Canoecopia reflections

March 1991.

It’s March 1, I’m sitting on the floor next to several large boxes of SealLine Dry Bags and a bunch of price tags. I’m wearing a walking cast to support my broken ankle. I had slipped on a sheet of ice on my way to a pool rolling session at the UW Natatorium. It was my first Canoecopia.

I still had my “real” job, working as a statistician for the State of Wisconsin. I worked four ten-hour days and then worked Friday and Saturday at the shop. I never took home a paycheck; it wasn’t like a kid in a candy store, it was like a kid working behind the counter at the candy store, except instead of candy, it was canoes. They’re even sweeter than candy, I think.

I worked several more Canoecopias, as a part-timer, staffing various areas of the show. I have a few stories that have stuck with me in the last three decades or so.

1994: A couple brought in their old Kevlar Wenonah Jensen 18. A fast and light boat, the Jensen 18 is not always forgiving of inattention. Their family had grown, and they needed something with more capacity. I gave them a fair price on their trade-in in and they purchased a wider boat for the whole family.

Not more than an hour later, a woman approached me to talk about canoes. She lost her canoe in a divorce (“and he doesn’t even like canoeing!”). I asked her what her canoe was, and she said, “A Jensen 18, but I can’t afford one.” I said I thought I could help. I walked her around to the place we stored trade-ins, and she saw it and gasped. She asked how much, and I said “a thousand bucks”. I hadn’t finished my sentence when she said, “I’ll take it.”

Someone said (I won’t embarrass them) that we could have sold that canoe for a lot more. I responded with something like “Do you really want to have this conversation right now?” He didn’t.

When I announced that I was selling the business, I received a stack of letters thanking me for selling rather than closing. One of which read:

You probably don’t remember this, but thirty years ago, you helped me find the impossible canoe. I was still recovering from my divorce, and I knew that paddling was a way to get better. The fact that you found the perfect boat for me was a miracle.

I have been on 20 BWCA trips since the Jensen came into my life, but now I’m in my late 70s, and my body just can’t do portages anymore, and my last trip was in 2020. I am selling her and donating the money to the River Alliance of Wisconsin. The Jensen gave me many years of happiness, and I’ll be pleased to see her go make other people happy. Thank you.

I absolutely do remember this, like it was yesterday.

My daughter Whitney was five years old. She asked me for a few quarters to buy a soda. I said no, that she didn’t need it. She didn’t say anything, but five minutes later, she walked by with a soda. I said, “Hey! Where did you you get that?”

“That nice man gave me quarters.” She pointed at a man who was selling kayaks. His kayaks. The nice man was Andy Zimmerman, founder of Wilderness Systems. From then on, he was just Uncle Andy. He is invited to Whitney’s wedding next Summer.

A few years later, Canoecopia occurred on a cold, snowy weekend. I spotted a couple standing in an aisle, holding a cluster of red, white, and black boxes, indicative of a Yakima rack system. They looked confused, so I asked if I could help. They had just bought this rack and wanted to buy a canoe, but they didn’t know how to install the rack. They somehow escaped the rack-install area without realizing they could have had it installed. I said I’d help them, and this is how I was introduced to Craig and Sylvia.

We installed the rack in the snow, taking breaks to thaw our fingers on the defrost vents above the dashboard, laughing about how it had been 40 degrees and sunny the day before. It took us over half an hour, but we got it on. Then we went back in to look at canoes together. We found the right canoe, got them set up with paddles and PFDs, and strapped the Old Town Penobscot onto their newly installed rack.

Craig handed me his business card and said, “Come down and see us in Chicago.” I handed him mine, and we shook on it. Two weeks later, I received a phone call from Craig. “When are you coming down?” He was serious about a visit. Cool, I thought. So we went down to visit, ate Greek food, and got to know each other better. That was the start of a long friendship with the Nelson family.

Fast forward ten years, and I’m in the midst of trying to figure out how to buy Rutabaga. Let me take care of the legal, said Craig. Craig is a CPA with a JD from Notre Dame, and he’s one of the smartest people I know (and I know a lot of them). He did all the legal work, a stack of documents an inch or so thick, locked down and as bulletproof as a legal document could be. Even the seller’s attorneys were impressed.

He wouldn’t let me pay him. “You’ve done so much for us over the years, it’s the least I can do.” So I gave him some nice paddles. What else can you do but say thank you? Nothing. Just say thank you.

A fourteen-year-old girl approached me and introduced herself. Her name was Hailey Thompson, and she was looking for sponsors as she was an up-and-coming slalom racer.

I get asked for sponsorships frequently, but none were so well put together. Hailey had a small binder with her bio, her accomplishments, and her goals (and her 4.0 GPA). The list of what she wanted was modest, yet she clearly deserved more. So I said, “Hailey, you are officially my niece.” We walked around to my friends on Sunday as things slowed down, and I introduced her as my niece (air quotes) and asked if they’d like to sponsor her as well as Rutabaga. Within half an hour, we had procured her a dry suit, a new paddle, and a PFD. Then I stepped out of it, and this remarkable teenager established relationships with many of these and more manufacturers.

Hailey went on to accomplish all her goals and then some. She could have gone to university in the country and ended up in the US Coast Guard Academy. I still get an occasional phone call from my niece to talk to Uncle Darren. I’ll love this young woman until the day I die.

Last March, I was taking my annual selfie with the crowd getting ready to enter the Canoecopia hall at 2:59 pm. As I opened the door to let in the appreciative crowd, a customer-turned-friend grabbed me by the arm, pulled me to the side, put my back against the block wall, and said “Stay here. You need to take this in.”

As I stood there, dozens of friends, faces I knew, and complete strangers stepped out of the stream of entrants to shake my hand or give me a hug or just say “Thanks for doing this, Darren.” T.C. held onto my arm and said, “Take this in, Darren. You did this. Take it in.”

I am sure I was embarrassed and probably blushed, but for five full minutes I stood there, smiling and saying, “Thank you.” If I tried to leave, T.C. pulled me back and said, “No, not yet.”

I was grateful for her doing that. I was mortified as I am a certified introvert who hates that sort of attention, but at some point, you just have to say thanks and be gracious.

So thank you. I am certain that many of you have attended Canoecopia. If you haven’t, thank you anyway. You’re part of the community, nonetheless.

Now, as I transition from owner to part-time consultant and then to a paddler cheering on the sidelines, it feels natural. The new owners are wonderful people who love the shop and the community it has created and specifically asked me what it takes to maintain and support the paddling community. They said, “I want you to come back to the shop in a year and still be proud of it.”

That’s perfect.

I am grateful for all your support over the years, and I hope you’ll support the new ownership with your enthusiasm for paddling (and by shopping with them). I am leaving Canoecopia and Rutabaga in excellent hands.