Driving Through the Cornbelt

Ian has a week-long church youth group thingy called "Especially for Youth" (a.k.a. EFY) down in Normal, Illinois. Three hours a few minutes of Interstate 39 going down. I dropped off the boy, he was already chatting with a really nice young man from Texas and a cute girl from Milwaukee, so I felt safe in leaving him in the hands of the counselors.

Once the boy was offloaded, I consulted the GPS. I really did not want to face more Interstate, so I programmed the GPS to give the best route home if I were on a bicycle. It worked okay.

Carlock to Congerville. Goodfield to Eureka to Washburn. LaRose, Varna, Magnolia, McNabb. Spring Valley, Ladd, Cherry, Arlington, Lamoille. So on through the corn belt, past crumbly towns and old grain elevators. Past historic markers (there was a huge coal mine disaster in Cherry, casualties numbered 268 in a town of 500). Past very small rivers that are begging for a paddle (I was sans canot).

I stopped in Arlington because I spotted an old grain elevator next to an abandoned railroad spur. The structure was clearly abandoned as well, even though there was still a huge mound of corn rotting in one of the passageways which was weird. It was a really cool structure...totally unsafe, but cool anyway. Lots of weathered corrugated tin and such. I did find a small piece of tin and I have an art project in mind for it.

I also found a huge pile of railroad spikes, maybe 40 of them, and judging from the head of the spike, they had never been driven into a tie. I can only conjecture someone was sent to repair the spur, dropped the box of spikes and went home to dinner, and then abandoned the job. It's a buttload of steel, and I am already dreaming of ways to use them.

Total time home: 4 hours, 25 minutes, including all stops. I think I like this method of travel.

*Now listen up, folks. Normal, Illinois has suffered enough already. There are no statements, jokes, jests, barbs or other attempts at humor surrounding Normal that have not been sufficiently beaten to death. You cannot come up with anything new or clever. To wit, I am not going to say anything, and neither are you. Claro?

Hedging her bet.

Ian was helping out at the shop Saturday and while clearing some brush, noticed this nest within a shrub of some sort. I had never seen a robin (Turdus migratorius*) have two babies with two eggs in the nest. Either they never hatched (good, judging from the amount of space available to the remaining fledglings) or they will hatch soon. The fledglings are eating like pigs and have been seen stretching their wings a bit.

I like robins. They're common, simple birds but they're pretty and they're not sparrows. Since I grew up in the desert, they seem a little exotic to me. When I was first married and new to Wisconsin, I observed that it is a Midwestern characteristic to talk about the weather and the seasons. Whereas in California the talk is about who got a new Beemer, here it's about who saw the first robin (a sure sign of Spring).

I like people who are in touch with the natural world, no matter how tenuous and slight that link might be. For the mindless climate controlled masses on the west coast, where I do believe a substantial population has never breathed non-air-conditioned air, well, they miss out. We get fireflies on muggy nights, and it's worth it to get a little sticky to see the dance over the prairie grasses.

Respectfully submitted,

Canoelover

*This does not mean "migrating turd." It means "migrating thrush" since robins are thrushes. "Migrating turd" is a Grateful Dead song, I think. If not, it should be.

Giant Fiberglass Animals

If you spend any time driving around country roads in Wisconsin, you will eventually encounter the Midwestern phenomenon I call the GFA Syndrome. We Midwesterners tend to create giant fiberglass animals and place them in public view. The giant muskellunge in Hawyard. The giant loon in Mercer. The big mouse in Fennimore. Delevan's giraffes and elephants.

There are also wonderful examples of GFAs in other states -- Audubon, Iowa has has the giant Hereford, Albert. Idaho has a giant potato (shocker). Apparently there are giant lobsters in the northeast. Crabs in Maryland.

Anyway...I was driving across Highway 13 and saw this cute little guy on the side of the road. The addition of a billboard built into his side made him even more interesting. Herefords are not normally green and white either.

