Herotodus said, “human life is like a revolving wheel and it never allows the same people to continue long in prosperity.” The contrapositive of that is the same people never have to be constantly under the wheel. But anytime anyone talks about fate I am suspicious. You feel best when you achieve what is hardest; women and men create their own fortune. The sooner people realize that, the quicker they can improve their lot. This trip illustrates that principle.

Thursday, July 29th, Day 1

We trailered “Assembly Required” to Albany from New Baltimore in Greene County. As we drove up route 144 (River Road) we could not find the remote control to the wireless electric motor, which was supposed to be our primary propulsion mechanism (running off of a battery bank charged by two wind turbines). This remote was our Achilles’ Heel: the motor had no manual controls of any kind, even an on/off switch. So we searched everywhere, my parent’s house, my apartment, the pavement at Coeymans Landing where we’d performed trials. It was nowhere. We arrived at the boat launch in Albany two hours before our scheduled departure time (one hour before high tide that night) and contemplated dismantling the wind turbines, removing the four deep cycle marine batteries and electric motor because without the controller it was dead weight. Then I put on my life jacket and it was clipped to it.

“Jesus Christ,” Rob shook his head. My father and cousin, who helped us assemble the boat, exchanged anxious half-smiles. The trip hinged on a lot of hypotheticals working together, the failure of any could ruin it. I put the remote inside the boat and sighed nervously.

It took two hours to assemble and wire the boat. We were helped by two kids, Chi and Mohammed, who happened to be looking around Albany on a trip from Queens to Montreal. At 7 p.m. the water was slacking and a gentle west/northwest wind made cat-paws on the surface. About thirty friends and family encircled us as we passed a bottle of bubbles. I donned my fedora and ‘adventurer’s jacket’ that I’ve worn on every trip, and Rob raised the American flag that has also joined us for every mile (we even found this flag torn up in the woods after the third boat was stolen and destroyed–Rob sewed it back together by hand).

“Friends, Albanians, countrymen,” I pronounced, “lend me your ears! Five years and seven rafts ago, I had a dream. That someday we would build a boat and float to Manhattan without using fossil fuels. Some have asked ‘why;’ we have said ‘why not?’ Now our day has come: July 29th, 2010, a date which will live in…whatever is the opposite of infamy. Now, my friends, on to New York City!”

* * *

Albany is about 126 nautical miles, or 144 standard miles, from Manhattan, accounting for all the twists and turns of the river. We pushed off and rowed under the railroad bridge connecting Albany and Rensselaer. We drank a beer in celebration. We passed the concert at Alive at Five and rowed beneath the Dunn Memorial Bridge, past the U.S.S. Slater and into the Port of Albany. Boaters motored to us and wished us well as we passed piles of scrap metal and moored, rusted barges. By eight p.m. we reached the Normanskill Creek and crossed into Bethlehem. There it was that “The Manhattan Project” was wrecked by vandals. We held a moment of silence.

The sun set at 8:17 and cast oranges and reds in layers across the sky. We could perceive the movement of the sun, like our boat, very slowly, down.

It grew dark as we rowed into undeveloped banks, the stars and blinking buoys the only lights ahead or above us. The moon was not to rise until early Friday morning. We rowed in darkness hearing only the splashes of our oars and crickets chirping like timed tambourines.

At eleven p.m. we met my parents at Henry Hudson Park in Glenmont, eight miles south of our launch site. There they provided us with a cooler filled with frozen chicken breasts, steaks, pork chops and ham that my mother had prepared for our provisions. When we landed we smelled a noxious odor, and checking the battery bank, we found that one of the batteries was smoking. The negative terminal melted right into the battery and you could see the liquid acid inside. We took this battery off the boat: one quarter of our reserve power. We bailed the boat because it was leaking about five gallons an hour. Also we installed specialty oar locks–we’d ordered these because, two days previously, we’d tested the boat and snapped two metal locks within in hour. We’d overnighted the special oar locks at $75…guaranteed by noon, they did not arrive until an hour after our launch, so my parents brought them up. They fit only awkwardly on the oars we had custom made for other locks, so we had to use lots of duct tape to help attach them. There we had a beer and a sub with my parents and pushed off at 11:30 p.m.

