I'm going to be on the water today with the rower whose Olympic dream began with the personal tragedy.

We'll see how that worked out for him and how far his competitive rowing has taken him Well, we're in Dover, New Hampshire, today on the Chico River.

This river is an estuary.

And the moment we're waiting for a high tide.

But warmer.

We didn't want to take you on a little side trip over to New York State to one of our country's oldest and most fabled waterways.

There are more songs and stories written about the Erie Canal than anything.

And lots of history, too.

Now our guide to all this pleasure and all this adventure is Eric.

Fred.

Pleasure to see you again, Eric.

Yeah, it's been a while.

Nice to see you, too.

Now, you and I are in for a little exercise today, is that right?

A little bit of exercise.

Yeah.

Well, I hope so.

I'm going to be in my kayak.

And you're rowing.

You're a rowing shell.

Single rowing shell.

A single scull shell.

Yes.

Yes.

All right.

Now you've been at this a few years.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Almost over 15 now.

Wow.

Amazing.

Amazing.

Well, we want to hear more about that.

You know, as we go.

And I'm sure we will.

I'll show you a trip on the Erie Canal.

Last year, we rode the length of that sucker.

Yeah.

Oh, that's a long haul.

I want to hear about that.

But so we can hear about it in the water.

Shall we embark, you suppose?

Absolutely.

Okay.

Let's do it.

Well, Eric Rose is racing shell.

I'll paddle my slower and more stable kayak we take off from the dock at Great Bay Rowing in Dover, New Hampshire.

We'll follow the critical river for several miles.

It's part of the Prescott acquired river drainage basin, which flows near New Hampshire's border with Maine.

I served rowing in middle school at a camp out of here, the Great Bay Rowing ran, and that was like a week long camp.

I did that two summers and started rowing like consistently in high school.

Freshman year of high school, until he left for college.

Eric spent his life in the Seacoast area of New Hampshire, about ten miles from where we are today.

There's plenty of water here, both rivers and Great Bay It's a 6000 acre estuary.

And if you have the desire to grow, it's a very good place to be.

Eric began to row around New Hampshire and later at Ithaca College.

The sport eventually took him around the world, kind of caught the bug from there and kept training two years in Vermont for years.

And Philly went to a few world championships, few international races like Henley from there.

And it was definitely great experience In the summer of 2020, Eric packed what he could fit into a racing shell and took off to New York State and the Erie Canal to tell me about what got into it with this New York thing.

Yeah, when I was at aftercare my senior year, we did a 60 kilometer through Rochester New York on the canal and we went through two locks and I thought was really cool.

And so when I stopped training at the beginning of the pandemic, there weren't any races to kind of cap off, you know, all those years of rowing.

So I wanted to do something difficult and something rewarding.

Here's the sign for the intersection of Syracuse, the series that way, both that way Albany.

Lake Oneida.

That way, yeah.

Definitely found something difficult of going on the canal.

So I decided that would be a good challenge.

The road from one end to the other in the sinuses.

Erie Canal.

Onondaga Lake.

One mile.

Syracuse Terminal, six miles.

Buffalo 183 miles.

So I thought the rowing in a single rowing shell racing show would be challenging enough to leave me satisfied Now, before we head too far down the Erie Canal, it's important.

You know how Eric got here.

You started out this fine madness because of something that happened to your older brother, right?

Yeah.

Nicholas Frid, known by friends and family as Nick, is the reason Eric Rose.

Nick was his older brother.

Born eight years before Eric, he took to the sport with enthusiasm before Eric even considered sitting in a racing shell.

Nick was already out on the water.

He rode about four years, maybe five years.

So yeah, growing up, going to races, I definitely didn't enjoy that.

But I feel like for, you know, I knew it was something I wanted to try at some point.

So and it was like fun being a little kid watching these high school as, you know, these high schoolers being a team and have a good time.

It seemed like something I really want to do The impression was made it was the beginning of a journey for Eric with an end destination.

He couldn't imagine.

Yeah, I think I enjoy it being on the water the most and like how hard the sport was Growing up, I played a lot of sports and wasn't very good at them.

But rowing is kind of one of those sports where like putting in effort equates to going faster for the most part.

And I think I enjoy that, enjoy the team atmosphere, and it's definitely a huge team sport more so than other sport.

So it was a pretty good environment to be in.

Nick continued to train and compete.

Eric remained his brother's loyal fan with high school behind him.

Nick moved on to a role for the University of New Hampshire and a cool October morning in 2003.

The crew came ashore after a team workout.

There was something about Nick that not even his family knew he had a birth defects in his heart and passed away at a practice.

And so ever since then, I knew I wanted the row.

And once I was able to get on the water, it was definitely a connection to him.

Definitely.

And definitely being that young, you know, it's difficult to deal with grief.

And I feel like it was like a pretty easy avenue to kind of address some of that stuff.

Love for a brother became a passion for a sport.