Better yet...you can rent the Giant Fiberglass Animal.

I am SO tempted.

Thanks, but no thanks...

Driving to Douglas County on Highway 13 is really nice. Quiet backroads, 55 gas-saving miles per hour, interesting towns—a nice pace for a vacation.

But if you have to eat something besides Subway or McDonalds, your odds diminish rapidly after six o'clock.


Even with such an inviting invitation, an eloquent plea for us to partake of a sumptuous banquet, nay, a convivium, we still must politely decline the invitation to EAT.

Actually, it came across as more of a command. EAT, and EAT you will. NOW. Pull over your car, get out, and EAT, dammit.

We would have but we couldn't find a parking space.

Gastronomically submitted,

Canoelover

The (Teneral) Variable Dancer

You'll have to excuse the plethora of odonatia this season, but it is the high season for odonates and I'm making hay while the sun shines. Again, I walked behind the shop and again, lots of fun stuff. Still lots of dragonflies, but I was focusing on the damsels.

These bloody little things are terribly difficult to photograph with a point-and-shoot digital. After throwing away a dozen good photos to get one, I left work this afternoon and forked over the big bucks for a Nikon D200. I am keeping my film cameras for B&W (I still love the smell of a good darkroom) but for the blog stuff, I suspect you'll see a dramatic improvement in the photos. I now can control depth of field! Yahoo!!!

Well...anyway...

I did get a good shot of a shy fellow, a teneral Variable Dancer (Argia fumipennis). Variable because they change color and vary in color a lot. Teneral because he was just barely emergent from nymph stage. That's why the straw color...they turn purple/violet later.

I love the word teneral—it's just a fancy word for the time in between you leave one stage of life but you're not quite ready for another. Teneral odonates are terribly exposed for a few hours as they transition to adult form. Their wings take several hours to fully harden after emerging, and during that time any number of things can eat them or crush them.

I guess it could apply to many human conditions as well. Your first crush, the first time you drive a car alone after you get your license, the second you turn the key in the car on your way to a first date...face it, you're teneral. It gets worse. There's the time between the point you realize you want to kiss someone, and the moment you actually pull it off...totally teneral.

I speak from experience that when you drop your daughter off at college, leaving her in the dorm room alone, the whole bloody family is teneral. My wife was teneral for 1500 miles.

So here's to odonates who brave the world in their teneral state, and here's to humans who brave the world in teneral states every bit as dramatic as a damselfly's first moments testing out its new wings.

Respectfully submitted,

Canoelover

Anax junius Rescue Service

I took a little 20 minute break from the computer today to get outside for some fresh air. There is a lot of odonate activity these days, lots of pairing off and territorial zooming around. Lots of Calico Pennants (Celithemis elisa), a few Common Whitetails (Libellula lydia), plus a bunch of various and sundry bluet damsels and at least one Eastern Forktail (Ischnura verticalis).

There were also a couple of Common Green Darners (Anax junius) paired off and laying eggs, and the ones that were not paired off were apprently pissed off about it. Dragonflies have short lives, so speed dating is of the essence. They were being viciously territorial, and as I was just getting ready to go back inside, I saw something on the water surface fluttering madly. It was a Common Green Darner, looking like he had just been clocked but good in a bar fight. I fished him out of the pond scum and duckweed in which he had fallen and let him perch on my finger.

As you can see from the picture, he is not in too good of shape. Chunks of wing are missing, he's missing a segment of his left front foot, and generally was having trouble getting his strength back. After a few minutes he started cleaning himself off, especially his eyes. One of the coolest things about Darners in general is that they have huge eyes that meet at the top of their heads, which is one way you can tell Darners from the other odonates. His eyes were soon cleaned off and he proceeded to do the best he can to tidy up, given he was missing a leg and all.


