QUOTE
Safari breeds creature lore
By ANITA MILLER - News Editor
Posted: Saturday, Jun 04, 2005 - 10:36:24 pm CDT
It's long enough already, the list of creatures that can bedevil Texas Water Safari racers.
Snakes and spiders, alligators and alligator gar, wasps, ants, mosquitoes and poison ivy are all likely encounters during the 260-mile marathon canoe race down the San Marcos River, which begins its 42rd running on June 9.
And since the race ends at Seadrift on San Antonio Bay, throw in the possibility of stingrays and sharks.
Yet as impressive as that list sounds, veteran racers will, if you catch them in the right mood, share stories of other creatures real and imagined. Monkey men in the Palmetto groves that line the river near Gonzales and the Chupacabra in Dewitt County are a couple that have been reported, more or less seriously, by more than one paddler.
There's also the rumor that a Bigfoot-type creature surprised hog hunters near the river as it nears the coast.
Words are inadequate to describe the physical and mental state of someone who's been paddling non-stop for 24 or more hours, particularly when they are used by someone who hasn't had the experience. But veterans of the Safari will tell you they begin to enter what's known as Hallucination Alley around Victoria, when the lead boats have been at it for around 20 hours.
"That's when you start getting into the swampy area," explains Tom Goynes of San Marcos, who has chalked up seven overall wins in addition to winning different categories of the Texas Water Safari.
It was in that area, he says, that a few years back a racer imagined that he was being chased by the Mexican Mafia prison gang, an episode that has become the Legend of Naked Man. "The guy took off his clothes and used black mud to write 'help' on his yellow shirt. He hung the shirt in a tree" as a warning to those who would pass by later.
Goynes' daughter was one of them. She saw it, he recalled, and stopped to help. "Off she goes, little did she know there was a naked guy running around," he chuckles. "She never found him."
Just about anything can spark hallucinations when the mind and body are pushed to the limit of exhaustion and beyond.
"There are some questionable things I've written off to hallucination," Goynes says. Among them must surely be the sighting of full-color, 100 foot tall images of Roy Rogers, Superman and Batman he experienced "right in front of the canoe" while partnered for the Safari with his wife Paula.
She didn't see those characters, but both of them discerned, just below Victoria, faces in the trees. "All the trees start developing faces. Like the trees in 'Lord of the Rings,' only most of them aren't looking very happy to see you."
Though most times the Safari racers are the ones surprised by what they see, Goynes has something of a signature tale that goes back to his very first Texas Water Safari experience as a teenager in 1968.
He and his brother had taken a wrong turn into Mission Lake and instead of the tiny town of Seadrift, were headed towards what seemed to be a brightly lit city. "I was from Houston, I'd never seen Seadrift. We worked our way all the way to the Union Carbide Plant."
To get there, they went cross country, through what turned out to be settling ponds for the chemical plant, "filled with nasty stuff that burned our hands when we touched it."
After crossing the barge canal, Goynes left his brother with the boat and decided to ask for directions in what they now clearly understood wasn't Seadrift.
"I found a little guard shack and heard people talking. I knocked on the door and they opened it. They saw a hippie with shoulder length hair, holding a paddle, covered from head to toe in mud with a mosquito net over my face and a miner's light on my head and wires running from the light to a battery. The whole group of them kind of fell down."
The most surreal of Goynes' recollections, and the one more sure to stand your hair on end, is a vision he says has been shared by many racers over the years. The stone forts, he calls them.
"They seem to be made out of huge rocks," fortified outposts along the river's edge.
"I'm still not convinced maybe if you're tired enough you enter another dimension and see something that had existed in the past. What does it mean? I don't know, but I saw them, my partner saw them and other people saw them."
This year's race begins at 9 a.m. June 9 in Spring Lake. For more information on the race visit www.texaswatersafari.org
By ANITA MILLER - News Editor
Posted: Saturday, Jun 04, 2005 - 10:36:24 pm CDT
It's long enough already, the list of creatures that can bedevil Texas Water Safari racers.
Snakes and spiders, alligators and alligator gar, wasps, ants, mosquitoes and poison ivy are all likely encounters during the 260-mile marathon canoe race down the San Marcos River, which begins its 42rd running on June 9.
And since the race ends at Seadrift on San Antonio Bay, throw in the possibility of stingrays and sharks.
Yet as impressive as that list sounds, veteran racers will, if you catch them in the right mood, share stories of other creatures real and imagined. Monkey men in the Palmetto groves that line the river near Gonzales and the Chupacabra in Dewitt County are a couple that have been reported, more or less seriously, by more than one paddler.
There's also the rumor that a Bigfoot-type creature surprised hog hunters near the river as it nears the coast.
Words are inadequate to describe the physical and mental state of someone who's been paddling non-stop for 24 or more hours, particularly when they are used by someone who hasn't had the experience. But veterans of the Safari will tell you they begin to enter what's known as Hallucination Alley around Victoria, when the lead boats have been at it for around 20 hours.
"That's when you start getting into the swampy area," explains Tom Goynes of San Marcos, who has chalked up seven overall wins in addition to winning different categories of the Texas Water Safari.
It was in that area, he says, that a few years back a racer imagined that he was being chased by the Mexican Mafia prison gang, an episode that has become the Legend of Naked Man. "The guy took off his clothes and used black mud to write 'help' on his yellow shirt. He hung the shirt in a tree" as a warning to those who would pass by later.
Goynes' daughter was one of them. She saw it, he recalled, and stopped to help. "Off she goes, little did she know there was a naked guy running around," he chuckles. "She never found him."
Just about anything can spark hallucinations when the mind and body are pushed to the limit of exhaustion and beyond.
"There are some questionable things I've written off to hallucination," Goynes says. Among them must surely be the sighting of full-color, 100 foot tall images of Roy Rogers, Superman and Batman he experienced "right in front of the canoe" while partnered for the Safari with his wife Paula.
She didn't see those characters, but both of them discerned, just below Victoria, faces in the trees. "All the trees start developing faces. Like the trees in 'Lord of the Rings,' only most of them aren't looking very happy to see you."
Though most times the Safari racers are the ones surprised by what they see, Goynes has something of a signature tale that goes back to his very first Texas Water Safari experience as a teenager in 1968.
He and his brother had taken a wrong turn into Mission Lake and instead of the tiny town of Seadrift, were headed towards what seemed to be a brightly lit city. "I was from Houston, I'd never seen Seadrift. We worked our way all the way to the Union Carbide Plant."
To get there, they went cross country, through what turned out to be settling ponds for the chemical plant, "filled with nasty stuff that burned our hands when we touched it."
After crossing the barge canal, Goynes left his brother with the boat and decided to ask for directions in what they now clearly understood wasn't Seadrift.
"I found a little guard shack and heard people talking. I knocked on the door and they opened it. They saw a hippie with shoulder length hair, holding a paddle, covered from head to toe in mud with a mosquito net over my face and a miner's light on my head and wires running from the light to a battery. The whole group of them kind of fell down."
The most surreal of Goynes' recollections, and the one more sure to stand your hair on end, is a vision he says has been shared by many racers over the years. The stone forts, he calls them.
"They seem to be made out of huge rocks," fortified outposts along the river's edge.
"I'm still not convinced maybe if you're tired enough you enter another dimension and see something that had existed in the past. What does it mean? I don't know, but I saw them, my partner saw them and other people saw them."
This year's race begins at 9 a.m. June 9 in Spring Lake. For more information on the race visit www.texaswatersafari.org