Certified Rollers

One of the things that Amanda and I have really enjoyed over the last few years has been Tuck Fest, an annual outdoor sports and music festival at the U.S. National Whitewater Center outside of Charlotte. It’s a four day celebration of the outdoor lifestyle with countless competitions, demos, vendors, and music.

Typically, I’ve raced the half marathon and then we’ve spent the rest of the weekend hanging out listening to music and doing all the various activities the whitewater center has to offer. It has taken on a bit more meaning than just a fun race weekend for me in the last couple of years. I wrote about this a little bit on the old blog after 2017 Tuck Fest, but the gist is this, one of the last things my mom and I talked about before she passed away was that she wanted to live to Tuck Fest that year so she could hear about how the weekend went.

Prior to that conversation and in one of her signature surprise moves, my mom entered me into the Tuck Fest half marathon, bought three day passes for the USNWC, booked hotel rooms, and a flight for my brother, so we could all spend the weekend in Charlotte and enjoy the festival.

As you can see, it’s become a pretty important weekend for me. Regardless of how I’m running or any of that stuff, it’s become a weekend that I choose to celebrate my mom’s enduring spirit. She never got to go, but I would bet you anything she would have fit right in and loved it. I can’t help but feel like I’m 12 on a summer vacation whenever we go.

Unfortunately, we weren’t able to go to Tuck Fest this year. The combo of Easter falling early and the way the schedule fell for work it just wasn’t possible for us to make it. I was pretty bummed. Regardless of whether or not I would have been able to run, let’s face it I probably would have went for it like an idiot, the larger meaning of the weekend for me left me hurting when we missed out on it.

All that to say, we decided to make our own Tuck Fest for this edition of Adventure of the Week. As we prepared to head back to Atlanta from our vacation back in New England, my wheels were turning on how we could make it happen. Fourth of July falling on a Thursday provided us with the perfect opportunity.

We both had short workdays on Friday the fifth, so we loaded up the Jeep and made our way to Charlotte in the afternoon and made it to the USNWC in time to catch some of their Friday night River Jam music session. Each Thursday, Friday, and Saturday in the summer they feature a few bands, it’s not a bad way to spend a night for six bucks.

As usual, I was up early and ready to go because I’m a 12 year old. I had to do a little work, so I found the free coffee in the lobby and after I had two cups I think Amanda was reconsidering our marriage bit.

We made our way back to the whitewater center, picked up our day passes and got signed up for our raft trip. Both Amanda and I were a little apprehensive about rafting. Last year, our entire boat went for a swim during Tuck Fest. I was trying to play it cool because I could tell Amanda was a little nervous, the two cups of coffee probably didn’t help, but I was a little antsy too.

Fortunately, once we got in the raft things settled down pretty quickly. Not in the way you’d expect thought. The rafting breaks down like this, you do a couple trips down the wilderness channel, which is class II and III rapids. It starts pretty mellow then gets a tougher at the end. It’s kind of like taking a green circle and then hitting a tough blue square if you are skiing.

After that you go down the competition channel, which is class III and IV and they come at you quick. Last year we flipped in the competition channel. This time, first run down the wilderness channel we lost one of the girls in our boat.

You’d think that would be a bad sign, but it was kind of like how quarterbacks talk about how they like to get hit once or see a close rush to get into a game. When she hit the water, Amanda and I looked at each other and hoped into action. After all, we’d done a rescue before. I handed her my paddle and grabbed this girl’s PFD, and hoisted her back into the boat.

I don’t know if it’s the fact that someone else went in and we didn’t but that ordeal seemed to get us both into it and from then on we were having a blast.

We hit the wilderness channel twice than our raft guide took us to the competition channel. We made it through the spot were we flipped last year, which Amanda was stoked about, but a little further down the river we came into a rapid a little sideways and our guide got absolutely launched off the back of the boat.

We ended up in the eddy just below that rapid but then got pinballed around by another boat and floated the rest of the way down the river. Honestly it was kind of fun. We collected our guide and hit the competition channel one more time to redeem ourselves, which we did with a much cleaner second run.

Following a quick lunch break we made our way to the Deep Water Solo pool. They put this in a couple of years ago but since we are normally there for Tuck Fest, it’s generally closed for event competitors as it’s a pretty legit competition. Since I’ve gone bouldering twice now, I was super keen on trying it.

