pain

As I lay in my tent on Sunday night, listening to the rain that would soon be pooling under my sleeping bag, I tried to recall why I had signed up for this canoe race across an entire country.  I guess I could not resist the allure of another adventure with which I could regale attentive audiences for years to come.  I suppose that Betsy and Lucia's enthusiasm has also helped convince me, but now the rain, damp, cramps, and 20-plus hours of paddling had somewhat cooled everyone's zeal.  There was one exception to this.  Some highly intoxicated local was still staggering around the crowded park, shouting his not-to-keen insights about the race standings to an imagined audience.  I was to learn later that several of my fellow-racers contemplated assault, but did want to drag their cramped bodies out into the rain to do it.  I rolled onto my side and tried to cover my face from the spattering of rain that came right through my tent.
In truth, I had wanted to do the Ruta de Maya for some time, although I only got that chance at the last minute.  It is basically Belize’s combination of the World Series and the Boston Marathon, and the chance to participate in such an adventure had always been attractive.  It would be an exaggeration to say that nothing had prepared me for it.  My wilderness trips during college gave me a pretty good idea of how to prepare for it physically, and I insisted on buying enough food to feed a small army.  I was also fairly confident that I could push a paddle for four days, and that my team would probably pull through.   Lucias was a star athlete in high school, and Betsy’s small stature was more than compensated for my her iron will. As I said, this is the country’s biggest event of the year, and that took me by the most surprise.  The first day we arrived at the river and found it filled with seventy or more canoes of every description.  The professional teams were already line up by the time we got in the water.  Their boats reminded me of switchknives, sitting low and sleek in the water.  But the amateur teams were a motley crew.  Teams from Belize, Canada, Britain, America, and I know not where else had turned the country over for anything resembling a canoe.  Some were flying flags patriotically, others had matching purple mohawks.  None of us were lined up well, and there was a lot of bumping and awkward paddling was we tried to point our boats downriver.  It was like trying to untie a knot in your shoelaces right before a sprint.  The three and one minute warnings increased our anxiety as made our last minute attempts to straighten our boat out.  The professional teams kept creeping forward under the bridge that formed the starting line.  The announcer repeatedly warned them to back up, in increasingly angry tones, but none of them were willing to surrender their position by compliance.  Finally, the announcer gave up and sounded the horn.  The water and air exploded with shouting of 2000 people and the splashing of 200 paddles.
The Ruta de Maya was underway.