“Now we are on our way,” I said to Rob as the park grew smaller behind us.

“It would be nice to have that north wind that was forecast,” Rob observed.

That morning around 2 a.m. we passed under the Schodack bridges. By 3:30 the tide was beginning to flood, we’d used half of our battery power, and the north wind had not materialized with any significance. So we threw anchor just north of Coeymans, eleven miles south of Albany, and slept for four hours.

Friday, Day 2

We woke up with the sun Friday morning, having slept about three and a half hours. Everything was dewey and cold so we looked forward to the rising sun. We decided to keep the rest of the batteries on reserve for an emergency unless they were recharged by the wind turbines. Ordinarily one would install an ammeter [or "amp-meter"] to measure the charge from the wind turbines but we had neither the time nor the money as we finished the boat, so we had no way of knowing if or how much the turbines were charging our batteries. So we rowed, each with two oars, past Coeymans. Then the female plate of our rear rowing station broke, leaving us only one station. So we took turns sleeping and rowing as the sun evaporated the morning mist. Rob rowed as I cooked us eggs and bacon on a grill. As soon as we ate we felt our strength build and it was ridiculous to think we made other trips without good provisions. That morning we passed, at a mile an hour, Barren Island, New Baltimore, Rattlesnake Island and Coxsackie. By the end of the tide that afternoon we’d reached the “Middle Ground Flats,” a group of islands between Athens and Hudson, around 25 miles south of Albany. In fact we rowed partially against the flood tide in order to make it to these flats, because they provide a two-mile stretch of sandy beaches. Here we got off the boat and took turns pulling the boat via a rope as we walked along the beach to the southern tip of the island, thereby making a two-mile gain while the tide was upcoming. It wasn’t much but we knew the trip, like life, would be composed of many tiny gains strung together and we refused to stay still if there was any means of moving forward. We pulled the boat to the end of one of the flats, rowed it across a bay at a quarter-mile-an-hour to another small island, then pulled it down that island at a half-mile-an-hour.

“Well, progress is progress,” Rob said.

“Slow but steady, like the tortoise.”

At the southern tip of the flats we cooked up steak sandwiches and had rum and cokes. We rested for about an hour in the afternoon sun in what seemed to be a painting of San Blas or Bermuda. Then in the slackwater one hour before high tide we pushed off again. Aided by a light north breeze we passed Athens as evening enveloped the river, and after dark, we passed the Rip Van Wrinkle Bridge and Catskill point.

“We are now a whole day ahead of last year, our most successful trip,” Rob stated. We drank a beer to that. As it neared midnight our eyes drooped and our arms and shoulders ached from rowing. On our hands big blisters were forming. My lower back hurt from making the same pulling motion all day. By Inbocht Bay, about 35 miles south of Albany, we threw anchor for the night. I set my alarm for 6:30 a.m. (three hours in the future) and fell asleep within nanoseconds of closing my eyes.

Saturday, Day 3

It was dark when we woke on Saturday. Every muscle, every ligament ached. I’d jogged, done pull-ups, sit-ups and pushups in anticipation of rowing a great deal but that did not prevent the soreness. As I climbed from inside the cabin to the roof to row, I groaned with every movement. It felt as though my legs, backside and arms had been beaten with rods. My palms felt like someone had surgically implanted pebbles beneath the red blisters, and my ass was a giant bruise from sitting on the hard cabin top. But we rubbed our eyes and rowed, half asleep, before the sun began his day.

Between Catskill and Saugerties there is an unremarkable stretch of river. The banks are composed of trees and weeds. Now and again the railroad tracks appear–they cut off all access citizens might otherwise have to the river between Albany and NYC–or some business’ wharf sticks out, rusted and rotting. We passed Saugerties and the Esopus Creek around noon. In the early afternoon a break in the foliage on the east bank afforded a glimpse of a well-kept hillside.

“That’s a really nice, like, hill,” I said.

“Chelsea Clinton’s wedding!” a voice called out. A man in a motor boat came alongside us. “That’s Rhinebeck, that’s exactly where the wedding is today. Downstream if you look up you can see the tents. That’s some vessel you got there. Homemade?”

