AuSable Canoe Marathon History Book: best sports book ever!
I just got back from Grayling, MI, where I bought a FINE copy of a FINE book all about the 50 years of the AuSable Marathon.
(I got mine at Ray’s Fly Shop & Canoe Livery.)
What a treat! Has everyone here already heard about this?
Anyway, it’s full of GREAT pictures & stories. I suspect there isn’t a better FLATWATER marathon book out there. Not to mention bio of a US outdoor sporting event. What a great cast of characters, too!
All kinds of crusty types. Father and son teams, brothers and sisters. All racing at world class levels on this long event.
And what an event! The world’s longest oldest single day canoe race.
120 miles or so. Goes all night. There’s often fog. The best racers know how to follow the river by looking up at the night sky through the trees, to see where the river goes. They know their way by heart across the half dozen vast dam backwaters, where the unwary hit submerged tree stumps and tip over a half mile from shore, or hole their boats.
The tactics are tied closely to the landscape. All the insiders know about special shortcuts that branch off just past a certain logjam. You can’t see them, but just turn into the brush….
They just fly these long, narrow straight keel craft around the twisty, shallow bends, leaning the beachball-round hulls far over to the side to get a turning radius.
Feeders wait in special preplanned nooks and crannies to step out in the current and hand the paddlers food and drink and to pick up empty containers dropped floating into the current upstream. And the feeders themselves race all night from spot to spot, on the sandy backroads and
woodsy two-tracks, trying to keep their plans secret and stay ahead of their rivals. But to still have fun at the same time.
Like 200,000 other rowdy northwoodsers who party all night on the bridges, watching the racers go by. It’s the biggest northwoods event of the year. They used to have big klieglights set up on the bridges, with kegs and music, but it just got too wild. Rats, I wish I could’ve seen that! Even so, the backroads and trails are full of partying fans trying to keep up with the race and not crash on the way.
Makes me wish that all my favorite oldtime outdoor sports events had books like this! (Does anyone know if other events have such books? I basically like em all. The Birkie has a very nice book as well.)
These old classic events make great stories and they’re basically neglected otherwise. What a great opportunity for service.
I commend the folks who put this one together.
$40 (+4 ship?) to ARICM, POB 911, Grayling MI 49738 should get you a copy of this fine coffeetable book. (Actually, I’ve heard they’re out of print.)
