Havana Bad DAY
DAY 214 of connecting Statue of Liberty and Gateway Arch by Runyaking
April 22, 2024
I left home about midnight EDT and arrived where the 2023 runyak season ended last October, in Liverpool, IL about 7:00 CDT. About and eight hour drive. I began getting drowsy on I-55 southwest of Chicago and pulled into a Casey’s gas station. I didn’t sleep, maybe dozed off for one minute or two. I was was back on the road after 20 minutes of trying to get some winks. I never felt drowsy again. Funny how refreshed one can get with a one minute doze.
After prepping Swiftee at Liverpool, I left to plant the van at today’s landing, enroute I met with Kate. She had driven from the other direction, St Louis. She’d been to a beer festival there. Her cooler was full of beer. She may have brought some MO craft beer but I never saw any of it.
This being leap year, I, the self proclaimed Michigan Beer Snob, only drink Michigan beer. I have a clause in my leap year beer rules, If in another state, I can drink that state’s beer. She and I both had brought some IL beer to drink on the river. It’s a good thing for we’d be in beer hell. Peoria was the last town we passed with a craft brewery, the only thing we’d likely find now are those beers brewed in Milwaukee, and St Louis, and Golden, Colorado. Those beers never get past the Michigan Beer Snob’s lips any year, let alone a leap year.
In separate vehicles we drove to Havana, IL, our landing for DAY 213. We planted my van there for the end of the paddle.
Kate then drove me over three mile to a place in the road where I’d began a 9.15 mile run. The location was within the Emiquon National Wildlife Refuge. DAY 213’s run would total 12.4 mi. and I did not want to run it all at once. I’d run the remainder when the paddle was over. I want the runs to be no longer than 9.5 miles. Running further truly saps my energy stores. The pause gives the legs time to recharge a bit (as I instead deplete the energy stores in my arms by paddling).
Some may not understand the starting point and finish point of my runyaking rules, which geographically is same location. One reason I know this to be true, a fellow runyaker tried to convince me way back on the AuSable River, that I should just do that section of my journey with the current, from Grayling, in the middle of the state to Lake Huron, instead of against the current.
While running today an electrical analogy came to my head of how to describe it. Say, I start anywhere, but when finished, it has to be a complete circuit. In other words, wherever I start, imagine I am laying down electrical wire. I keep rolling the wire out whether running or kayaking. When the runyak DAY is finished an imaginary electrical circuit is complete and current could run through it. And, it has to be all one wire. I cannot splice a piece of wire, or lay down wire in the opposite direction, to complete the imaginary wire circuit.
When Kate dropped me off I realized I’d left my Garmin Forerunner in my van back in Havana. Argh! We should have drove back and got it. Running without it is bad enough, for I am a data kind of guy. I feel it’s even more important while paddling. When running I can feel how fast I’m moving, but with many conditions of current and waves it is hard to comprehend the paddle speed.
We launched well before noon and it went easy enough, yet, right away winds of 16 mph and more were as in our face the entire paddle. We stayed near the river bank as close as we could for in the middle of the river whitecaps were seen all the way to Havana.
With no Garmin, I tried using a phone app, Strava. I’m not too familiar with it’s navigation it was pretty much useless. Then, I somehow unknowingly stopped it in route and everything was for naught. I do know from checking Google Timeline afterwards that we were were on the river 4 hours and 25 minutes. Then, from measuring the paddle distance with Google Earth, I knew we kayaked 8.4 miles. From that I could figure the pace. It was 30:30/mi. A horrible pace. Carrying the kayaks on the banks would have been much faster… if that was possibility. It was not, for the river is in flood stage and much of the banks were under water.
I’d been checking Google Maps prior to the trip and I was seeing flood warnings in the area we’d be kayaking.
It concerned me, but not to where I’d cancel a long awaited 4-day trip. In some instances I thought it might help, for it would increase the current speed. I do like fast currents. Only downside I could think of, is some launches might be under water. When launching today at Liverpool the ramp itself was mostly underwater, but you can see from the photo it was an easy launch.
Hugging the riverbank and we eventually made it to Havana. In Havana we passed under the Scott W. Lucas Memorial Bridge.
Just passed it was our planned landing spot on the property of Havana Forestry District Office
For DAY 214 to conclude I still had to run back to where I’d started that morning within the Emiquon Wildlife Refuge.
In doing so I had to run over the Scott Lucas Bridge. Which caused concern for the shoulder was very narrow. A little scary but it ended up not being a huge problem.
During the 3.25 mile run I passed over Spoon River which I’d never heard of before. Kate and I paddled by its mouth on the Illinois just before landing. At the time it only made me think of Moon River, Johnny Mercer’s song from Breakfast at Tiffany’s. But a weird coincidence happened one week later, April 29. I was at a Genesee Wind Symphony concert and was listening to a performance of Spoon River by Percy Grainger. I’d never heard it before either. Yet, it was written more than 30 years before Mercer’s Moon River.
Wikipedia: In 1857 Captain Charles H. Robinson collected a fiddle tune he heard at a country dance at Bradford, Illinois. He sent the tune to Edgar Lee Masters who passed it on to the Australian−American composer Percy Grainger. Grainger used it as the basis for his composition ″Spoon River″ written over the years 1919−1929. Several editions for concert band have been published.
I finished the 3.25 mile run and Kate picked me up. It was dinner time and I was so hungry I could eat a horseshoe. And I did, at Babe’s in downtown Havana. The specialty at Babe’s are “horseshoes.” We first noticed horseshoes on menus last year in Peoria. It is the signature dish of Springfield, IL and can be found in cities within a 100 mile radius from the capital. Basically, it is an open face sandwich of Texas toast, some meat, usually hamburger, topped with French fries and cheese sauce.
It was only 7:30 pm when we left Babe’s but I was tired. I hadn’t slept but one minute in the past 40 hours! I had woken up early (3:00 am) Sunday morning to drive to Ann Arbor. I was to run the Big House 5k at 8:00 am. It was now Monday evening. Yeah, I was very, very tired. We slept in our vehicles at a campground, of Anderson Lake Fishing and Wildlife Area downriver from Havana. We’d found out about it when checking out our next day’s landing point for DAY 214. And, that’s not all we found out about. It looked like DAY 214’s Plan A was out, because of flooding, a Plan B was needed. Read more about that in my next update.
Thanks for towing us along on the river with you. Enjoying the ride.
Is that "W. Dearborn St." crossing the bridge?????