“You could tell?”

“Is it a car chassis? A Volkswagen?”

“No, it’s made from making molds of a canoe with fiberglass,” we explained.

“That’s really something.” We watched as two black, sparkling clean SUVs patrolled the hill; as two police cars appeared on the railroad tracks a mile up and a mile downstream; as three police boats and two dozen pleasure craft congregated in the river; as a yellow helicopter looped overhead. “I hope Obama comes,” the man went on, holding a pair of binoculars to his eyes. “I want to see Airforce One.”

We threw our anchor and slept as a boat crowd coalesced. We woke up and caught the ebb tide around 4 p.m. A mile downstream at the Rhinebeck rail station the paparazzi was lined up, pointing cameras with telescope lenses up at the hill.

“All these people are paid to come up here just to take pictures of a hill?” I said to Rob.

“Well, they get some picture of Hillary or Madeline Albright and some tabloid pays ten thousand dollars to put it on the cover with a scandalous headline.”

“That is ridiculous.”

“Welcome to the world we live in. ‘Free Lindsay!’”

Saturday night, as my friends in Albany took to the bars, Rob and I rowed ourselves beneath the Kingston-Rhinecliff bridge. We passed the Esopus lighthouse which we’d been given a tour of as we passed it in 2008. Around midnight we threw anchor along the east shore two miles south of Hyde Park, about 68 miles south of Albany.

“Today is our last day with a north wind behind us,” I said to Rob as we rolled out our sleeping bags. “After this it gets harder.”

We slept within squinting distance of the Mid-Hudson Bridge at Poughkeepsie.

Sunday, Day 4

We were nervous as we approached Poughkeepsie. This was a tough place for us in other years. The wind was shifting and blew from the west that morning as we approached the city. We were so tired that Rob took a picture of the railroad/pedestrian walk bridge as we passed beneath it and fell asleep before we passed the Mid-Hudson Bridge not a half mile south. We tandem rowed (one of us on the port side with one oar, the other on the starboard with the other) to get past the factories south of Poughkeepsie. At 72 miles, “Po-Town” marked our halfway point. Then a southern wind developed that halted our progress–exactly where it had halted us in 2009 and 2008. We had no choice but to throw anchor and wait it out, even as the tide continued to ebb. Immediately we fell asleep. I dreamt I lay on a tarmac and a bi-plane shot bullets at me. I heard the the bullets ricochet. Then I woke up and realized what I’d heard was raindrops landing on empty aluminum cans in our boat. Quickly we threw a tarp over the open bow as the sky became a faucet. A storm blew in that sent rain flying at us horizontally. The wind kicked at us in an attempt to blow us north. With every gust we begged the anchor line not to break. As the waves were whipped by the wind to rolls the boat bounced like a bucking bull. At every second we anticipated flying backwards into shore rocks that would have dashed us to pieces. I grabbed my life jacket and prepared for the worst. Thunder, white-sky lightening. Then the storm subsided over a ten minute period, the sky cleared, and the only evidence of the storm was a wet roof.

After we dried off we climbed to the roof and rowed again because the south wind diminished after the storm. We passed a “discharge facility” where alarms announced the introduction of treated wastewater into the river. We rowed to Chelsea, about 80 miles south of Albany, by the end of the tide at eleven. I set my alarm for 4 a.m.

Monday, Day 5

The conditions changed. Changes in circumstances necessitate changes in tactics. The south wind–our nemesis on every trip–meant that the tides would have no effect. Up until Monday, if we rowed, then rested, inertia would carry us forward a ways. Now if we stopped rowing we’d slide backwards, if the wind let us row at all.

Rob had studied aerial images of the river ad nauseum. We rolled out our nautical map and examined the upcoming bends and penninsulas which could break the breeze for us, and which shores would provide an opportunity to drag the boat.

“We must continue to move,” I said. “We’ll row–if we can make it two hundred feet, fine. We’ll get there and throw an anchor. We’ll rest and then we’ll row another two hundred feet.”