After a ten minutes or so, he feebly took off across the pond. If he were a car, he would have been a rusted out 1986 Chevy Cavalier with a muffler dragging across the ground. He looked pathetic compared to the Ferrari and Lamborghini dragonflies zooming around the pond. Yet he was not dying in the pond, he was flying. At least he might meet his end as a nice meal for a bat, and he'll die a more noble death.

It sounds silly, but I think even a Common Green Darner would rather die with his boots on.

Respectfully submitted,

Canoelover

P.S. Rosie, I still can't find my picture of the Dragonhunter I took a few years ago. So instead, here's a 12-Spotted Skimmer (L. pulchella) from a slide I took a year ago. A little fuzzy but she was a long way away.

Here she is...

The name of this blog is canoelover's blog. It stands to reason that an actual canoe shows up here from time to time. So I got a new boat. Today I took a short paddle behind the shop and my ballast Gracie came along.

Anyway...the new boat is a Nova Craft Pal. It has a history and a good story.

The Pal is an old Chestnut Canoe design, not surprising given Nova Craft's tendency to build Chestnuts (like the Prospector and the Cronje). It is, I feel, one of the most versatile light tandems around. Not for expedition tripping for two, but can certainly handle two people and two packs for a BWCA trip. What I find is that it is the perfect canoe for soloing with a dog.


Gracie is a phenomenal canoe dog. No restlessness, just in when I say "in" and out when I say "out." If she wants a drink, she politely leans over and takes a few licks between paddle strokes. When she is tired, she lies at my knees and goes to sleep.

Anyway, I once had a wood/canvas Pal. Lovely boat, but it was 80 pounds if it was an ounce, and while I love the aesthetics of wood, I sure don't like the weight. It was for somewhat selfish reasons that I suggested to Nova Craft three years ago that they start making the Pal. It fit into their line-up, gave a little more user-friendly boat for lighter loads, and of course, was gorgeous. It also has a good pedigree, and anyone who paddles one wants one.

Roch from Nova was here last weekend for a Nova Craft Rendezvous. He brought along a special order Pal but that boat was somehow damaged in shipping. The customer is getting a new one, but in the meantime—here was a cosmetically damaged canoe. So Roch made me a sweet deal, I get some gelcoat and make a small repair, and voila, Canoelover has a Pal again.

Needless to say, I'm stoked. 45 pounds is a long way from 80, and none of us are getting any younger. Now I can go on solo trips with my dog again. She will also be pleased about this, I believe.

The best news...the lakes are all no-wake. This means it will be very quiet. A nice change.

Respectfully submitted,

Canoelover

P.S. Watch this space, I am getting two new boats next week. It has been quite a dry spell. :-)

Walking with my sweetie

The best thing about camping in a rural, lightly populated area is the ability to walk around holding hands. Down the middle of a road. For miles, with no sign of an automobile.

P.S. It is not an optical illusion caused by the camera angle or lens. My ankles are really that skinny. Which is why my daughter calls me Chicken Legs.

GHPs

I seriously racked up some good husband points (GHPs) tonight.

Stephanie needed to bolster her supply of brassieres. By bolster, I mean replace the one left that was about ready to die. You see, like all sane women, my sweetheart hates bra shopping. The problem is you actually have to go to Kohl's or some other such place and enter it, walk through a maze of bras (I didn't know there were that many breasts in the Universe) and pick out ones that look like they might actually fit human females.

I was a good soldier, helping her find sizes (that information is classified. I am already in deep doo-doo for even writing this). I endured the furtive glances of women who looked at me like I had crossed a DMZ. "This is a woman's world. Go away. Shoo!" What was I doing in the bra section at Kohls? I mean, they weren't hanging around in the jock strap section. That's because the jock strap section is one end cap. Three sizes, one style. White. I am not exaggerating when I say there are acres of bras.

Weird Fact One: least half of the bras looked like something that someone somewhere thought someone would think looks good. These were all 75% off. Bras with leopard skin print with a frill of pink lace. Black Watch tartan bras. Ginham bras for the Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm look. Nude bras (what's the point?). Notice to designers: animal prints are so 1970. I think the last animal print bra I saw was on Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate.

