BILL KAISER, TRULY ONE OF A KIND
Sunday, June 20th, 2010
Bill Kaiser biking on Prince Edward Island
I first met Bill Kaiser whitewater kayaking on Maine’s Dead River back in the late 80s. We quickly became friends. Or, at least, I thought we became friends. He later told me he had a hard time liking anyone who worked for the IRS. That was the beginning of over 20 years of banter that continued until the night before he died. I called him Grampy, Grumpy and Mr. Clatter. He had names for me like Heidi, Wimp, Mr. Clutter and others I won’t mention. We disagreed on politics and declared a truce. We usually broke it.
Bill was one of the most remarkable and exceptional people that I’ve ever met. No one could ever call him boring. He was tenacious, provocative, opinionated, irreverent, combative, incredibly persistent and he loved Cocoa Puffs for breakfast. In other words, he was near perfect in my eyes – except for the Cocoa Puffs. He was also unfailingly generous, courageous, devoted to his friends and family and he adored his wife, Alice. He could fix anything: Computers, trucks, engines, cameras, anything. He was a technical climber, whitewater paddler, pilot, computer whiz, and untrained legal beagle extraordinaire. A couple of years ago, I mentioned I needed a website and he came by the house and created one – then maintained it. He sued the State of New Hampshire, represented himself and won.
My wife, Nancy, and I never knew Bill when he wasn’t part of that inseparable team, Bill & Alice. They and our large circle of outdoor friends have shared hundreds of adventures. Probably a score of whitewater trips to West Virginia, the southeastern United States and Quebec, whitewater expeditions down the Grand Canyon, Salmon River in Idaho and two weeks paddling rivers and hiking volcanoes in Costa Rica. There were several multi-day winter trips into Baxter State Park and the White Mountains hiking, climbing and skiing. We experienced probably a couple of hundred days navigating whitewater streams and rivers throughout New England. And, with Bill, there was always a misadventure within the adventure. He loved to tell people that I’d saved his life several times. That he nearly killed me several times would be closer to the truth.
On his 60th birthday, Bill pulled a 100 pound sled 16 miles into Chimney Pond in northern Maine’s Baxter State Park in February. I carried a hidden bottle of Heineken Beer wrapped in toilet paper with a big red bow as a present. The next day, he climbed Mt. Katahdin for his first time in the winter. On the descent, he fell on the ice covered shoulder of Cathedral Ridge and began to tumble and slide. As companions Gary Cole, my son, Adam, and others watched in shock from above, he swept me off my feet from behind and made a last second, desperate ice-axe arrest at the edge of a sheer cliff. He saved his own life, not me. Thank God for that blessing, he still had a lot of life left to live.
Bill videoed many of our whitewater adventures and he created several excellent Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC) films including the infamous Bloopers, Bleepers, and Screwups videos. They were successfully marketed as a club fund raiser. Occasionally, I would do the filming, particularly when Bill was running a rapid. Once, I caught him in the midst of a blooper and substantially embellished the narrative. After, Bill was like a hawk waiting in prey with his video camera. There’s a great scene in one of the Bloopers’ tapes with Bill filming me pinned in my canoe in the middle of a difficult rapid. While others were expressing concern, you can clearly hear him saying with obvious glee, “I gotcha, Ronnie, this one’s for the Bloopers.”
One of our most memorable whitewater trips to West Virginia was with our three Quebec buddies, Pierre, Ritchie and Jean Guy – also known as Moe, Curly and….…aah, well…. never mind. It’s difficult to say what was most outrageous on the trip, the Class IV/V whitewater or our off river antics. I don’t believe I’ve ever laughed as much and most of the time we couldn’t understand each other. We couldn’t speak French and they little English. Bill insisted on driving the entire trip. My responsibilities were to sign with the Canadians during our ongoing vehicle wars and mediate Bill’s road rage. You’ll have to use your imaginations on the signing. We weren’t missed by the West Virginians when we left. The van broke down a couple of times on the return trip and Bill repaired engine problems with coat hanger wire and duct tape. After an emergency stop at his son’s house in Worcester, Massachusetts, we limped home but just barely, the engine was smoking when he dropped me off.
There are so many stories. Frustrated with delays during a whitewater a trip on the Jacques Cartier River in Quebec, Bill left the group and attempted to carry his kayak out of the canyon. Instead, he fell into a swamp and was badly chewed up by thousands of hungry mosquitoes. Forced to return to the river, he refused to speak to us when he reached the takeout. There was much more to this fiasco - A lost American paddler unable to communicate with French speaking farmers, naked men running in the woods, Mounties conducting a search and rescue, and more……. It was an epic of legendary proportions. When Bill retired as AMC Canoe Chair, we had a fleece shirt designed for him with Renard de la Marais, that’s Swamp Fox, inscribed on the back.
At age 72, Bill announced that he was going to backpack through the Presidential Range of the White Mountains. His son, Dick, and I were victims of the draft. Not satisfied with a simple hike in the mountains, he decided to plant edelweiss in the alpine zone. Born in Germany, he thought the Whites needed a touch of his native homeland. His back gave out before he was able to complete the trip, but he still put in three strenuous days in the high peaks.
Back problems forced Bill to give up whitewater and mountaineering a few years ago, but he wasn’t ready to surrender his love of the outdoors and need for new adventures. Biking became his passion. Of course, he approached this new sport with the same enthusiasm and dogged determination as he did life. After a few bike rides, he was ready to take on the nearly 200-mile Confederation Trail on Prince Edward Island. Last September, during his second visit to the island, he finished the entire trail with Alice, friends Frank & Carolyn, and Nancy and I cheering him on. If I remember correctly, he insisted on beer and ice cream as his reward.
He really loved the bike trails in Florida. Nancy and I joined Bill and Alice for a month of biking there each of the past two winters. He and I had a running competition on who could do the most stupid stunts on a bicycle. While Alice and Nancy would ride properly along the trails, we would burst by lying on our seats, feet on the handle bars, standing on one pedal, you name it. Each trip, we kept a record of our mileage. The first winter, Bill’s goal was 250 miles. After finishing our last ride, we calculated our final totals. Bill only had 249 miles and said he was going to round it off to 250. I told him he could round it off if he wanted, but as far as I was concerned he was cheating. He pretended to sulk, but loved it. Last winter, he complained incessantly about my screwy mileage calculations, but exceeded his goal of 300 with several miles to spare. We finished our trip sharing a cabin at Grayton Beach on the Emerald Coast, which connects with the 20 mile Timpoochee Bike Trail. On our last ride, Bill fell while crossing a road on the way out. When we returned, I rode ahead and stopped traffic so he could safely cross. We had a great laugh, but I knew he was scheming for the future.
Bill called the night before he died. After several minutes of joking about our stuffed koala bears, Wally and Aussie, new plans were made. We decided to ride the Mountain Division Bike Trail near Sebago Lake the following Thursday and the Franconia Notch Trail again sometime in June. When he and Alice returned from their train trip in the Canadian Rockies, we’d go back to Prince Edward Island. I find it gratifying to know that Bill was still planning new adventures when he left us. I wish we could have shared many, many more, but consider myself blessed to have known him and enjoyed his friendship for so many years. I know Grampy’s out there somewhere waiting for me and plotting a payback for my road crossing gag. He was truly one of a kind and I miss him a lot.
Ron Chase is an avid four-season outdoorsman and freelance writer, who co-authored the mountain guidebook Mountains for Mortals – New England. Visit his website www.ronchaseoutdoors.com, created by the inimitable Bill Kaiser.