“Progress is progress,” Rob said. “In a couple of hours people will start their work week. Our week entails getting to Manhattan. That’s our mission.”

And it was a mission. I felt like an NCO planning a tactical assault on an obscure bridge during the Normandy invasion. We were tired and achy, but our ticket home was through Manhattan.

That morning we left Chelsea and rowed south. We hugged the east shore. Although we passed Newburgh we only made four miles during the morning tide. As we approached Bannerman Island [this is the island with the dilapidated castle you see as you travel south on Amtrack or Metro-North just below Poughkeepsie. It was used to store surplus Spanish-American War armaments until an explosion destroyed the place] the south wind flew in at 15 mph and stopped us dead.

“This is where the wind killed us last year,” I groaned. In 2009 we had spent two days a mile south of Bannerman Island at Breakneck Point marooned on railroad track rocks before our anchor-line snapped and our mast broke and we had to be rescued by tow. I put on my life jacket. “Well, only one thing to do. Keep us off the rocks.” I jumped in the water with a shore line and swam to the rocks.

It is one thing to walk along a sandy beach with a line and tow a boat behind you as you stroll. It is a whole different challenge trying to climb over big boulders balancing while holding the rope in one hand as the boat blows backwards in the wind. It took athleticism to jump from boulder to boulder on the dry rocks, but when fallen trees began sticking over the rocks into the river I had to jump into the water to get around them. I would take one step and the water would be six feet deep. Then next the I’d find no footing because the water was over my head and I’d have to swim to the next place I could find a foot-hold before the boat pulled me back with it. The next step I’d smash my knee on a rock just below the surface, lose my balance and fall in the water. I would climb over an invisible rock, get on the other side of it, brace my leg against it, and pull the boat forward six feet. Then I would let out enough line to swim to the next rock before the boat slid back, brace myself on that rock and pull the boat another six feet. When fallen trees stuck out I’d have to put the rope in my teeth, use my hands to climb around or beneath the branches, then pull the boat once I could wrap my fingertips around the next jagged, underwater rock. I sliced up my shin and hands. At one point I slipped off a a boulder and landed on my tailbone and for a full minute I could not move. Meanwhile, as I pulled the boat Rob had to keep it from hitting the shore rocks using a stick. Easy enough to do when only rocks are ashore. But when the trees hung over the the rocks Rob had to keep the spinning wind turbine rotors from hitting the overhanging branches. We were not always successful–we added some chopped up leaves to the river. It took us three hours to move 1 mile downstream just north of Breakneck Point, where route 9 comes close enough to the river that we could rendezvous with Rob’s parents to resupply.

Rob’s parents brought us ice because ours had melted and, besides drinking 80 degree Cokes and beer, our meat was starting to go bad. Also, they had searched every Walmart in the Hudson Valley for a trolling motor, because our wireless remote had died and we had no way to turn our motor on. My advice: don’t ever buy a wireless trolling motor.

By twilight we had our supplies loaded and we set off from Breakneck Point, exactly where we ended our 2009 trip. We turned on the motor and powered through the wind toward Cold Spring. It felt great to move. In a half hour we passed what we could not pass during two days in ‘09. On the other side of Breakneck Point–a mountain with hiking and climbing paths–we heard female voices shout to us.

“Hey! Nice boat!”

We looked up and I saw two cute girls smoking something, hanging their feet over a cliff face seventy feet above us.

“Thanks!” I shouted through cupped hands.

“Where’d you get it?” They shouted. You could barely hear them.

“We built it!”

“Wow! Awesome! How old are you guys?”

“Twenty six! What about you?”

“Twenty two!”

“That’s a good age!”

“Meet us at Sandy Beach? A mile down?”

I sighed, “We can’t! We have to keep moving! We’re on a tight schedule.”

That was the most disappointing point in the trip for me. I guess maybe they were Sirens.

By dark we passed Cold Spring, still using our motor to pass the Marina where we had almost been hit by lightening in 2009, and we were further than we’d ever been.