Weird Fact Two: There has been significant drift in the bra cup size world. What used to be no longer is. Just like in grad school where every gets an A, apparently A is now B, B is now C, C is now D, and D is now something I don't need to know about. I did see one 40 EE. In camo. I've slept in tents that were smaller.

It only took an hour, and we're done for another 12 to 18 months. Mission accomplished. Someday someone will make bra shopping painless, charge $75 each and clean up.

The World's Coolest Outhouse

My friends Dustin and Hovas have a sweet little home they built on a section of land outside Bayfield, WI. It's a home-grown effort, and while it lacks some of the fit and finish you find on a custom-built home, it is one of my favorite places to visit. It reminds me of my shack in the backyard, just a lot bigger.

One of the coolest thing about the Long residence is the outhouse. Since they're almost off the grid and have no septic field (the clay soil isn't good for septic), they have a cistern that needs to be pumped out periodically by the local honey wagon. To keep the pumping to a minimum, they use a graywater field for showers and such, but the biggest savings is to eliminate waste water, and that means an outhouse.


Forget everything you think you know about outhouses. This is not a fiberglass shell, plastic seat with a crappy door that doesn't shut that smells like a Monsanto Superfund site. This is what outhouses are supposed to be. There's almost no odor because it was ventilated properly. There is plenty of reading material on the bookshelf. There is tons of light due to two nice windows. It is as nice a place to [insert your favorite euphemism for defecation] as anyplace I've ever used except for one other spot: a latrine overlooking Seagull Lake in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. It was a little, er, exposed, but oh the view...

Random Odonate Sighting

There we were, walking through the neighborhood, enjoying some fine weather between the scatter showers, and this little fellow zoomed past us. I was able to sneak up and get a picture.

It's an Autumn Meadowhawk (Sympetrum vicinum). They're little, members of the skimmer (Libellulidae) category. They're about two inches long with a three inch wingspan.

Just thought you'd enjoy it.

Respectfully submitted,

Canoelover

Hawkweed

If you drive along the back roads of northern Wisconsin this time of year, you'll be certain to see an orange mist covering some of the grassy areas beyond the gravel shoulder. That would be caused by Orange Hawkweed (Pilosella aurantiaca). I spotted a large patch of P. aurantiaca growing in a field near Bayfield last week. Due to the colder Spring, the flowers were smaller and just barely emerging. Luckily the color lasts a long time due to an interesting and lovely configuration of multiple capitulae (flower heads) all clustered at the end of the stem. When one fades, another is already taking its place. It's not uncommon for two or three of the flower heads to be blooming at once.

While not native to North America, I like Hawkweed. It's considered invasive in most of the western states and is banned from cultivation in Australia and Tasmania. It is considered evil, which is why the folks down under call it the Devil's Paintbrush. It is considered a protected species in some areas of Europe.


It's interesting to me what makes something a weed. Again, it's all about context. I see a field of lovely orange flowers, others see a patch of an invasive species. I guess if Hawkweed were taking over 500 acres of wheat on my farm, I'd consider it a weed alright. But for now, it's not a weed, despite its name. It's a lovely spot of orange in an otherwise monolithic world of greenness.

Respectfully submitted,

Canoelover

P.S. Where did Hawkweed get its name? It's the trivia question for the week. "I'll take Asteraceae for $600, Alex..."

In a restaurant yesterday

So yesterday I am in a restaurant grabbing a quick bite for lunch. It was almost empty except for another table with two women talking about their family woes:

"My sister-in-law...really tired of all this...cheated on her husband...just disgusting...can't believe these people...I tried to tell her but...Cody was staying with his stepmom...she had booze all over the place...I'm not sure if I can take this much longer...she is pregnant with her boyfriend's baby
while her own kids...Hailey is starting to dress like a little s-l-u-t..."

Good thing she spelled slut. I would have been really offended by her profanity.

