Epic Fail

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Well, if you have to fail, do so spectacularly. Teddy Roosevelt said something like that, I forget when, but screw it. He was right.

And we did. Fail. Epically.

I have to acknowledge my partners in the failure, who contributed with élan and espirit, and a certain indomitable panache that made me proud to be part of the shambling human race.

Maybe I should back up a second. When last we shared some time, we were about to launch boldly on the conquest of the Last Stone: Southeast 9, the one left cut off on the wrong side of the Potomac by the slash of concrete we know as I-295. We knew that it was a challenge. The undergrowth is much as it was when Major Ellicott and his merry band of surveyors planted SE 9 at Fox Landing, by the banks of the Big River, and completed the erection of the first National Monument of the United States of America.

Argo and I had already tried it twice: we essayed the overland route from Oxen Hill Farm, only to be defeated by the rip-rap that surrounds the highway and the bridge at Oxen Cove. We were smart, or rather not as smart as we thought, and the second time we rented a kayak down at National Harbor and paddled north under the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, not understanding the power and imperative of the Big River rolling down to the sea.

It was the River, and the wet, that was our undoing that time. But we were on to something, and vowed to conquer the stone from the River next time, and yesterday was to be der Tag, the day of victory.

It did not work out that way, though we saw all sorts of amazing things, learned new skills and found an altogether unprecedented new summer cocktail along the way.

I was giving a lecture a couple months ago about China’s adventurist policies in the South China Sea, a body of water about which I have a certain jingoistic residual feeling from my days as a member of the elite corps of the Overseas Family Residency Program, a Midway sailor. Louis was a Coast Guard civilian in the audience, and we shared some thoughts once the formal presentation was done. We stayed in touch afterwards, and that was the genesis of the morning’s plan.

Argo and I had decided when the River defeated us that a real boat was in order for the next assault, and since Lou is a rated master for vessels of unlimited tonnage, I asked him if he had a line on a skipper and a boat we could rent to finally finish the saga of the Stones.

“No,” he said. “But I have an idea on how to do it.”

And so began the epic fail. We arranged to meet at his rowing club’s boathouse yesterday morning, and Jon-without agreed to be part of the final triumphant amphibious landing.

I will confess that I could have done a little bit better on the final planning, and I did not bing my “A” game to the morning. I had to pick Jon up at 0715, which I made to the minute, and we only screwed up the approach to the George Washington Parkway by inadvertently driving into the District, but we eventually wound up on the correct side of the Potomac with minutes to spare, and there was a near-empty parking garage immediately adjacent to the Alexandria Seaport Foundation, and we stuck the Panzer in there, shedding much of the water-soluble baggage.

Key fob? Wallet? Whatever.

Lou was relaxing outside the boathouse, and we were minutes early, even if a bit flustered at our inadvertent tour of Downtown. The River really is something that divides all sorts of good sense from other things.

Did I mention that learning to row on a Cornish dinghy is way cool? How graceful that wooden lack-strape cockleshell is, and the way it dances on the waves? Or shipping your oar on a peg with a round of rope as your oarlock? Or how big that damn River is when you are in the navigational channel and do not have the right of way with a hangover?

Anyway, presently we found ourselves across the channel and into the shallow water with the spawning carp and on a wild and distant shore. The number of things that could go wrong on this adventure were legion, and got worse. After an uneventful beaching and disembarkation, we got separated in the dense undergrowth, the directions made no sense, and despite having connectivity via phone in a plastic bag, I could not find the GPS coordinates I should have downloaded to get us to within eight feet of the Stone, assuming that the idiots who share my ill-advised passion actually had actually really been there.

The directions are clear and simple. And wrong.

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After crashing through the mounds of plastic bottles, washed up coolers, motorcycle helmets, footballs and basketballs, with evidence of the other mammals that actually live in this thicket of wilderness in the heart of the Capital of the Free World, we had lost Mallory and Lou, I was immobile on a stump with my feet in the Potomac, thinking that perhaps that this foolishness was going to cost someone their pride, if not their life.

I was shouting into the green for Lou and Mallory, and later just at SE 9.

“I do not surrender, SE 9! I will piss on you next time!”

Actually, Lou and Mallory wandered up the tangled beach a while later, Jon returned from his last foray into the wild to try to find them, and we re-embarked the dinghy, accepting temporary defeat. Lou let me take the cox’n position, and despite my manifold lack of training, we conducted an uneventful transit back to the civilized side of the River.

Upon mooring, we broke down the equipment on the dinghy, oars, rings, footboards and rudder and got them properly stowed. All electronic devices, even the inadequate ones, were liberated from their waterproof containers. We parted after a tour of the Seaport Foundation workshop, and Jon and I swore to contribute lavishly.

We had to. We will be back. And we will conquer that god-damn Stone. And I am going to do what I told it, the last time I was close enough for it to hear me.

Jon-without and I were grateful to Lou, the master mariner, and to Mallory whose stroke was elegant. In tribute to their expertise and access to watercraft, we walked up to the Union Street Public House, eponymously named for its location, only two minutes before the formal opening hour.

Bruce the barkeep opened up early, on general principle, and over the course of the next therapeutic hours, introduced us to an amazing concoction composed of Stoli Vanilla and diet Schweppes, eerily and insidiously tasting like a Cream Soda of old, and possibly the best new drink of the summer.

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And that, my friends, was only the before-noon part of Saturday, and there was plenty more to come.

Hell, I am in Culpeper this morning, and actually remember how I got here. So, it may have been an epic fail, but there is more to come on that, and what an amazing summer is it starting to be!

Copyright 2016 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

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