Originally uploaded by chaesq.

This is the first documented photo of me, Chicken, half of Team Cesar Salad with Chicken, taken about two hours in to the 2005 Genesis Adventure Sprint at Hartford, CT. (And yes, I named myself Chicken because I was scared to death about doing this race, and anything related to it.)

The first leg -- mountain biking around a 6-mile trail -- was pure agony. Cesar Salad, I think, enjoyed it and just didn't want to get off his bike long enough to take a picture. I, Chicken, on the other hand, nearly died on that course, and would have fled into the woods if Cesar Salad had made any efforts to document my pain and suffering.

Here, we are faux-cheating. After a nice downstream float, we found ourselves fighting both wind AND current on our way back to the fourth Checkpoint. We saw some other teams drag their kayaks onto land and walk back, so we attempted to try the same.

We ended up on some bizarre trail that sort of paralleled the river. We dragged that poor kayak across all manner of terrain: dirt, rocks, pebbles, pavement, grass. We encountered a group of young men in the woods who were totally drunk and tried to help us. (Incidentally, that was the only time I felt scared for my life.) We scraped up the bottom of that kayak nice and good before we decided it was too damn heavy to carry anymore, and we relaunched into the river.

When we got back to shore -- legally, this time -- we dragged the kayak out of the water. "DON'T DRAG IT! LIFT IT AND CARRY IT!" berated the Checkpoint monitor.

Cesar Salad and I exchanged looks and smirks. Oh, if they only knew ...

And so, the adventure began.