John Hendrickson and Allen Hunter have a dream, and they don’t care if friends and family think it’s crazy. In fact, Hendrickson and Hunter admit it probably is.

The Waco Transit managers are planning next month to paddle kayaks from San Marcos to the Gulf of Mexico to raise money for college scholarships for transit workers in Texas.

They plan to travel 260 miles in four days as part of the Texas Water Safari, which calls itself the “World’s Toughest Boat Race.”

Allen Hunter (left) and John Hendrickson will kayak from San Marcos to the Gulf of Mexico.
Jerry Larson/Waco Tribune-Herald

Just how tough is it? Participants who don’t drop out are known for losing all their fingernails and sometimes their minds as exhaustion and sleep deprivation bring on hallucinations.

The route along the San Marcos and Guadalupe rivers is fraught with treacherous rapids, milelong logjams, alligators, venomous snakes, Texas heat and mosquitoes.

Plan unfolds

Hendrickson and Allen are river rookies who hadn’t paddled until last November, when they began hatching their plan.

Their first attempts at paddling were comical. But they have been training on local rivers and finished a recent 45-mile qualifying race for the Texas Water Safari. They are determined to finish the big race, which was scheduled for this weekend but was postponed to July 10 because of flooding.

About 100 people are expected to enter, and 30 to 50 percent usually drop out before the end, depending upon river conditions.

“We’re trying to do something to make people say, ‘It’s crazy to do that,’ ” said Hendrickson, Waco Transit general manager. “That way they’ll think, ‘I’m going to sponsor you a dollar a mile because there’s no way you’re going to make it past the first day.’ ”

Hunter, an assistant general manager, said when he called Texas Water Safari last fall to inquire about the race, the woman who answered the phone tried to talk him off the ledge.

He recalls the response: “She said, ‘Let me save you some time. You guys have no business being out there.’ And you know, she was absolutely right. But we’re more prepared now. That statement has driven me.”

Hunter and Hendrickson said they see the race as both a personal challenge and a chance to help employees.

Hendrickson, past president of the Texas Transit Association, is working with the association to set up a scholarship for transit employees who want to pursue college. He and Hunter got industry groups, including Lasseter Bus and Mobility, to sponsor the effort. They have raised more than $5,000 for Texas Transit Foundation scholarships.

The adventure was born last fall, when Hunter watched a Texas Parks and Wildlife Department special about the Texas Water Safari, a tradition that dates to 1962. Hunter told Hendrickson about it, and his response was: “We should do it.”

“I thought I might as well do something crazy while I still can,” Hendrickson said. “I have this problem that I don’t back down from stuff. It’s hard for me to quit. Our wives think we’re both crazy.”

‘The goal is to endure’

Hunter, 42, is a Gulf War veteran. Hendrickson, 39, is a former Army drill sergeant. Now they are dads and have office jobs, but they still thirst for adventure and physical challenge.

“We’re not doing this to be competitive,” Hunter said. “The goal is to endure all the things your body says aren’t natural. We’re trying to do that. This is going to test us physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. We’re going to have to dig deep to see what we can do.”

The men started training last fall with Brandon Thomas, Waco Transit’s marketing director who is serving as Hendrickson’s race captain. Steve Edgar, Waco Transit’s maintenance director, has volunteered as Hunter’s captain.

Picking kayaks

After struggling with a canoe trip, they settled on kayaks.

“We realized that every time someone sneezed, we’d nearly fall over,” Hunter said.

The men paddled stretches of local rivers: From Waco to Marlin on the Brazos, from McLennan Community College to Aquilla Creek on the Bosque and Brazos, and Farm-to-Market 185 to Lake Waco on the Middle Bosque.

Last November, the crew set out in kayaks on a flooded Brazos River. They zoomed past the Waco Suspension Bridge and were headed past the Texas Ranger Museum when Hendrickson tipped his kayak over.

Thomas, a kayak rookie himself, had to rescue his boss, who was headed toward the Lake Brazos dam.

“I’ve gotten better,” Hendrickson said. “When I first got into this, I was upside down more often than not.”

