Sue sent an e-mail to Chris asking him about his triatholon on Saturday. This was his response to her inquiry:

"I suppose this all hearkens back to a rainy day in September.

I arose that day at around 430am in order to make it to the Lewis and Clark half marathon….I looked outside and noticed a torrential downpour, just as the weatherman had predicted…the remnants of Hurricane Ike. The thought occurred to me to slip back into my warm dry bed and snuggle up to me beautiful wife and pack tucker, oliver, and eli in and around me to ensure my comfort…..but, some of by best runs have been in the rain and runners aren’t woosies……so out the door I went. I got down to the amphitheatre (whatever they call it now… I still call it Riverport) and sat in traffic, in torrential downpours until 15 minutes after the race was supposed to start. I finally got parked, opened my car door and stepped into ankle deep water…..As I walked to the starting line, the rain needled my face and the water got deeper, at one point over my knees. When I made it to the Start line (they hadn’t started yet)…I checked my iphone….which I had placed in a plastic bag. It had some message about product being incompatible with this device do I want to go into airplane mode…I selected no…turned on some music and waited for the start of the race. Finally, 45 minutes after the scheduled start of the race, we take off. The water wasn’t so deep on the run, but that didn’t mean it still didn’t hurt when it was pelting my face….After 3 minutes my iphone starts cutting out and by mile 5 it doesn’t work anymore. At mile 8 we find out that they have shortened the race to 10 miles. After the race my phone still won’t work (the weather, by this time, has lightened considerably). I am on a bus back to Riverport and the bus radio announces that no buses in lot 2….the wakes the busses make are further flooding the cars in lot 2……am I in lot 2?

As I am waling back to my car, I realize that I am not in lot 2..whew, but I do have to walk through lot 2 to get to my car…..We are in thigh deep water at this time…and what happens when I get back to my car…..I hop in, towel off, start the car, only to realize that I have left my lights on. I live 15 minutes away, I will call Shelly and she will come and save me…..oh, but my phone doesn’t work. However, with the help of a towel and some prayer, I manage to dial out. On the third try, shelly can actually hear me, and she and all three dogs come and save me. By evening time, the iphone works like new.

Which leads us to this past weekend. John Machalek, a gent I work with at Bemes, Inc. had hit me up some time ago to pair with him in an adventure race at Castlewood Park on December 6. The race would combine elements of canoeing, hiking, biking, and orienteering. Certainly…sounds fun….But then stories of John, adventure racing and curious happenings started being leaked from my cohorts…..John’s wife Barb also works at Bemes, Inc. and she may have had the sharpest barbs of all. Then we found out that the race was the same day as the Christmas party….surely Barb would say that John couldn’t go. But a month before the race, John announced that we were signed up and ready to go. A week before the race Barb really starts warning me about all of the horrible things that were going to befall me.

Race day shows up and as I get up I notice that a dusting of snow has fallen overnight. I set out on my way and meet up with John before the race. We are immediately transported to a horse farm far away from Castlewood Park. One of the team members then has to run a mile to get supplemental maps and points to plot. I do the run, bring john the coordinates and the map, he maps them out, we run down to the river and hop in a canoe.

We glide through the first 3 miles and take out at Route 66 State Park for some orienteering…one problem, john lost his compass. That’s OK, we persevere, using the sun as our guide (and the trampled grass from those who went before us). WE collect our checkpoints and go on our way, but we get a different canoe….

We get back into the river, and after a half mile my feet start getting wet and it is then I realize that we have a leaker. It’s a slow leak, but a leak none the less….

We get our next check point along the river and John gets back in the boat. Water is ankle deep by this time. We get back in the current and one of us adjusts a bit and the canoe shakes like Califonia in an earthquake. “hey john, maybe we should pull over and dump the canoe”…”ahhh, we only have a mile”

Two minutes later, on a 30degree day, I am swimming, fully clothed, in the Meramac river.

My waterproof backpack…definitely waterproof….all of my clothes in it were bone dry. I changed clothes and was fine. Poor John had no dry clothes. My waterproof jacket, not waterproof, at least not from the inside out. My iphone…in the jacket. We got rescued and no one was permanently hurt. This made us the first one done with the race, just not the first ones finished.

After two days, the phone has resuscitated itself. I am now familiar with all of apples tricks to make certain that you don’t go swimming with your phone. I have in a dryer at work, hopefully it will start showing a charge and the mottled background becomes clear, but so far, so good."

After reading Chris' account, I ask WHY WOULD ANYONE DO THAT TO HIMSELF????