Eric embraced throwing it became his way forward.

He rode all through high school.

All through high school.

Where did you go to high school?

Oyster River High School.

Oyster material.

Yeah.

And then it's a good college.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But you weren't a music major.

No, no.

You know, I played Trump in high school.

I did not go for free music.

But you wrote a disco.

I did, yeah.

Yeah.

On the lake again in LA.

And then there there's more to Eric story but for now, we take you back to New York State and the Erie Canal Here you go.

Niagara River started the Erie Canal so it'll to be just really extremely challenging, especially to do it in a single 360 Mile Sea in Troy.

Yeah.

No, I just thought I've always liked the idea of doing like a through hike or something like this.

So this was kind of like, you know, the equivalent for rowing.

And the Erie Canal is this unique body of water where it's now hundreds of miles of perfectly flat water.

So, um, definitely perfect for like a rolling show.

Eric plans to grow his racing shell 338 miles a distance.

He's not used to you as your support person all along the way there.

Oh, I didn't have a support person, so I just carried all my gear in the boat.

Yeah.

Which, in hindsight, was a bad decision because it's that way.

It's really, really wears on you.

But I love you.

By.

And when I take a video, as you roll out my fiance, they drop me off in Tonawanda.

On the Niagara River near Buffalo.

And then she left me.

So I was on my own Good morning, Dave, for something in this field and Ben's.

Now, you didn't can't you camp some along the way?

Right about it?

Half of it.

And then at some point, I realized that doing 70, 80 kilometers a day and camping on the ground was going to be a little too much on my back.

And, you know, poor thing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So you could tell it all right along the way.

The motels, right?

Yeah, yeah.

A few times I had to find somewhere to stash my boat.

And you got to get up at that.

And then, yeah, there's motels along the way.

A lot of walking to get to the motel or to find food, but walk in with your boat on your shoulder.

No, no, that would be that.

Be tough.

But, uh, yeah, I mean, the hardest thing was finding somewhere to take the boat on the shore, because, like, your kayak, the boat's really rowing, so it's pretty fragile.

So you can't put it up on the rocks or anything like that.

Here we are, halfway point on the Erie Canal somewhere, uh, north of Syracuse.

If you don't know much about where Eric is rowing, here's a bit of its history.

The Erie Canal connects the Hudson River, just north of Albany, to Lake Erie at Buffalo, New York.

The 363 mile waterway was built 40 feet wide and four feet deep.

Barges made it easy and inexpensive to transport goods from Buffalo to New York City.

But it did more than that.

Towns along the canal prospered and grew pretty cool.

Like Town.

And Baldwin's ville was very friendly.

Probably the nicest one yet.

And I'd continue to be amazed by how impressed people are with how near the thrilling show is.

I think something you take for granted Construction of the canal began in 1817 and employed mostly immigrant workers.

The people who engineered the construction were self-taught.

There were no engineering schools at that time in the United States.

The cost of the project $7 million You probably knew about the Erie Canal history before you started, right?

Yeah.

And you go to buy a lot of little blue signs?

Yeah.

Did you actually stop to read them?

Sometimes I think when I was in Rome, New York, because that's where they and that's the first part of the canal they built.

There was a lot of information there and so I read a lot over there, but definitely have spent some time researching it.

And, you know, there was like an older canal that's no longer in use that I didn't see.

But and so, yeah, it's definitely a lot of resources there and you can bike it.

And I feel like if you break that, you're probably going to open.

Oh, 18, 20, 18, 18, 25.

18, 25.

And who was the guy in charge of it?

Was it Clinton?

That's it?

Yeah.

DeWitt.

Clinton.

Yeah.

Called Clinton's big ditch commercial traffic on the canal declined in the late 1950s once the Saint Lawrence Seaway opened, the Erie Canal is now used mostly for pleasure.

And definitely, like, going through the locks is like a really, really cool experience.

You know, there's over 30 locks on the canal and I think all the lock attendants were really surprised to see me but yeah, definitely really cool.

Like, just sitting there and being lowered down.

Like, I think some of them are up to 100 feet of elevation change.

So that was definitely really cool.

Whether Eric is rowing against competitors are challenging himself on America's most famous canal.

One thing remains the same.

So you have to really work with the water.

And I feel like the more you grow, the more you realize that I feel like when you first start rolling your kind of fighting against the water, um, but you know, the way that fluid dynamics work and whatever you have to like.

Yeah.

Really become one with, uh, what you're doing in the water and doing across the surface.

Um, and I feel like, you know, it can be a really strange mix of relaxation and like intensity like you feel pretty connected to the world around you when it's going well, but when it's not going well, you're kind of just frustrated and stressed out and sort of kind of going against the grain.

And so you well, you made it down river, filled my self, my boat and it's a good college.

Eric's rowing was full steam ahead of trying to focus on battling in our championship and etc.

But that for me, my senior year, I kind of realized that I would want to keep rowing after college.

