I feel like this:
I didn’t die doing something that stupid and worthless, so I am way ahead of this guy.
Sometimes dopes and idiots get recognition, but recognition doesn’t mean they aren’t dopes and idiots.
As a father with an adventerous streak, I have to side with those that say when you choose to be a father, you choose to scale back your adventures. If giving up kayaking solo across a sea, or skiing solo to the North Pole, or climbing Everest solo w/o oxygen causes resentment, you are not ready for children.
A friend of mine hiked up Kilamanjaro before having kids, because he and his wife always wanted to do it, and they thought it would be safer before kids than after, just in case they caught some weird disease. I have a few friends that mountain climb, paraglide, ice climb, etc. They are childless, by choice. Not only is the risk unfair to any children, but the time and expense involved is unfair, also. The time away from family is what the military guys I know regret, not actually going to Iraq.
But, I understand why he did it. He probably felt like Jimmy Stewart in “Its a Wonderful Life”. A lifelong dream to see and do things most only vaguely wonder about confounded by falling in love a bit too early, and having kids a bit too early. Maybe it was to be his last big thing. Maybe his wife and friends loved him because of his risk taking, not despite, and to give up up his lifestyle would not be a compromise, but so alter their view of him as to eventually cost them their love and respect - maybe his self respect. (I know, his wife never said “Honey, if you don’t kayak across the Tasmin, I won’t respect you in the morning.”, but over the years, we old married farts can become someone our spouses wouldn’t have initially respected.)
Ditto, well said, huzah and all that stuff.
I attended an “inspirational” talk by some fool who climbed Everest, got into trouble, and barely survived with the loss of his hands and feet. His experience was supposed to inspire us that with proper focus, anything is possible.
I kept looking at him and thinking how foolish he was. Wife, kid, successful career as a doctor. He just had to climb a freakin’ mountain where one in six climbers dies. Same odds of Russian Roulette with the latter being so much cheaper to attempt.
I’m not sure how this can be inherently any worse or better than, say, getting killed because you forgot to look both ways when you crossed the street, or drilling through a power cable when you’re fixing up shelves. What difference does it make whether you’re doing something productive and worthwhile when you accidentally die?
Can you imagine paddling through forests, completely content as you silently merge with nature. Can you imagine paddling along rivers, lakes and oceans with your spouse, just the two of you in the entire world, knowing each others bodies and souls as no others ever could? Can you imagine watching your children grow into strong, self-sufficient adults over the years as your family paddles together in the remote wilderness.
Can a wilderness paddler imagine any other life?
I grieve for my lost friends – Ducan Taylor off Mauritius, and Herb Pohl this summer on Superior – and there have been moments when it could have gone either way for me, but when all is said and done, the risks are well worth the rewards.
We all must go someday, so the least we can do is to leave our family and friends knowing that we lived a life well led.
Richard Culpeper
*
“Hour after hour, day after day, we paddled and sang and slept under the hot sun on the northern ocean, wanting never to return.”*
Integration:
• Feel the power – share the path of the water
“The great waterfall of Lu Canyon is thousands of feet high, with a halo of mist that can be seen for many miles. Nothing survives the violent waters at its foot. Yet once K’ung Fu-tzu saw an old man swim the tempest. K’ung-Fu-tzu and his retainers ran with ropes to rescue him, but when they descended to the floor of the canyon they found the man sitting on a large boulder, quietly singing.”
“K’ung Fu-tzu exclaimed, “You cannot be alive! What are your powers to allow you to do what you have done?” The old man turned and smiled, “I am just a man, but I began to learn as a boy, and I continue to practice. I flow with the water, going up, down and around with it. I forget myself and do not struggle against forces far beyond my control. Then I use my meager abilities in the moments when the water and I share the same path.”
• Be the power – two people, but one body, one mind
“You will learn to think as one, where decision will happen because you both know what the other is thinking. You will learn to paddle as one, with matching technique and a tremendous sensitivity to what each other is doing.”
“As you develop together as a paddling team, you will start to feel the boat respond when you paddle as one. As you hit, it will surge explosively out of the water, and glide along as you recover, and then just as it is about to settle, as one you will hammer down again, and then again, and again and again and again. One heart, one mind, one body; stroke after stroke after stroke, feeling the boat respond under you, feeling the interaction of the water with your boat and paddles. Feeling the grace and power that on your own you would never have. Sheer joy of movement.”
Richard Culpeper
“Hour after hour, day after day, we paddled and sang and slept under the hot sun on the northern ocean, wanting never to return.”
I would agree with that. Don’t understand why there wasn’t a support team involved. Not the 15 minutes of fame he was looking for. Sad all around.
I didn’t realize Hitler was a positive role model for adventure seekers.
Oh for pity’s sake, Muffin. No one is arguing that the guy should give up paddling. Hell, to get me to give up paddling, you’d have to pry the paddle from my cold, dead hands. But there is a substantial difference between paddling around on some wilderness shoreline versus taking off on a solo trans-oceanic trip with half-assed or no safety precautions.