As we approached West Point at night the wind died down so we could row without the motor. Supposedly the current is strongest here because the river is narrow and 15o feet deep. On the banks sheer cliffs rise from the river bottom and provide no way out of the water. Well, there was some current, but nothing to write home about. I wish we had triple the current at we had that West Point for the whole trip. We got two miles further by 2 a.m. and then the wind returned. We cast our anchor on the east bank across from Con Hook. We laid sleeplessly as a south wind pounded us all night. We feared an anchor break and twice had to bail the boat. 93 miles south of Albany, we pondered that our first two days we had made 25 miles a day, and now it was taking every mental and physical resource to make thirteen or fourteen. And the wind was forecast to get worse.

Tuesday, Day 6

The wind blew all night and in the morning it kept blowing. We hugged the east shore as closely as we could, almost bottoming out, so that “Anthony’s Nose,” a mountain that juts out of the east bank, would help break the wind. We rowed, then Rob dragged the boat and smashed his shin. Then we did the row-as-hard-as-you-can-and-throw-an-anchor technique to get to the Bear Mountain Bridge. Here a cliff prevented us from dragging the boat and the wind prevented us from rowing. We used our now-scarce battery reserves to motor under the bridge, but just after we’d passed a wind overpowered the motor and we had to throw an anchor. An anchor holds a boat to the bottom of a water body not by its weight, but by its shape. You must lay out a line equivalent to six times the water’s depth to anchor effectively in a wind. But the water just south of the Bear Mountain Bridge is between 89 and 116 feet, while we only had about 100 total feet of line. So we rowed as hard as we could to make it across the river to Iona Island where there is a bay and where Dunderberg Mountain to the south might break the wind. There we cooked what remained of our meat because it was starting to smell putrid. We tried to nap during the flood tide but it was impossible in the waves created by the wind. While we lay the wind blew us to shore and we grounded on rocks. After that we had to bail 40 gallons of water an hour from the boat and she listed slightly to starboard.

By six o’clock we’d made barely 3 miles and the wind only got stronger. This was terribly frustrating. We managed to row a half mile downstream and throw an anchor. There we dragged the boat by walking on rocks in the evening around Jones Point. At nine the wind died and we made progress rowing. We did not know how many peaceful periods we would get so we rowed as far as we could and then motored (who knew how much juice the batteries had?) to get to a shore in Haverstraw where we were protected from the wind enough to sleep for a few hours. We’d passed the 100 mile mark.

Wednesday, Day 7

As I write this it is now 11:48 p.m. and a jazz band playing in the back room at Justin’s is bringing the weekend to a close. The piano player’s hands tickle and jump around the keys as he jerks his head back and forth each measure. Then he rests, and closes his eyes as the bass player, who’d asked me why I had a waterproof river chart in a jazz bar, bobs with eyes closed too and commences a walking line. Only the drummer seems awake and sweaty. The sound of the jazz band is panacea. I am happy to have time to experience what I love again.

On Wednesday morning we were able to row only a few hundred feet downstream. Getting annoyed with our pace and the wind we threw anchor against the west shore. I dragged the boat a half mile over submerged rocks. Then Rob dragged. Bend after bend we hoped to see the Tappan Zee Bridge appear ahead of us but it would not. All afternoon we pulled the boat, sometimes swimming rock to rock, other times able to amble over cobbled beaches, past caves formed in cliffs of sedimentary rock, sometimes getting washed against the rocks because a barge sent a wake like an ocean wave to shore. The erosion of the riverbanks must be five times as rapid as a result of motor boats. I’ve got cuts on the bottoms of my feet, shins, ankles, hips and palms from that day. Over eight hours we pulled the boat two and a half miles. Finally at 8 p.m. I pulled the boat past buoy 15, and far in the distance we saw the Tappan Zee Bridge. At that we jumped for joy–not figuratively, we literally jumped.

After sundown the wind slackened and we abstracted this as a pattern. I remember reading that the lake effect causes winds to blow up rivers from the ocean during the day, and out from rivers to the ocean at night. Very seldom does the wind blow south on the Hudson in the summer, but at least the wind lets up a little at night.

