I've lost an old friend

I've just achieved a milestone in my paddling career that was long overdue, I guess.  Before Monday I'd never had a boat stolen.  But when I came home around seven o'clock Monday evening, there was a bare spot where my trusty whitewater boat, an old Dagger Atom C1, had been leaning against the firewood pile in the little parking area behind my building.

I've always been fairly nonchalant about securing my boats.  Typically I'm more concerned with protecting them from the sun and similar elements than guarding against theft.  Here in the Memphis area the market for stolen goods runs through the pawn shops, and I've never been able to keep a straight face while imagining a thief carrying a high-performance canoe or kayak into a pawn shop and asking for money.  Making the idea seem even more absurd is that I'm the only active whitewater C1 paddler in Memphis, and I'm pretty sure that Atom was the only boat of its kind in the Mid South.

Unfortunately, I've always neglected one piece of reality: not all thieves are that smart.  Some thieves will grab anything that looks like it might be worth something even if they know nothing about it.  And the likely result--the worst outcome where I am concerned--is that the thief will try to get somebody to pay him for the item, fail, and end up chucking it in a ditch.

So who knows if I'll ever get it back.  I'm watching Craig's List but have seen no sign of it there so far.  I've called a few pawn shops to see if anybody has come in with my boat, but most of the shopkeepers I've talked to say they don't pay for kayaks and canoes, and with many dozens of pawn shops in the greater Memphis area, finding the one with my boat in it would be like finding a needle in a haystack.

These days I don't paddle whitewater anywhere near as often as I used to, but I do go once a year or so.  And even though that boat was old and not particularly special, I liked it.  When Dagger first came out with the Atom I think it was hoping the whitewater rodeo C1 competitors would take it and run with it.  But they were fickle and turned up their noses at it, and the boat was quickly forgotten at the elite level.  But I have found it to be a good, solid river-running craft and have stuck with it even though it looks like an antique today.

The following photos depict just a few of the many great memories that boat and I created together.

Top drop of Four Falls, North Fork of the South Platte River near Bailey, Colorado, 1998.  Photo by a guy named Gage who paddled with me that day.

Whiling away a summer day on the Ocoee River near Ducktown, Tennessee, late 1990s.  Photo by Sonny Salomon.

Popping an ender at Slice and Dice on the Ocoee River, 1999.  Photo by Sonny Salomon.

Surfing the top wave on the Caney Fork River in Rock Island State Park near McMinnville, Tennessee, late 1990s.  Photo by Sonny Salomon.

Losing some altitude on the White Salmon River near Trout Lake, Washington, 1998.  Photo by Wendy Peterson.

Getting what I can on a small wave on White's Creek on Tennessee's Cumberland Plateau, 2001.  Photo by Julie Keller.