This guy wasn’t just seeking wilderness fun. He was a glory hound, and to get that glory he was willing to risk making his child an orphan.
Hands up those who live in neighborhoods with high murder rates.
Hands up those who are overweight.
Hands up those who smoke.
These are all controllable risks that Andrew did not take that a great many people on these boards do take.
It’s really just a matter of choosing which risks you are willing to take and which risks you are not willing to take. Whatever your choice, you will be playing the odds. Andrew made a calculated choice, and lost. Many of us will lose, for making choices far more mundane than to go adventuring.
Note that he had nearly completed the crossing, was within a day of shore, and was in good condition. In other words, the length and remoteness of the trip was probably not a factor in what killed him.
I am curious as to why his epirb was not attached to him, and why he did not have a spare also attached to him. I am also curious as to whether or not his drysuit was sealed or if he had opened it for some reason. He obviously made a mistake – just what that mistake was we do not know at this time.
As it happens, I was watching the film of his paddling along the Antarctic coast when in real life he was lost off the coast of NZ. In the film it appeared that he did not have much experience at cold water and high wind paddling. I wonder if this was a factor in his death.
If you choose to move your family to a high crime neighborhood, you keep locks on the door, install secure windows, and befriend the neighbors. And you might want to buy a gun.
Overweight people should lose weight, particularly if they are obese, especially if they have children.
Smokers and other drug abusers should quit for their kids.
So are you saying that parents shouldn’t care about how their risky behavior? Do you really think a morbidly obese, two-pack-a-day smoker who regularly drag races and handles rattlesnakes is making wise choices for his family? Is it too much to ask that he pare down some of these activities and not be so–I dunno–self-absorbed?
You’re right. Simply driving the streets of Miami is risky behavior. But the difference is that some risks are necessary for survival. Just like a lion has to risk getting kicked in the head by the zebra he’s chasing, the average person has to risk getting into a car accident or mugged on the subway to bring home the bacon. Many people have to deal with high crime neighborhoods because they can’t afford safer ones. But if someone with a family decided to move to a high crime neighborhood simply for the adventure of it all, I’d be like :rolleyes: for that too.
I think it’s incumbent on parents to limit unneccessary risks they take into their life. And that includes the risks you mentioned above in addition to kayaking across an ocean all by yourself.
Presumably be became separated from his yak without a life jacket and beacon however shark attack is also a definite possibility in that area, no ones likely to ever know for sure. Personally I’m no hero, my near death experience in a kayak was in a rapid less than fifty meters from my car, don’t know if that quality me as irresponsible.
Did you see the linked photo? Call me crazy, but he doesn’t look that great to me. Bottom line is there were easy precautions for this man to take which would have saved his life, and he didn’t take them.
I really don’t get the mentality of adventurers who basically torture themselves and risk probable death for something that, when it comes down to it, doesn’t mean much. When I read about people getting lost on mountains and nearly dying (and usually losing most or all of their companions, as well), it never sounds like much fun, strangely. I find it oddly uninspiring, in fact.
Most people who live in areas with really high murder rates are there because they can’t afford someplace better. Also, the murder rate would have to be shockingly high to equal the kind of risk this guy was taking.
Noone has yet mentioned the amount of money wasted trying to rescue this guy.
I do not know how much it was, but it was probably thousands if not tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Many people nearly make it across the railroad tracks before the train hits them. At the end of the day, they’re still dumb and they’re still dead.
Agreed. Maybe he was doing things on the cheap. I suspect, though, that he felt if it wasn’t truly solo, it wasn’t worth doing.
There are things you can learn no other way. There are things you can experience no other way. There are things you can feel no other way. Not all of them are good things.
Read Aron Ralstad’s book, “Between a Rock and a Hard Place”. He is the guy who cut his own arm off. He asks this very question, and honestly admits he can’t answer it. It is not for “fun”, really. It is more primal and basic than that. Is there nothing you want to do, that ostesnsibly doesn’t have a purpose? Run a marathon? Hike the Appalachian trial? Drive Rt. 66? Knit a sweater? It is closest to that.
I don’t want to defend this kayaker, because I do agree a father shouldn’t be paddling across the ocean solo with no support. I do want to defend adventurers in general, though. All of the ones I have met are very good people in all respects. Most have given a lot of thought about truly important matters and what they want out of life. They are not glory hounds. Quick, name the first person to sail solo around the world. Name the sherpa who accompanied Hilllary up Everest. You can’t, because there is little fame in any of this stuff. Flashing your beaver, that will get you in the news.
Glory and fame are subtly different things. You can seek glory among as small a group as your circle of friends, without ever achieving fame. At a minimum, these guys are looking for bragging rights. It is ego-driven, and I think this sort of adventurism betrays a deep insecurity.