Stored inside one of the bicycle rooms in Vartan Gregorian Quad is a vessel more than twice as long as any bike and more than three times as heavy. It has weathered Tropical Storm Hanna, seen the underbelly of the Providence Place Mall and is just as at home on the Providence River as it is on a bubbly brook in the woods.
Approximately 12 feet long and over two and a half feet across, Axel Tifft's '10 fiberglass Riverjammer canoe comes complete with a wood and imitation-wicker bench and a length of white rope for the bowline. He also keeps two well-worn wooden paddles, two blue flotation devices and another piece of rope in his dorm for when he and a friend (it takes two to carry the boat from land to water) feel the urge to canoe.
The canoe has come a long way since Tifft first brought it up to Brown University in September 2007. Tifft was then living in Grad Center and kept it padlocked against the hinge of his window outside his room in Tower A. Visible only from Power Street, it stayed partially hidden, its bow just touching the grass and its hull tucked inside a nook.
Tifft initially brought the canoe from his home in New York in order to satisfy his craving for boating. After joining the Brown Outing Club his freshman year, Tifft found that the BOC eschewed the river for the mountains, he said. Though he could have stayed with the BOC and tried to encourage more activities on the water, he said, he brought his canoe from home instead.
"Shame on me," Tifft said with a grin.
Since last fall, Tifft and a willing companion have manually transported the canoe down Power Street to the waterfront downtown, from where they begin their two- to four-hour journeys. They usually paddle down the Providence River, sometimes to the abandoned railroad drawbridge across the Seekonk River.
While the physical demands of canoeing add to the commitment Tifft and his accompanying journeyman du jour must exhibit, the most exhausting leg is the journey from land to water.
"You always have to keep into account when you're taking it out that you need to take it back uphill," Tifft said. He is considering remedying this struggle by attaching the canoe to a longboard and dragging it up and down the steep hill, hopefully shortening what he says are typically 15- and 25-minute trips downhill and uphill, respectively. "I'm as skinny a white boy as they come." Nat Brown '10 didn't canoe much before coming to school.
One of Tifft's roommates, Brown has joined Tifft on four canoeing trips since Tifft brought his canoe to school. He was with Tifft when the two of them found themselves caught in the turbulent waves of Tropical Storm Hanna two weeks ago.
The duo was paddling directly underneath I-195, sheltered from the rain but not from the pounding waves, which hit the canoe on the side "one too many times," Brown said. Once they realized they would be unable to brave the storm in a heavy two-person canoe, Tifft said, they docked and then "made a run for it."
"We were a little close to swamping," said Tifft, who admitted that his canoe is not an "oceangoing vessel."
Mini-hurricane aside, Tifft and his friends have had few mishaps on the water.
Forrest Miller '10, who canoed with Tifft in the spring of 2008, said his experience canoeing down the muddy Providence River with Tifft has shown him some of Providence's "cool, secret" things.
Under a bridge across the Providence River, he said, local artists erected installations of plaster faces, with pieces of crisscrossing wire forming patterns on the underside of the bridge. Half a mile down from the Providence Place Mall, Miller said, abandoned objects - such as fire hydrants and lampposts - lie rusting in the water. Miller and Tifft have also ventured beneath the food court of the mall, where they were noticed by local skateboarders and mall denizens alike.
"It was really weird to see people eating their teriyaki chicken and looking down at you," Miller said.
Tifft said he is willing to let any friends - and even strangers, one of whom has expressed interest, he said - use the canoe, as long as they ask first. He said he would also let the BOC borrow the canoe if it wanted to.
"I'm 100 percent down to let other people use it," Tifft said. "But if you put a hole in it or sink it, you buy me a new one."
Tifft and Brown both said that canoeing requires little specialized knowledge outside of being weather savvy and learning a few steering tricks. However, Tifft added with a laugh, "You should be able to swim."
