The day’s objective, he continued in a calmer voice, was to paddle 42 miles in less than 12 hours, just as we’d have to do on Everything you’ve done up to now-everything-is pussy compared to the Safari.” You don’t seem to realize that this will be the hardest thing you’ve ever done. “You don’t worry about me being ready!” he said. Before we’d even slipped our brand-new Osagian aluminum canoe on the narrow and twisty upper San Marcos River, I mentioned my misgivings, and Canoeman snarled back. Our first practice run, three months before the race, did not go well. Hell, I know we won’t come home with a first-place trophy, but we will bring home that TWS patch.

“And I’ve logged over 1,000 river miles per year for the last five years. “You paddle more than anyone I know, whitewater and wilderness,” he’d said, huffing and wagging his finger in my face. Nevertheless, during a long, slow float through the Lower Canyons of the Rio Grande the previous November, Canoeman had alternately bullied and sweet-talked me into entering the Safari with him. I had never before participated in a paddling race, being of the belief that competition among paddlers is a good way to ruin a splendid sport. I just wasn’t sure my mind was up to the challenge.

I live in the Colorado high country and make time to hike, bike or canoe whitewater almost every day. Three years his junior, and thus tagged “Canoeboy,” I felt relatively more prepared for the Safari’s physical rigors. Though double-bladed paddles are allowed in the Safari, we had enrolled in the Novice class, which limited us to a stock tandem canoe no longer than 17 feet, 6 inches, and single-bladed sticks. In 33 years of canoeing, he’d always used a double-bladed kayak paddle, a style that is peculiar to Texas. He was coming off a lifetime of self-described “decadency and debauchery” as a rock ‘n’ roll musician, and was a complete rookie with a single-blade paddle.

Not that the portly 6-foot, 190-pounder was what one would call prepared. He turned 60 in 2008 and figured if he didn’t enter then he never would. A native son of Texas who claims distant kinship with Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone, Kit Carson and Geronimo, Marc considered a Water Safari run part of his destiny. There is no prize money for the winners just Texas-size bragging rights for the finishers.įor Marc, a Dallas resident and publisher of the popular, that means a lot. Competitors have four days and four hours to paddle from San Marcos, in the center of the state, to the shy little town of Seadrift on the Gulf Coast. In addition to the length, the challenges include whitewater rapids, multiple portages, and the relentless, soul-sapping Texas heat. They don’t call the Texas Water Safari “The World’s Toughest Canoe Race” for nothing. If the little problems Marc “Canoeman” McCord and I had just endured were harbingers of worse to come, what were our chances of finishing, let alone surviving, a 262-mile nonstop canoe race? “Watch out for little problems that could get a lot bigger,” it warned. I’m not one to take fortune cookies seriously, but this one nearly made me choke on my moo goo gai pan. Words by Larry Rice Photographs by Blake Gordon

Water safari