And so I definitely, you know, put in a lot more effort into, um, increasing my fitness and trying to get to a point where, you know, rowing after college would be something worthwhile.

Eric ramped up his training and set new goals like trying to train for the national team and trying to hopefully make the Olympics the way it works is essentially, you know, there's the US national team and there's certain events on the national team that are sort of, you know, trials based.

And the year before the Olympics, you have to like qualify and meet a certain standard internationally.

Like if the finish like top 11, for example, or top ten.

So you qualify that for the US I was on the national team for three years and I went to world championships in 2019.

We didn't finish high enough for our boat to qualify for the Olympics.

So then you get like a final chance we're gonna the next year in Switzerland, which is like only two spots like very competitive and that's what I was training with.

And then the pandemic happened, that event got canceled, the Olympics got postponed.

And so I kind of had to like reassess and decide I didn't want to keep training for another year.

Definitely makes you realize that, you know, you have to like take a look at things and, you know, feel happy about what you're able to do because otherwise you're never going to be satisfied.

And I think the most important thing is like if you're not happy with the process, you're never going to be happy of the results.

You know, like the results, you can always be better, you know, and not everyone makes the Olympics.

Not everyone medals.

So you have to find value in other things.

With the chance to ruin the Olympics behind him.

Eric retired from competition.

He says all the effort he gave to the sport came with rewards.

That's the value Eric talks about.

Rowing is like an extremely repetitive sport.

You have to be pretty zoned in and you're like really kind of inflicting a lot of effort on yourself.

And so being outside, being like in this environment, was it's kind of part of the payoff of it all, you know?

And I feel like being able to go, you really get the experience you know, areas that most people don't like in College Road at Ithaca, and there's a huge lake there like Cayuga and like most college students who go to F K or go to Cornell and don't ever actually make it down onto the water, even though it's such a big part of that area.

And so the rowers definitely have some exclusive access to like some of the best parts of, you know, a city or an area or a region so stuck has been following.

They're looking for food.

If just a friend and other part they go, 99, it's best to me.

And I got about a kilometer in and I was taking on water and probably would have been swamped within a couple of minutes.

So yeah, a guy who flagged me down in his boat last night let me store my beer on his dark, uh, is going to figure out a way that I can cart off my single on his Pontiac and he's going to give me a ride to Sylvan Beach.

Eight days on the Erie Canal and Eric's gone as far as he can and ended up being 318 miles.

The full length is three 30, eight 20, the miles I wasn't able to do you because it was on Lake Oneida morning from Lake United.

You can't really see the other side and unfortunately what is generally a prevailing Western, you know, and yeah, I was planning on doing it the morning of I woke up, it was like ripping headwind whitecaps.

My boat was.

It's a shallow lake.

Yeah, it does get choppy.

I lived out there for years.

Okay.

Just south of Lake Oneida, Lake Yeah.

So, you know, you can't see the other side when you're on one side of it.

And so I'll go back one day and get that done with.

But with my schedule that I'd planned out for the trip, I decided to get some help and go around that.

But so it's been quite the journey.

I don't think I would do it again, but it's so I just got to go headfirst into things like that.

And, uh, yeah, Eric no doubt enjoys challenges, competition at home and abroad.

He spent years rowing with team mates and crossing Cross Lake after testing himself on a 318 mile solo journey.

He seemed satisfied and I thought it'd be a great way to kind of like, cap off you over a decade of rowing.

Um, it definitely was, and it was definitely really challenging, especially at the pace that I did it at.

Like doing it in like eight days was pretty, pretty tight schedule.

A rowing career that began with the loss of a brother continues for the love of the sport, the journey Eric began as a young student continues.

Yeah, we'll see.

I mean, I feel like the past year or so I've been like, you know, I've been coaching a little bit, but sort of staying away from rowing that much.

I would definitely love to grow and team boats again.

I mean, I've grown a couple of times in Seattle where I now live and it's really special rowing there because it's a really great body of water.

Um, I feel like Seattle's so centered around the Puget Sound and the lakes that are there.

So, um, the few times I went out, I've gone out and Seattle's has been pretty special well, we've had a lovely day in the Chico River.

Absolutely.

Eric had a nice roll.

I had a nice paddle trying to keep.

I gave I gave up and I came back I thought you had a good time.

Yeah, I hope.

Absolutely.

You got to swim well, I don't know if she wanted to, but she did.

And, um, we've come to that point once again where we have to say goodbye.

So I shall um.

Eric Kratz.

Thank you.

It was a pleasure.

That was a duck.

And we must not do it.

Emily must do it.

Again.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Bye bye, everybody.

I hope to see you again.

I'm Windows to the wild support for the production of Windows to the Wild is provided by the Alice Jaye Rain Charitable Trust.

The Fuller Foundation, the Gilbert Verney Foundation, Bailey Charitable Foundation, the Macintosh Foundation.

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