home

T

he story about Dan Friendly, the man living on his canoe, brought more than the usual reaction from TownDock readers. One of those responses led back to a kayak/canoe store in Greensboro, and helped to fill in some more — but not all — the the blanks in Dan’s story.

Will Seeley is the manager of Get:Outdoors in Greensboro and says that he first met Dan Friendly early last December when he came to the store and said he wanted to buy a canoe to go from the interior of NC out to the ICW.

Dan Friendly showed up in Oriental in April. A Greensboro paddle shop offers some more background on his trip.

At first, Will said in a phone interview this week, “I figured he was just a guy looking for a canoe.” He seemed eccentric, but then Will says, “odd people buy boats.” He allows, however, that Dan may have been the most unusual customer he’s seen.

Dan’s means of transportation at that point wasn’t a canoe, but rather, a bicycle. Given all the gear hanging off of that bike, Will sussed out that Dan was likely homeless. He had a tent and it seemed that he camped a lot. “But he didn’t present himself as most homeless people do,” Will says. “He was relatively well-spoken. He didn’t panhandle. He just said he wanted to start inland and paddle.”

Within a day or so, Dan returned to Get:Outdoors with a down payment for a Mad River Explorer 16 TT — TT for Triple Tough. It had been part of the store’s rental fleet and cost less than a new canoe. Over time he paid $300 for the 16-foot canoe.

This is what a 16 ft Mad River canoe looks like without all of Dan’s stuff.

On and off for the next month, Dan came to the store, and worked on the boat, which was kept in a fenced-off area behind the building. One project that occupied much of Dan’s time was sewing together a canoe-length spray skirt, made from several that Get:Outdoors was throwing away.

He’d come by in the mornings, Will says, work for several hours, go away for a time and then return to his sewing in the spot behind the store. Will says that in the cold of winter, Dan wore a jesters-style hat made from pieces of sweat shirt that covered much of his head, and a thick insulated jumpsuit.

Dan in Oriental’s anchorage in April. The black cover for the canoe, was fashioned from spray skirts that a Greensboro paddle shop was throwing away.

On really cold days he’d come inside for a while. He also used the store’s microwave to heat up food that he said he found while dumpster-diving.

Dan told Will and the staff at Get:Outdoors that his name was Dan Friendly, but it was an open secret that the name was made-up. Will says Dan told him that it was “a name he had to go by” and that an effort to change his name was “held up in the courts.” The pseudonym, Dan Friendly, was the figurative counterpart to the camouflage that he literally wore.

(Will says that a Google search of the name turned up a blogger’s account of meeting Dan while biking through Virginia last year. )

When the paddle shop’s staff wasn’t busy with customers, Seeley says, Dan would talk with them at length. One frequent subject: a coming “war between the Republicans and the Democrats in 2012.” Carlos Castenada was another. He talked with authority about historical matters, Will says. He explained why he camped out rather than use homeless shelters. (He didn’t trust them.) He told them that a Marine Ranger SEAL friend trained him in survival techniques and gave him supplies.

Will says Dan also spoke of traveling around on his bike and leaving some of his belongings in places where he might return. A Gortex jacket, for instance, buried in a woods.

Dan Friendly at Oriental’s Dinghy Dock.

One subject did not come up in Greensboro. Will says Dan never spoke to him about the “Jobian Flair Librarians” that he spoke of at Oriental’s Dinghy Dock in April. “He must’ve come up with that on the river,” Will guesses.

At the Greensboro store Dan also talked about his coming trip and wanting to set out as soon as possible. Will says that he thought Dan had “a decent sense about travel” from his biking, but the store manager was concerned about the cold weather in January when Dan wanted to start his trip on the Deep River. Will persuaded Dan to wait a while.

“We held him off as long as we could till things warmed up.” In the meantime, they took the canoe out for a test paddle on a Greensboro-area lake.

Dan’s canoe and cargo in Oriental in late April, two months after leaving Randleman and taking on the Deep River and then the Cape Fear.

Will, who has led many canoe expeditions, also took time to show Dan how to load and balance his boat and the need to “keep things strapped.” That was especially important given all the possessions — including his mountain bike — that Dan wanted to bring along. Will says he worried that the canoe would sit so low on its lines that water would easily pour in. All that cargo was also an issue because Dan would have to portage the boat when he got to the several dams and locks on the route to Wilmington.

In late February, there was a warm spell and with Dan increasingly impatient to get going, Will drove him to the Deep River in Randleman, just south of Asheboro. (His belongings filled the back of the kayak shop’s 12-passenger van.) Among Dan’s things were a paddle and a PFD that the store gave him. Dan wore the bright colored life vest inside out, Will Seeley says, so as not to impair his camouflage.

Dan wearing the PFD that Get:Outdoors paddle shop gave him, along with a paddle for his trip.

Will says he’s heard from Dan — or about him — several times since seeing him off at the Deep River in February. In March, Will got a call from a lockmaster on the Cape Fear River who said that Dan had ended up on top of a lock and in passing, mentioned the canoe store in Greensboro. The lock master helped him on his way.

Will also heard that Dan camped out under a bridge during a rare March snow fall after which “the river got real, real high.” There were portions of the route where there were Class 1 and 2 rapids and he got through those. Dan later showed up at a canoe/kayak store in Wilmington and in more recent weeks, has called twice from Coinjock.

In his latest conversations, Will says Dan talked about wanting to reach Urbanna on the Chesapeake Bay and that he had added a daggerboard to his canoe to keep it from sliding sideways when he sailed. He was asking about a Sunfish sailboat that he’d seen in Greensboro. Will wasn’t sure if Dan wanted to “switch boats or just take parts.”

Will says he admires Dan’s “determination to get where he is now.” Dan’s photo, from the TownDock.net story, graces the screen saver at the kayak shop’s computers.

Dan is homeless, “in the sense,” Will says, “of having no permanent address,” But the paddle-shop owner who gave him some refuge and means for a dream, sees Dan through a different lens. “He is more of a wanderer. A free-spirited guy.”

Posted Thursday June 4, 2009 by Melinda Penkava

email this story | back to top