it's all mike's doing
The butterfly effect is a real thing.
In 1987, we met Mike and Natalie. We were poor as church mice undergrads, living in a $270 a month efficiency. Stephanie was working at a bank; I would be starting my senior year that fall. I was working at the Harlow Primate Lab, managing the colony part-time and taking a full load of credits. In retrospect, I love those times; life was simpler. Not easy, mind you, but certainly easier in some respects.
Mike was in Madison at the Medical School to do a fellowship in cardiac anesthesiology. He had more education than anyone I had ever met—undergrad from Ithaca College, PhD in Chemistry from the University of Rochester, MD from Miami College, Residency at Dartmouth, and an extra year just for fun at the U.W. So yeah, real dumb guy.
Mike and Nat had an apartment across the yard from us, and Mike had a kayak chained to the clothesline pole. It was a beautiful slalom kayak from John Sweet’s Nittany Valley Boats, if I recall correctly. I didn’t know anything about kayak shapes other than there’s a hole in the middle where you sit and it has two pointy ends.
Neither of us had kids, so hanging out was easy. We went to drive-ins in our old 1972 Oldsmobile Delta 88, huge and olive green, so we named it Sherman, like the tank. Plenty of space in that beast.
One day I asked if I could borrow his kayak to try it out. He gently explained that a) I wouldn’t fit, and b) it’s not designed for flatwater. Then he explained to me the different kinds of kayaks. A good education. I wanted to take an Olympic-style slalom kayak to the Boundary Waters, a desire in retrospect that is the facepalmiest thing I’ve ever wanted to do.
Fast forward a year, and Mike got a job at the Rochester General Hospital. We kept in contact and as it happens, I got into grad school at the University of Rochester and moved there six months later.
Mike and Nat were once poor students as well, so they knew our plight. We spent more than one Sunday night at their house eating massive dinners and going home with enough leftovers to feed us for three days. They always seemed to have “extra food.” Granted they were probably ten years older than us, but that didn’t seem to matter.
Mike taught me about kayaking, and I purchased my first boat, a used Perception Mirage, a 13-foot whitewater boat that was just massive compared to today’s whitewater kayaks. But it was stable and it served me well as I was learning.
For the two years I was in school, Mike and Nat (and a new baby daughter not much older than our own Whitney) treated us like family. We were family. They made it possible for us to survive a tough period in our lives. They contributed to our lives in unmeasurable ways, but they contributed to your lives, you just don’t know it yet.
So the reason I can write this is because of Michael C. DeTraglia, PhD, MD. He mentored me as a paddler and started this path.
When I moved back to Madison in 1990, I got a real job (so to speak), but my fun job was working at this little crumbly store called Rutabaga. The roof leaked, the inventory was disorganized, and the vibe was chaotic but exciting. Monday through Thursday I sat at a computer and lived in the world of MANOVAs and multiple regression, calculating unemployment rates and looking at breast cancer stats. I got to talk to people about boats all day Friday and Saturday.
I worked at the State of Wisconsin for four years, but the short version is that I went from part-time weekend warrior, to full-time manager, to VP/GM, to co-owner, to owner, over a decade.
I never thought I would be here, and yet, here I am.
If it weren’t for Mike, you wouldn’t be reading this. Rutabaga Paddlesports would not exist. It would have probably ceased to exist in 2003. I would have become a statistician at some Madison biotech company, and probably retired by now. Thousands of people may never have had the opportunity to paddle good equipment.
These two kids may have never paddled in a canoe.
My kids loved paddling when they were young, but they might have lost interest if they did not grow up around the industry. Ian may not have taken his canoe on a honeymoon to the Boundary Waters.
I probably would have still paddled, but probably not as much. I certainly wouldn’t have introduced dozens if not hundreds of our family friends to paddling.
There’s no reason to go back in time and play What If. But it certainly makes me pause at how fortunate we all are that Mike and Nat moved into an apartment behind ours, of the tens of thousands of places there are to live in Madison.
Last night I was inducted into the Wisconsin Paddlers Hall of Fame. An award from my peers is something I didn’t expect, but when I read what kind things they said about what I’ve done the last three decades or so, I had to accept that at least some of them are true.
And all the good things that have happened in paddlesports in the Upper Midwest trace back, in one way or another, to my friend, my mentor, my brother—Mike.
Beautiful story! Congratulations! And too, thank you!
Congratulations and thank you for all you’ve done to contribute and bring joy to Madison area paddlers!