The Tappan Zee (the body of water) was a scary hypothesis in our minds as we planned the trip. Essentially the remnants of a glacial great lake, the wind blows over the surface and whips the water to waves. At the bridge the river is two miles wide. Well, the wind died out that night and we seized our opportunity. We rowed for hours, passed low tide, passed Nyack, under the bridge, all the way to Piermont as the water began to flood. This was amazing, unexpected progress and we could have patted ourselves on the back and slept soundly in a safe harbor at Piermont. But the river was glass that night, and we needed to cross it the next day. We decided to cross it that night while the river was calm, even though the tide was now coming in, rather than wait until the next day when a south wind could make a crossing impossible.

In the silence that results from exhausted monotony we rowed a mile from the west short to the end of the pier at Piermont. Then, twenty feet from the tip, we heard a crunch: we’d bottomed out. In the middle of the river at 1 a.m. we were stuck. Here myriad birds were gathered and they incessantly cawed at us, hundreds of them, geese, gulls, all shouting as if to say “get out of here now!” That was creepy.

We battled drowsiness as we waited a half hour for the flood tide to float us. Then we started to row across.

On the river we are happy if we can discern any movement at all by comparing, for instance, a tree trunk to a star and judge whether one is moving relative to the other from our perspective. The closer to the shore, the easier it is to discern this. As we got into the middle of the river, equidistant from Piermont to the west and Irvington to the east, we could not tell whether we were making any progress at all. A half hour into our crossing we rowed just hoping we were actually moving east. It took almost an hour to cross. We got to Irvington on the east bank, found the nearest dimple in the shore, and dropped anchor. I was asleep before the anchor hit the river bottom.

Thursday, Day 8

What a mix of emotions we felt when we woke up on Thursday morning. On the one hand we could just barely make out the George Washington Bridge 8 miles downstream. On the other hand the wind was relentless, our batteries were dead, we’d broken another oar, we were bailing 60 gallons of water an hour, we were out of food except candy, out of booze, and we hadn’t slept more than two consecutive hours in 8 days.

We rowed the boat past Ardsley on the Hudson station. We rowed just south of Dobb’s ferry, making feet, not miles, per hour. Then the wind picked up so that, although we rowed hard enough to break another oar, we moved backwards. In frustration Rob jumped off the boat, grabbed it with one hand and dragged it ashore, grounding it on rocks.

Here we came close to crisis. This act of grounding the boat, insignificant as it was, made me despise Rob for about 15 minutes. I am certain Rob despised me. He walked to shore, fell onto a couple of planks and fell asleep immediately. I walked along the shore and thought about all the money I’d spent, all the time I’d wasted building homemade boats over the years when I could have just bought a motor boat like a normal person and taken my friends out, taken girls out, been up and down the river 10 times, and instead I had a seventh leaking, broken boat. I wished I’d grown up in Nevada and never set eyes on the Hudson River. I just wanted to be done with the whole thing and I was ready to leave the boat there and swim the eight miles south just to be done with the curse that was the Hudson Raft Project.

A few miles upriver my college friend Kasper was vacationing in Tarrytown. He told me before the trip that he wanted to meet up with us along the way. I texted him that we desperately needed booze and ice. He showed up an hour later with two bottles of Gatorade, two bags of ice and a bottle of rum which he snuck through a yacht club to get to us. Rob and I slapped each other on the back and said, man, eight more miles, lets go. We had quite a few rum and cokes on that beach that afternoon as we sat marooned. That rum might have saved us.

There is physical energy–nutrients which our bodies break down and use to actuate our limps and organs. There is another kind of energy that is just as important: mental energy. It is a torture to keep someone awake. At some point a person becomes delusional if he cannot sleep. We had the physical strength to move our arms and legs, but every movement of them somehow hurt our minds. It felt like we had been taking a thousand-question test, the result of which would determine the rest of our lives, and every time we thought we were finished, someone added 200 more questions. If we were children we would have cried. But we are not children. We focused what we had left of our concentration, we reached, and we rowed two more miles against the wind so that we could feel we made progress that day. The whole day we made less than 3 miles. But progress is progress.

Friday, Day 9

We had not eaten in a day. Like people in grief the slightest provocation made us want to explode. We had one working oar, one very bad oar. Our motor was dead. The wind blew from the west. Down river the George Washington Bridge and the Manhattan skyline rose like gray blocks against the hazy morning sky.

