The Fig 12 hour 2017 by Captain Ahab
Robert Bart, Amy Crews, Dave
Beattie and I got a late start driving to the Fig in Eastern Kentucky. Roberto Black Heart Bart, Crazy CP Pusher
Amy, and A-hole Ahab (Captain Ahab or me) would race, while Broken Arm Beattie would
sit this one out and volunteer. We left
the driveway over an hour later than we expected. Loading up 3 kayaks, 3 bikes, and gear is a
lot of work. We stalked Team Off the
Virtus, I don’t know if that was their team name, but it sounds right to me, (Chuck
and Lo) for lunch,
We started at 7am and ran directly
to the St Helen’s Post Office to mail postcards, which I thought was weird, but
it was the prologue to separate the pack before the boats. We ran, and walked, back the way we came to
get to the boats, and at this point we were making relatively good time as I
think we were in the front portion of the middle pack. We hit our kayaks, mounted glow sticks, and
got into the water as fast as we could get Robert to move through his
transition’s multiple mental checklists.
We had to paddle upstream to CP#2 and we moved like turtles. I wanted to hook up the tows, but they wanted
to wait until we were going downstream.
Canoes started passing us and I realized individual kayaks were probably
a bad idea because one person is propelling one boat. The canoe would have had 3 people propelling
one boat. I started doing weight, water
line length, paddle propulsion calculations in my head until my head hurt a
minute later. I concluded 3 kayaks
equaled a bad idea. I kept pulling way
ahead of them, especially because I was surfing a canoe’s wake and barely
putting in any effort at all, so I had to slow and let them catch up a couple
times. Once we finally got CP#2, I gave
them no choice and hooked up the tows.
We then flew by every boat we saw, but I felt my strength waning after a
while. I need to do that more often as
that was an awesome workout. I started
looking at the next upstream leg to CP#4 and started thinking it wasn’t worth
the time it would take to get there and I really didn’t know if my arms would
hold the tow that long. Amy piped up
that she thought we should skip it. I
thought we are thinking the same thing, so that was an easy decision. We hit CP#3 downstream, skipped CP#4, and
then landed quickly at the TA. We did a
pretty quick transition, but we started loading our gear up in the boats like we
were driving home and then I said, “We can do this later, let’s go.”
We ran into town to get the
multiple points that earned you CP#5. We
ran first to a monument and for some reason I was looking for a CP flag and ran
right past it. We had to write down what
war it represented and it was the Civil War.
We then ran to another monument and find out how many people lost their
lives in a fire, which was 7 if I remember correctly. The story goes that Dave Beattie’s great great
grandfather was bootlegging Fireball whisky into dry county and accidentally
started the fire by spilling some of it on to his map, so he quickly changed
his last name from Beatty to Beattie to allude the coppers. Those Beattie’s are ninjas like that!
Next we
ran to a museum and counted military rifles.
The old man on the front porch told us it was 15, but I said “not that I
don’t trust you, but we will count them”…15.
We then ran to a church to read the cornerstone and of course the front
of the church was opposite of what I thought so we ran around the entire
building to find the 1896 cornerstone.
We then ran to the coffee shop and found Afghanistan on the map. We ran / walked out of town, stopping
periodically to stretch Amy’s groin (not as sexy as you think), to the bike
drop where we saw Beattie waiting for us.
We transitioned to the bikes and
quickly took a wrong turn as I was looking for a gravel road and it had been
asphalted over. I had to keep reminding
myself that the map was old. We
corrected quickly and traveled down the road until it did turn into
gravel. We hooked up the tow for about
10 seconds and I realized that the road was too bumpy and turned too often for
me to be in the tow reading the map, so I released and rode on my own. Robert continued towing Amy only on uphills I
believe. The ride was slow going. We found CPs 6 and 7 easily.
I looked back at Robert a few times and he didn’t
look so great.
I asked if we all towed
if we could move faster. Amy mentioned
Robert’s rear tire needed air and she needed to adjust her saddle height. We rode for some time until we hit asphalt
after walking a monstrous hill. Robert
filled his tire and Amy adjusted her saddle.
We took off and I told Robert to do his thing since we were on
asphalt. I thought we could all get in
tow and fly, but Robert didn’t look good.
I asked him how he was doing and if he thought we could speed up and
tow. He didn’t think we could go much
faster. I knew he wasn’t feeling good so
we just rode on. Finding the road to CP8
was tricky. We took a few minutes to
study the cliffs in the distance in the power line cut.
I then realized it was just farther up the
road and may be asphalt again. Once we
got near CP8 it took a few minutes to find, but wasn’t that bad either. CP 9
and 10 were easy too, but getting out of that area took some walking up some
hills to get to asphalt. The gravel
roads were rough. We were briefly on
asphalt before turning back to gravel.
We stopped at the gate, climbed under it, climbed the hill and studied
the topo, picked a road and followed it to the TA.
We came into the next TA, dropped
the bikes, and changed into trekking gear.
We ate while we made a plan to attack 11, 12, 13 and then bail so we
could be back on the bikes at 5pm. Amy
wanted to get more CPs, but I roughly estimated that it would take us two hours
to get back at our current riding speed and if we traveled faster, then we
would attack a couple CPS in the twenties.
