Contoocook, NH, 4th of July Race
I’d been trying to get to this race for four years. With my dad being so sick and unpredictably in and out of the hospital, I hadn’t been able to make it. Priscilla Reinertsen hosts this race, and she hosts a huge picnic and turkey roast at her home after the race. She has a wildflower maze in her field to wander through, which is just gorgeous.
Pam Browning was brave enough to volunteer to be my canoe partner for this race. She paddled stern. A bit surprisingly, two kayakers in a C2 actually did pretty good together. Pam and I have raced K2 together several times so it wasn’t surprising that we worked well together, but it was a little surprising to me that we could paddle a canoe so well together. Pam’s a great steerswoman, which makes it easy as a bowperson to follow her commands.
I think a lot of the pro canoe paddlers and the C1 paddlers were surprised to see Pam and I in a canoe, and that made it even more fun for me as they did double takes as they passed us going up river and then saw us head on when they were coming back down the river ahead of us. Pam even had us drafting other boats as they passed us.
The prize Pam and I received for finishing as the third place women’s C2 was locally made buffalo stick sausages. The local buffalos in Contoocook are very tasty.
It was a good day.