“Tonight, we sleep at home,” I said.

We started rowing. We rowed past Greystone Station. The bad oar broke. We anchored. We fixed the oar. We rowed. We entered Yonkers. In Yonkers a hard west wind blew us into a construction site where a pier is being replaced. Three workers approached us in a tug and in New York style asked us what the ____ we were doing. We rested. Then we rowed due west against the wind in order to float due south with the tide, and passed the construction site. We broke the oar again. We anchored. We fixed the oar. We rowed.

Now we could make out the Spuyten Duyvil bridge which connects the Bronx to the north to Manhattan. All along the shore were railroad track rocks. We could drag the boat if we needed to.

We did not need to. Though the west wind wanted to slam us on shore we rowed hard and kept off. We rowed past the Spuyten Duyvil and under the George Washington Bridge, mad at the river, wanting to fight Nature, past the little red light house beneath the bridge, and let the wind push us onto a little beach in Fort Washington Park. We threw our anchor at 12:03 p.m. As a man threw a tennis ball to a dog on the beach, as Manhattanites cycled, skated and jogged by, as a group of little kids watched, Rob and I jumped off of “Assembly Required,” waded to shore, and popped a bottle of champagne. We had finally made it. I reached down and grabbed a rock from the beach which I would fight ninjas to keep for the rest of my life. And it felt surreal and satisfying. It did not feel euphoric like a drug. It felt liberating like ending a prison sentence and being granted freedom again. It was the hardest thing I had ever done, and I’d done it. I will never be the same.

***

In the final analysis we had traveled 139 miles counting all the crossings and windings of the river. We had dragged the boat eleven miles; rowed about 100. I lost ten pounds over nine days.

After begging a tow across the river to Fort Lee New Jersey (I am indebted to the Samaritans that towed us) I met my parents and we trailered the boat back to New Baltimore. The next day I took a bath, turned the water black, drained the water, and took another bath and soaked for four hours. Rob could not close his hand, I’ve got blisters like dimes. I patched myself with a dozen band aides and convalesced for a day.

Now it is 2:04 on Monday morning. Dean Martin is crooning from my computer speakers. I write by hand, so it will be many hours before I finish typing this and sleep. But I wanted to write it and I did, so it will be worth it.

When I got home my parents beamed at me with expressions that exuded pride. Every person I meet congratulates me and I don’t know what to say to them. Today I spent the morning sitting on a porch chatting with my folks, because I can, because I don’t have to put a coat of fiberglass on the boat or wire wind turbines. I look forward to spending the same energy I’ve spent over five years on rafts studying for the GREs, reading about ancient Greece, writing, learning piano, learning to sing, learning about physics, chemistry and law. Rob and I have earned a bachelors in The Hudson River.

The point. Was it worth it? Yes. We learned things we never would have learned, experienced things we never would have experienced watching television. I have formed a relationship with myself that is honest and self-inspiring. My friends, colleagues, family and strangers are uniformly congratulatory, and it felt infinitely comforting to return to my apartment, my cats, my life. Americans love to go away, to travel, to experience new things. But sometimes the best part of an adventure is coming home.

I like this song that Dean Martin is singing. Its called “The Best Is Yet To Come.”

Specifically, we will be assembling “Assembly Required” at the ramp just north of The Barge restaurant (where the Albany Aquaducks enter the water) between 3 and 7 pm on Thursday.

The outlook is good. The forecast shows 10 days of sun and weather in the 80s. But best of all the forecast shows a north/northwest wind starting on Thursday at 6pm and continuing until Sunday. While it is a light wind (between 3 and 8 mph), the absence of a south wind alone is exciting for us. We plan to sleep in shifts and not rest until we are prevented from moving by an outside force. If we can be propelled at 3 mph perpetually we will make our goal by early next week. But we are prepared for rowing, pulling the boat by a rope as we walk along the shore, and to do anything else in our power to finally make it to Manhattan.

Thanks for all the well-wishes and support!!

-Dallas and Rob

Welcome to the 2010 Hudson Raft Project. Please look around and enjoy.
-Dallas