Day #1--They're off!

(Prelude by Fred Tutman): Thursday night...

Well they’re off! The 2008 Sojourn has officially begun! My job today was loading kayaks and driving the shuttle bus. It’s been a day where the phone on my hip vibrated constantly, I’ve stacked more kayaks paddles and PFD’s than I care to remember and most muscles ache. I left Lauren Webster who works in our office organizing restoration projects, along with the other Sojourners down at Kings Landing Park in Calvert County. Lauren’s usually immaculate car looked like something from the “Grapes of Wrath” fleeing West, with cases of soda pop stacked in the back seat, buckets of fruit salad, baggies overflowing with homemade brownies and a giant touring kayak precariously lashed to the roof of her car. It was quite an insane Thursday with endless details to be attended too ranging from assigning marine radio frequencies for the safety boats, to helping people setting up tents down by the water, loading coolers and other gear into the huge “U-Haul” van that will shadow the Sojourn to each of it’s pit stops over the next few days. I am working on the “pit crew” this year. My job, in addition to usual mountains of office and field work that often fills my days, will be to operate our 22-foot patrol boat on some days, helping to keep jet ski operators and other possible hazards away from the flock of 80 or so kayaks that will be operating in big water where they would be vulnerable to the speedboats and other stuff. On other days I will be dropping off supplies and helping to shuttle paddlers from various campsites to their cars and back again. For this task I will be lumbering along the roads in the “River Bus” which always draws lots of stares because of its garish colors and high profile river theme gaily painted on the exterior. Part of my duties tomorrow will be to trailer our red patrol boat to Solomon’s harbor and launch her so that for the next few days I can easily get onto the water and navigate to the Sojourners during the various parts of their journey. The boat is loaded, fueled with all the gear checked out. After a winter in mothballs I’m anxious to get the boat onto the water, and see how it performs after it’s recent mechanical overhaul. It always seems like paradox when out of the water. It just sits under tarp looking lame and out of place in the office parking lot. In the water it actually seems to have a life of its own with all the many electrical components operating and the playful way it bob in the waves and responds to the water environment it was designed for.

I noticed earlier today that Greg Lewis, the facility manager from Jug Bay/Patuxent River park is actually paddling this year along with his daughter. Greg spends all year working behind the scenes planning and unsnarling red tape in order to get the Sojourn ready to launch. This will be his first time actually paddling with group. I saw many familiar faces from past years but also plenty of new faces like those from Digital Harbor School in Baltimore and many others from all points of the compass. I noted Dave an Marta Kelsey placidly flipping burgers under a Pavilion and as I left the group last night, and I saw a band setting up for contra dancing on the lawn next to the park’s visitor’s center. Of course there was also Kate Dowling from the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay on hand looking rumpled but somehow unflappable as she attended to a thousand large and tiny details needed to get people oriented, and settled for the night.

So while I sit up late at night doing paperwork, the Sojourners sleep under the stars tonight listening to the crickets, the loons and the other sounds next to the river. Lauren will be phoning in her daily blog content and I will be retyping and uploading it here so that you, the reader can follow the progress of the Sojourn as sort so a virtual paddler—your positive energy can help fuel the Sojourners as they pull their way many miles down the placid Patuxent all the way to the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. Tomorrow the group will stop for lunch at Eagle Harbor which is at the southern tip of Prince Georges’ County and next to the border of Charles County (immediately next to the Chalk Point Power Plant). Afterwards the group will paddle just past the town of Benedict (once famous for being burned by British invaders during the War of 1812) and the group will set up camp for the night at the State owned camp site located off Indian Creek. Lauren’s first dispatch will also get filed sometime tomorrow. Stay tuned!