I wanted to say "Please, people. Shut the hell up. I'm eating." What I did do is eat faster and leave.

So what I didn't say yesterday, I say today. If you want to talk about your talk-show-fodder family life, do so in a corn field, soundproof room, or other place where other people can't hear you. I was embarrassed for you since you didn't have enough sense to be embarrassed for yourselves.

Disrespectfully submitted,

Canoelover

The Tilley Hat

Tilley Hats are something of an inside joke to canoeists. They're decidedly old-school canvas wide-brim hats with traditional Canadian styling (i.e., not that much styling) and a lot of function. There are stories of Tilleys being swept over waterfalls and found six months later and sent back to the original owner because of the secret compartment which all Tilleys have in the top of their crown.

There's a generation gap with the Tilley. If you're 45 or older, you probably have one. If you're 44 or younger, you probably would rather be caught wearing a lacy camisole in a truck stop than a Tilley. Somewhere in there I find wiggle room. I'm somewhere in the middle. It's like eating garlic—I'm happy to wear mine as long as no one is looking or everyone else us wearing them too.

Anyway, we found ourselves on the Bois Brule River in northern Wisconsin a few days ago. At the bottom of a small rapid (Class I+) we were eddied out to wait for a group of kids to come through so we could surf the small wave at the bottom. While we waited, I looked down to the left and there was a floating greyish-brown blob of hat. It was the aforementioned Tilley. I scooped it up and stuck it in my boat and promptly ignored it so we could surf.

Back at camp I examined it, pulling open the secret compartment. In it was a small plastic bag with two band-aids, two books of matches, and $109.00 in cash. I confess to having kept a $20 in mine for emergencies, but 109 bucks? Sheesh.

The best news for the owner was the business cards he had in there. Mr. A---- F--- of Superior, Wisconsin. Lucky dude, as the hat was pretty well camouflaged. It had sat in that eddy for at least three days before anyone saw it.

Since there was no cell phone reception at the campground, I called A---- on the way home. The conversation was funny:

Me: "Is this A---- F---?"
AF: "Yes."
Me: "I understand you lost a very expensive hat recently..."
AF: [Laughing, talking to his friends---"They found my hat!"] "Yes, I did."
Me: "I just need to know one thing: What sort of drugs were you taking, carrying around a wad of cash like that in your hat?"
AF: "Well..."

He never answered my question. They must have been good drugs.

Story was he was leading a group of kids and sacrificed his hat to save some kid from dampness. Me, I let the kid get wet, but anyway...he said he would be grateful if I would send it back, keeping $40 for a finder's fee which he had advertised in the local paddling community. I declined as I didn't really find the hat, it sorta found me, but I did take out $9.00 for shipping. I marked the package as containing hazardous material and sent it along today.

So please it that the Karmic Reserve make a deposit of "Recovery of one lost hat" into my karmic bank account. Now I need someone to find my orange Kavu ball cap that I spent a year breaking in and was the most perfectest hat of all time. It is probably in a ditch off I-90 in Chicagoland. I think it is gone forever. R.I.P., orange ball cap.

Ophiogomphus colubrinus

Cool. Super cool.

We were privileged to see a hatch of Ophiogomphus colubrinus, also known as the Boreal Snaketail. It was, of course, Ian, who first noticed the nymphs crawling out of the Brule to complete their metamorphosis into full-on dragonflies.

Since it was right at a landing, Ian took it upon himself to rescue snaketail nymphs from being crushed by careless paddlers (there were large youth groups that day who were not exactly aware of anything going on outside their immediate world). So we did, and did so for over an hour.


Ian is the micro-observer who misses nothing. It is because of him we see much of what we see—turtles, birds, insects, all sorts of wildlife. I catch the flowers and plants, he catches everything else. Pretty cool.

At first I thought these were Common Green Darners since they are, after all, common. But the body shape was wrong, the head shape was wrong, but these were not a species I recognized. Not a Darner. Not a Skimmer. Then I started noticing the end of the abdomen—a slight flair at the end, indicating a Gomphidae. This is one of the cooler categories - Clubtails.