We walked down the gravel road to a certain point shot a bearing and
pace counted directly to CP11. We tried
the same to CP12, but realized there were things called cliffs that we didn’t
realized existed. Cliffs to us are small
and can be quickly walked around. These
“Cliffs” were massive 300+ feet tall, sheer drops, miles long, no way around,
no way down! We kept trying over and
over to find a Jeep trail to drop down to the creek and neighboring Jeep trail,
but we kept overlooking massive cliffs.
Although it was beautiful, it really started pissing us off. I finally saw another Jeep trail that would
take us down, but it was all the way back past CP11. So we back tracked, found the gravel road and
traveled forever down a steep ass rugged road that I told them I wouldn’t
mountain bike and it would give my Jeep a workout. When we were at the bottom we saw Chuck and
Lo and Chuck said to go grab 12. They
said they got one in the lower section of the cliffs (I don’t even know what to
call this…canyon is all that comes to mind) and were bailing. Our plan was to grab 13 and if easy then 12
on the way out. We made our way to CP13,
but I got antsy and checked a reentrant early even though I knew it was too
early. I don’t know why I do that
sometimes. It’s like, “I’m here, it’s
here, I don’t want to come back, so look, damn it why did I do that?” I take us to CP13 and dag nabbit it was super
freaking hard to get to! It was like
walking on the moon of Endor and I was a fat little Ewok. Where is my Wookie to carry me?
Amy got all super pumped up, the adrenaline
started coursing through her veins, and she said she wanted 14. I said I think we should bail, but she said
she wanted 14, the veins in her neck started popping out, her muscles started
tearing her green jersey, she said, “you won’t like me when I am angry” and I
heard her call me a FN P@ssy, and I gave in to her peer pressure out of fear. I said we have to go fast and can’t waste
time. I started feeling mentally
exhausted. We moved quickly and got
CP14. Then Amy’s excitement got the best
of me. I felt her adrenaline in my
veins, I got all super crazy and said we were going to get CP12. We went for 12, we walked forever, the map
wasn’t lining up anymore, and I told them we should bail. I asked for a team vote and got no response,
so I said I am making the decision to bail.
I thought I could head across the creek to the road that brought us in,
but it was blocked by a cliff. We tried
a couple more trails and roads that weren’t on the map. I then started looking at the distance we
covered, the time, and realized we just blew the race and there was no way we
would get to the finish in time. I saw a
hiker and asked if he knew where he was on the map, which he didn’t. He told us the trail we were taking was a
dead end. He took out a GPS and I said, “we
can either look at it and get back faster to eat and drink disqualified, or we
can find our way out, take longer, and possibly have search and rescue come for
us.” We figured out where we were on the
map with confirmation from the GPS.
Somehow we had traveled up a different canyon. Amy thought we could take a reentrant
out. I told her we should back track to
the parking lot where we last knew where we were. She called me the P-word again and I gave in
again and we traveled forever by broken trail, creek, and cliff side to where
the creek was literally coming out of the cliff! Beautiful, but damn really? “Cliff-f@cked! TM I handed Amy the
map and followed the creek to the broken trail, to the creek, to the broken
trail, over and over until we found the trail we came in on. I could only think of the team that stopped
for a smoke break just beat us and it pissed me off. Once I knew we were on the road on our way
out, I decided we would call the RD at 7pm to let him know we would be late,
but not to send search and rescue. I
also decided we would just have a nice night ride back. It was a slow climb out
of that canyon and back to the bikes. By
the time we transitioned it was after 6:30 pm.
On the bikes we moved downhill the
whole time making good speed. My bike
was spun out and I couldn’t go any faster.
The sun went down and my bike light wouldn’t work. We called the RD as planned and I put my
headlamp on. We decided to skip the last
mandatory TA and just get back to eat.
It was actually a nice easy pavement ride. One of the searchers came up behind us in a
pickup and said he had our 6, but Robert told him to check on the team that was
behind us, which was a great idea. We
crossed the disqualification “finish” line and I told the RD that we were
DQ’d. He asked why and I said for many
reasons. He said he would finish us and
remove all CPs for time penalties. It
didn’t really matter to me; DQ, DNF, Finish with no CPs, all the same to me. I wanted to find the boats, load them up,
shower, eat and drink, and go to sleep.
We quickly ate and did all those things.
The next morning we went hiking to
the Natural Bridge which was awesome, drove home with broken egos, licked our
wounds, cursed the cliffs, and agreed we would come back to redeem ourselves
next year.
In retrospect we were disqualified
for looking at a GPS, trying but failed to turn another GPS on, bike without a
headlight, I noticed Amy and I didn’t attach glow sticks to our life jackets,
skipped a mandatory TA, and used the phone to call the RD.
We should have skipped CP2 as it
was upstream and slow. We should have
towed the boats earlier. We should have
skipped CP5, although it was fun, it was a lot of work for one CP. We should have towed more on the bikes. We should have tried out the trekking
tows. We should have stuck to our plan
and grabbed CP13 and then quickly scanned for CP12 and then got out of the
canyon. We should have watched the time
better and stuck to our bail out hour. I should have remembered to correct for declination. I
should have handed the map to Amy when I felt fatigued going to CP14. If we would have done those things we would
have had more time to get the last TA and some of the CPs in the twenties. We would have actually had a good finish, or
we could have possibly fell off a cliff and died…Cliff-F@cked!– Ahab.
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