Mike Garland’s canoe trip down the Mississippi River took less time than expected but was more wearisome for the 59-year-old man from Santiago Twp.
“My arms and back are pretty sore,” he said at his welcome home event last weekend. “It’s all upper body so everything above the waist is aching.”
Though the feat concluded a few weeks earlier than expected, Garland came home with a plethora of stories, adventures and new friends across this great nation. He began his 2,289-mile canoe trip July 11 at the headwaters of the Mississippi River in Minnesota and concluded Sept. 10.
He raised over $11,000 for this year’s trip and now has brought in over $40,000 for cancer research in his bike, walk and canoe trips across the USA.
“It’s just tremendous the support I’ve received the last three years,” Mike said. “It’s big and bringing awareness to the cause is even bigger.”
Mike was able to make some stops down the river at several locations and give talks about his adventures the last three years. He had over 11,000 Facebook devotees following his day-to-day paddle trip excursions.
Mike faced barges, bugs, hogs, waves, bogs and ocean liners in his quest for the gulf and almost got arrested twice during his journey.
“When I came to lock #15 or 16 at around 6pm one night, I had to pull over and wait for a lock to clear,” he said. “So I got out and started walking around an area I unknowingly discovered was a military area. Three squad cars showed up to ask me lots of questions. They eventually let me go.”
The other near-arrest came when he approached a railroad bridge near a vehicle bridge and parked his canoe under the tracks.
“I wanted to go up to town and get some supplies and all of a sudden a guy showed up and asked me what I was doing. He told me the bridge was protected via the homeland security act and told me I was trespassing.”
Eventually, Mike explained to the fellow the situation and the tension subsided.
“He calmed down and eventually let me go about my business,” Mike said. “He did tell me he’s supposed to have all trespassers arrested, so I’m grateful for that.”
Winds were Mike’s biggest challenge on the trip. On some days, the winds caused waves so high he almost flooded his canoe with the crashing water. One of Mike’s most challenging days was early on in Minnesota when around Lake Winnibigoshish the waves kicked him around good and it took Mike 7.5 to nine hours to travel just nine miles to close out his day.
At Cass Lake, Mike ran into some floating bogs and tried mightily to stay with the current. He spent 2.5 hours trying to wind his way around the massive bog, but eventually just got out and walked across it.
Mike faced an onslaught of deer flies in Northern Minnesota and sand fleas in the south. Wild hogs down in the southern states invaded his campground one night and Mike also saw a wolverine along the shoreline in Grand Rapids.
“I saw a huge 52” muskie and gigantic catfish in New Orleans,” he said. “One of the catfish was so huge I thought it was a giant snake or something.”
From St. Louis on down, Mike’s toughest challenge was navigating around the massive barges and waiting in line to pass through the locks and dams. In Baton Rouge, Mike’s disintegrating oars were making paddling difficult, but an angel appeared to save the day.
“I came upon a few river angels,” Mike said. “River angels are helpers who keep an eye on the river and appear almost out of nowhere to help.”
This angel in Baton Rouge (Todd Budreau) offered to take Mike in and drive him to a sporting goods store to buy new paddles.
“It was a Godsend,” Mike said. “One of my paddles was wobbly and taped up and the other was basically a stump. I’m grateful that guy showed up when he did.”
One of the most rewarding parts of the journey was when Mike was put in touch with John Ruskey, owner of Quapaw Canoeing Company in Clarksdale, MS. He led a group of fifth graders from Jackson Middle School on a canoe trip as a transition into middle school and Mike got the opportunity to tell his story to the eager youngsters.
“I chatted with them for a little while, then spent about an hour answering questions from the kids,” Mike said. “I told them the most rewarding thing they can do in their lives is to do charity work.”
Garland has indicated this canoe trip is the last of his treks for cancer and he plans on finding a writer to help him write a book about his trifecta of trips. He plans to devote most of his time now traveling to schools and clubs and telling his story and even hopes to migrate his cause into an annual golf tournament at Pebble Creek.
Mike is certain that cancer can be cured and is super excited to see the latest advances in the treatments of the disease making the news.
“The FDA recently approved therapy for leukemia cancer that has shown an 83% success rate,” Mike said. “I believe it’s a shot where they take your blood, process it with cancer-fighting medicine and shoot it back into your body.”
Mike said it’s a one-time treatment that will have a hefty price tag.
“It’s somewhere around $450,000 for the one injection,” he said.
The treatment, CTL019, belongs to a new class of medications called CAR T-cell therapies, which involve harvesting patients’ immune cells and genetically altering them to kill cancer. It’s been tested in patients whose leukemia has relapsed in spite of the best chemotherapy or a bone-marrow transplant.
The prognosis for these patients is normally bleak. But in a clinical trial, Mike was right — 83 percent of those treated with CAR T-cell therapy—described as a “living drug” because it derives from a patient’s own cells—have gone into remission.
“There is a lot of exciting movement in cancer treatments going on today,” Garland said. “I’m excited to be part of what is progressing towards a cure.”
Mike has biked, walked and paddled over 6,870 miles for the American Cancer Society in the last three years.