If you are not familiar with Deep Water Solo, it’s essentially a climbing wall that rises off the deck of a pool. You don’t use ropes, so if you fall off, even if you reach the top, you end up falling into the pool. Yeah, I know that sounds awesome right? If i remember correctly, it’s the only facility of it’s kind in the US, maybe the world. Pretty cool.

It was super crowed, so I only got a chance to take a shot at a couple of routes, which I did not climb well but it doesn’t really matter. It was a really fun challenge and it’s a crazy feeling when you miss a hold or slip and just drop into the pool. Even when I’ve fallen bouldering, it’s generally not that high or you do that thing where you are falling but you know it’s coming so you can brace yourself for it or roll out of it. Not with this. There were a few people that made it pretty high but had to voluntarily drop because they were scared to fall from any higher. I didn’t make it that high, but it was definitely high enough to let out an ‘oh shit’ when I fell.

We regrouped at the car after that and ditched our wet shoes before heading down to one of the obstacle courses. We didn’t feel like going through the gearing up and waiting in line to do the high ropes course or zip lines but we found a low-to-the-ground course that we tackled. It was definitely for little kids and not people that are six-feet tall but whatever.

After working up a proper sweat at the obstacle course, we made our way to the flat water dock to get out on the Catawba River. In the past we’ve grabbed a two person kayak, which I am not a fan of. I don’t know if it’s because I’m usually coming off of a race or if it’s the way the kayak is shaped or if I just have bad posture but those things kill my back and my hip flexors always end up cramping up.

I’d been planting the seeds for trying Stand Up Paddle Boarding for a while and finally got my chance here. Seriously, I’ve brought it up a number of times, sort of half serious trying to get Amanda to go for it. She was all for it this time and enjoyed it way more than the kayaks too.

They launch you on you knees and have you paddle out away from the dock so you are out in the middle of the river when you try to stand up. I’ll be honest, I was fully expecting to spent more time swimming than standing and I for sure planned on dumping it on the first try.

Turns out, it’s not that bad. Now when we paddled out into the more open section of the river that had boat traffic, the wake waves gave me some trouble, but for the most part I did pretty well. I can’t imagine doing it in the whitewater or the ocean, but a calm and peaceful river, sign me up.

We spent more than an hour paddling up and down the river, which was really relaxing. It was a nice change up from racing from activity to activity on the dry land. One thing that Amanda always reminds me of is that we tend to go 100 miles an hour at any given moment. I tend to forget that and will generally either wear her or myself or both of us out. What can I say, I’m kind of dumb, I just go until I run out of gas. That’s all I know. This was a nice pace change so we didn’t run out of gas at like four in the afternoon.

When it came time to head back to the dock, I decided I had to take another shot at Deep Water Solo. I mean, if it’s the only one in the world I have to try it again. I stuck with the same route this time and got a couple more shots at it. My first go was my best of the day. I was able to watch a couple people climb it before me, including a crew that looked like they are regulars. That had me second guessing my route selection a little.

As much as I love the whitewater center there are usually a few moments that make me feel washed. The kids that work there and the people that have season passes all look like they are straight out of an instagram post. It makes me feel like I look like a outdoor narc sometimes. Reminds me of that scene in Point Break when the surf kid tells Utah that surfing is the source.

Hey, man, guys your age learning to surf, it’s cool, there’s nothing wrong with it.

Okay, once I got through that moment we decided to make our way to the car to change, grab a recovery beer, and make our way to the stage area to catch some music before heading back to the hotel. That was the plan, but remember how I’m 12. I noticed there were very few people at the rock climbing wall and I wanted to redeem myself from DWS.

I managed to get a couple of easier routes on the bouldering wall and messed around with the auto-belay on the climbing wall for a bit, but shortly thereafter I ran out of gas and my arms were just shot. I made it about half way up one of the walls before losing my grip a couple of times and decided it was time to shut it down and get that beer.

Recovery Beer of the Week

Bell’s // Oberon

A couple of years ago Bells was the presenting sponsor of Tuck Fest. I won giant can of Oberon for winning the half marathon and they had it on tap at everywhere at the whitewater center. Bearing that in mind, it felt like the natural choice for this adventure’s recovery beer.

Oberon is an american wheat ale that’s perfect on a summer day. It’s refreshing and flavorful and goes down easy after a day of pushing yourself.