaking on the Kickapoo.

A narrow, shallow, deceptively safe-looking river. Lined by impressive stone cliffs topped by large trees. And renown for its frequent twists and turns and bends.

The locals call it “the crookedest river in the world.”

It tried to kill me. It did kill my iPhone.

Which is why my wife, Jill – who it also tried to kill but who managed to salvage her iPhone – gets credit for most of today’s photos.

Mama don’t let your babies grow up to be kayakers. Let ‘em be e-bikers and road-bikers and fat tired mountain bikers and such.

It was supposed to be a two hour tour. A two-hour tour.

And being on a shallow, crooked, fast moving river I twice found my little fiberglass shell hard aground on the rocks.

I came up with a novel technique, consisting of a series of scoochy, back-and-forth body jerks, in order to slowly inch my way back into navigable waters.

We were supposed to get out of the water at bridge #4. But shortly before bridge #3 maritime disaster struck. Of almost Titanic-like proportions.

Coming around a sharp bend my fragile craft suddenly got caught between an immovable object – a clump of partially submerged tree branches. And an irresistible force – rapid water.

Which was the last time I saw my iPhone.

The next thing I knew there was a shock of cold water and the sensation of river rocks scraping the length of my tumbling, fragile body. It took me a while to get my feet beneath me. Even so I could barely stand upright in the current.

I briefly glimpsed a floating object that looked a lot like a gator. And I remember wondering if it had been stalking me all the way from Florida.

Fortunately, my friends Rick and Susan were not far ahead in a double kayak. They were able to snag my runaway cockleshell.

Unfortunately, Jill was still behind me. Waiting to see if she needed to go shopping for widow’s weeds.

The next thing I knew Jill was in the water too. Her kayak firmly lodged in the same treacherous spot that did me in.

Chaos ensued.

Suffice it to say that we eventually made it safely to shore. Now all I had to do was backtrack and retrieve Jill’s pinned-down kayak.

Which required me to precariously climb up and along a steep, loosely packed dirt embarkment. Clutching at branches and clumps of vegetation along the way to keep from plunging back into the murderous Kickapoo.

Arriving back at the scene of the double disaster, I found Jill’s kayak submerged. With the passenger side facing a current that kept it firmly lodged against the branches.

Despite employing all of my renown brute strength (Planet Fitness, three days a week) I was unable to move the irresistible object by so much as a millimeter.

Which is when Archimedes whispered softly into my ear: Gimme a lever long enough and I can move New Jersey.

Not a literal translation. But I don’t speak Greek.

Finding a thick tree branch, I inserted it between the kayak and the submerged branches. And heaved. And tugged. And jerked.

The next thing you know the thing shot out into the river like a torpedo. A moving object of physics-assisted beauty.

Later on, when I finally pulled myself out of the Kickapoo – wet, muddy, bruised in both body and ego – our shuttle driver told us that this sort of thing happens to a lot of folks kayaking the Kickapoo.

“Mostly when they are inebriated,” he said.

Which of course added insult to injury. I hadn’t had a drop to drink that fateful morning the Kickapoo kicked my butt.

I would soon remedy that.