Look, I don't know if this is funny if you don't know all of the people involved. It makes me laugh out loud, though, and I wrote it. So give it a read and if it makes no sense, you were warned.

The other night we partook in the Warren War Games. For those of you who were not involved, evidently Warren was prepping some guides and T.A.s for some kind of certification test. In preparation for this, he scheduled a short class and trip.

To play the parts of the clients/students in this exercise, Warren selected some of his students with whom he has been working closely this summer and assigned us all roles based on our particular strength and/or weaknesses.

Our goal was to attempt to sabotage the guides and test their reactions. For some reason he assigned me the role of talking incessantly in an attempt to distract the guides. I guess the role of “looking heroic on the water” wasn’t necessary.

I missed the class portion as Professor Warren was analyzing my roll-roadblock. We rejoined the group for the trip, though. The Rogues Gallery was as follows:

Reid: slippery and cunning, keeps his body fat in a storage locker in New Jersey . Mission : fall into the water as often as possible.

Vlad: AKA the Stressor from Odessa. Mission: sneak away as often as possible, all the way to Red Hook if the opportunity presented itself.

Ted: uses his knowledge of science for evil instead of good. Mission: break his arm, then think heavy and non-hydrodynamic thoughts as he gets towed back to the pier.

Me: the handsome and charming devil. Mission: engage the person on “sweep” position in conversation; lure them away from the group.

(I didn’t miss anyone, did I? It feels like we got up to a lot of shenanigans for such a small group.)

We were barely out of the eddy line before utter chaos ensued. The conditions couldn’t have been more perfect for this exercise; the current was going out at a good clip, the wind was blowing upstream for some good chop, and a ton of ferry traffic meant that you never knew which direction the wake was coming from.

A play-by-play would be neither entertaining, nor even possible. Before long we were spread out over a good portion of the river. I couldn’t see where my counterparts were, much less inventory their mischief. Instead, here are some highlights.

Two foot swells were crashing over our boats and it was sometimes hard to tell the real distress from the simulated. Constant shouts of “man overboard” almost drowned out my incessant chatter.

My first victim was Caroline, the new girl, the only one who didn’t know us already. This worked to my advantage; she didn’t know that I’m much faster than I was paddling that night, so she probably wasn’t suspicious about how far back I was hanging. Either my conversational prowess isn’t as great as I’d suspected, or she did her job well; she kept reeling me back in to the group.

As the sun began to set and the air cool, I suspected that Reid was capsizing more frequently because the water was warmer than the air.

With the current pushing us out to sea, the intense boat and ferry traffic, and the constant rescue-delays, we were barely in the middle of the river and well south of the pier. Warren switched up the leadership, but no one had a strong sense of where we were going or why.

Our group kind of turned into a directionless blob. Caroline, my prey, had moved to the south end of the group and I found myself next to Warren at the north end. “You see that boat?” he asked, pointing out a booze cruise ship headed right at us. When it started to get uncomfortably close, Warren temporarily took charge with a shout of “Paddle left!”

It was amazing how such a bunch of incompetents suddenly were paddling very efficiently out of the path of the cruise ship.

Of course, out of harm’s way, the chaos ensued again. Now XL was on sweep. XL likes to talk almost as much as I do, so I was able to lure him away from the group while I learned a thing or two about wind and chop height.

As good as “Reid DeNiro” was at acting a capsize, Tedward Norton did an Oscar-worthy performance with his broken arm. Had I not been in the briefing room, I would have been fooled by his shouts of pain. His pathetic, girly shouts of pain.

XL left the sweep position in order to assist the broken Ted, which left Jeff on sweep. Between me trying to steer Jeff out to the middle of the river, and Vlad sneaking further and further behind the group, we were pretty spread out. Thus I never did see how the rest of the group formed a daisy chain of tow-lines. Even poor, drenched, scrawny Reid was tethered to the group as three people were towing two boats.

Finally, back in the embayment, we did a little bit of a final class. Warren wasn’t quite done, though. Surreptitiously, he came around to each of us and told us to capsize on our way back to the dock. I’m sure it was a beautiful thing, more than half the group (Warren included) underwater, but I couldn’t see it as I was submerged, myself.

Poor Jeff, he did such a good job of getting me back in my boat in no time flat, how could he have known that Warren had secretly told Reid to pop the hatch cover off of his front hatch and let it fill with water. By the time Jeff attempted to right his boat, it must have weighed well over 150lbs.

Considering that I don’t think we paddled more than 100 feet, that had to be one of the funniest times I’ve ever had in a kayak. Funny because I’m not a guide.