Humbling mistakes

The men tease each other about their missteps. They spent hours at the Waco Family YMCA pool, trying to learn the Eskimo roll. Finally, they decided they’d just eject from their kayaks if they tipped over.

At the qualifying race this spring on the Guadalupe River near Cuero, Hendrickson let his kayak slip away from him while he was launching.

“He’s straddling his kayak, and then he rolls it over,” Hunter said. “All of a sudden, when the race started, John was facing the wrong direction.”

Scott Fagner graphic/Waco Tribune-Herald

Hunter admits he got a little overconfident after some weeks of training and went down a flooded Middle Bosque River. His kayak got stuck on a pipe in the river, and he tried to swim under it, only to get lodged underwater in a brush pile, with the force of the river bearing down on him.

The men built up their endurance with long paddles, getting on the river at 5 a.m. and returning at 2 p.m., then heading out again to paddle through the night.

Still, the qualifying race in Cuero was humbling, as they saw the prowess of other participants and the treacherous currents of the Guadalupe River. Hendrickson said the Texas Water Safari will be even tougher.

“On the Brazos, we’re not going down rapids at night, so it’s not terrifying,” Hendrickson said. “But when we’re on a river we don’t know, and you can only see as far as your lights shine, you’re going to have to make quick decisions.”

The team captains will drive to checkpoints to make sure Hendrickson and Hunter have arrived on time. They’ll bring them water and check their physical condition.

“My job is to keep John alive,” Brandon Thomas said. “I have the authority to take John off the river.”

Allen Spelce, chairman of the Texas Water Safari who has finished the race 11 times, said no one has ever died en route, but some have suffered snakebites or heat exhaustion.

Spelce said the toughest part of the race is the swampy area between Victoria and the San Antonio Bay, dubbed “Hallucination Alley.”

“By that point, teams have been on the river 40 to 60 hours, and a lot of them have not slept,” he said. “Objects begin to take different forms. One team of women jumped out of their boat and said a Russian submarine had been chasing them for two hours.”

Spelce said he hopes Hunter and Hendrickson can finish — if not this race, perhaps in the future.

“For a novice team, it often takes entering the race once and not finishing, then coming back to do it the next year,” he said.

All in the mind

“Most people think of this as a very physical race, but the challenges are more mental. You hurt really bad, and you have to set aside your pain and paddle through it. I’ve seen the tendency of people in their 30s and 40s to do better than those in their 20s with six-pack abs. They often have a mental edge because they’ve had to deal with things before.”

Hendrickson said he doesn’t expect the trip to be fun, but it could be rewarding.

“I think it’s going to be a great experience to get out there and get away from everything else,” he said. “At some point, you forget about everything except the river.”

Waco Transit’s Allen Hunter (front, from left) and John Hendrickson plan to kayak more than 200 miles down the Guadalupe River in less than 100 hours as part of the Texas Water Safari race. They will be accompanied by their respective race captains, Steve Edgar (back, from left) and Brandon Thomas, who also work for Waco Transit.
Jerry Larson/Waco Tribune-Herald

Finishing is the goal

Hendrickson said finishing the race is his only goal.

“Now that we’ve gotten into it, we realize it’s harder than we ever thought,” he said. “I’m just hoping his stubbornness and my stubbornness will push us to the end. Otherwise, we’ll have to do it next year.”

Hendrickson and Hunter are being cheered on by their employees, some of whom hope to receive the transit scholarships.

“I think it’s a good cause, helping people further their education,” said Eva Eastland, a Waco management assistant. “I’m very grateful they’re doing this.”

Eastland graduated from high school in 2005 and has recently started studying business administration at MCC.

Hendrickson knows about the challenges of paying for an education. While attending Texas Tech University, he worked as a diesel mechanic for Citibus in Lubbock, working his way up to assistant manager while attending college full-time.

He said he hopes this race will be the beginning of a permanent scholarship fund that will help transit employees realize their dreams. And that will be worth the struggle, he said.

“When you look back on your life, on the good things you’ve done, what’s important is the people you’ve helped mentor and grow,” he said.

jbsmith@wacotrib.com

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