My mother always told me that I should never agree to anything a man proposed to me while drinking in a dive bar, no matter how tall, how handsome, or how funny he was. Unfortunately I was never very good at listening to my mom’s advice, so this is how I wound up agreeing to canoe the length of the Delaware River with Steven Plichta.
We had met through a medical first responder course and gotten together to study for our final exam at Burt’s Irish Pub, our favorite local watering hole. After the first beer it became clear that very little studying would be done, and we started swapping stories of our favorite miserable outdoor adventures. I had solo hiked the Long Trail during one of the rainiest springs on record, and proudly showed off photos of when one of my toes blistered so badly that the nail fell off and was floating loose inside a blister the size of a golf ball. He had paddled the length of the Mississippi, partly with a broken thumb. Basically we’re both idiots who take an ungodly amount of pleasure in “Type II Fun”. (If you’re reading this blog, you might already have figured that one out.)
By the second beer we were gleefully trading stories of our favorite rugby injuries, horrible weather experiences in the backcountry, and comparing scars.
By beer number three, he was telling me his plans to paddle the Delaware and how he was looking for a bowman to join him but nobody seemed to think spending a month in a canoe in early May sounded like a pleasant way to spend their spring break. Apparently three beers is the number that it takes for me to think that sounds like a delightful vacation, because we shook on the deal and the next round was celebratory shots.
I’m never one to back down from a drunken promise (no matter how little I remember of making it), so I bought myself a nice canoe paddle and a sturdy portage pack and resigned myself to near-certain death by drowning.