Clubtails are a nifty little category. There are some fascinating species within the category, including the fairly rare Dragonhunter (Hagenius brevistylus). I didn't know they were rare when I was once paddling the in Boundary Waters Canoe Area in Minnesota and saw a couple of them sunning themselves along a pebbly beach. I snapped a picture and analyzed it later. When I talked to a friend of mine about it, he became very excited. Apparently a few years before he had been out hunting for clubtails with a German friend who, when he spotted the Dragonhunter, started shaking from excitement. I have heard of buck fever, but odonate fever?


It's always amazing that a dragonfly comes out of that nymph. It's pretty cool.

There was another skimmer hatching - a few Chalk-Fronted Corporals.


Respectfully submitted,

Canoelover

Back from a short trip...

...and someone had a great time.


I'll have more to say when I dig out of the giant pile of mail, email, voicemail, and any other x-mail that exists.

Respectfully submitted,

Canoelover

Thinking about our flooded friends

“The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings, which are all part of one another, and all involved in one another.”
- Thomas Merton

As the sump pump goes off again, vibrating the kitchen floor, I can't help but think about being surrounded by flood waters. We're fortunate. We had flooding in the past and put some money into the basement so we wouldn't have this again. But we're probably in the minority.

I have a hard time imagining what it would be like to be in Cedar Rapids or any of those other cities that are under water. I experienced some flooding in Missouri this spring, but it was nothing on the scale of what our friends in Iowa are experiencing.

Some folks are thinking "Those poor people...thank God it's not me..." I don't think that, because while it's not directly happening to me, it is happening to us. In some way, we are all in Cedar Rapids, Myanmar, Iraq, or Sudan. We may not be there, but we are.

Sorry for the paradox, but I'm feeling paradoxical this morning.

If we all pull together, we can kill the United Way

In my old job a few millenia back we had the annual giving campaign, an organized coercion that to this day reminds me of all I hate about cubicle farms and large state government buildings. The person in charge of the shakedown was a passive-aggressive fear-grimacing woman who wanted to make sure we got 100%. "Even if you only give a dollar a paycheck, we can still make our goal."

Our goal? Excuse me, but my goal would be to keep my hard-earned money and make sure it goes to a charity that doesn't give million-dollar severance packages and feels entitled to a little piece of everyone's paycheck, with a level of accountability reminiscent of a Pentagon budget.

I am now officially vindicated.

According to Charity Reports, the top management of United Way earns over a million dollars a year. For another example, the United Way reported a $1.5-million pension payment to its former chief executive, Ms. Beene, when she departed after only four years on the job.

In 2006, it was reported that the CEO of United Way used $190,000 worth of points redeemable for hotel stays that had been originally donated for charitable purposes. Do you really want your hard-earned money to pay for this?

To quote Peter Griffin, "This is freakin' sweet! " C'mon people, give 'til it hurts. Give 'til it hurts the United Way. Give to the Flat Earth Society. Give to Defenestrators Anonymous. Give to the Manhattan Asphalt Preservation Society. Give to anyone BUT the United Way.

Because if 100% of us decide to not give, they'll dry up and disappear forever. Do YOU want to be the person that keeps us from achieving our goal of 100%? Great. Just don't sign here on the little blue payroll deduction card.

A picture paints a thousand words.

Legend: Black means "High." Blue means "Over 90 percent. Green is normal flow, red is the drought.

So you can see why Cedar Rapids is under water right now. So sad...

A visit to Kipp's Down Home Cookin'

David and I go out to lunch a couple of times a month. We often try to find a place we've not been to before. I picked up David and started driving toward the near West side, where there is a good selection of nice lunch places and more importantly, no Chili's, Red Lobsters, or worst of all, Olive Gardens.

I have driven past Kipp's a hundred times. Maybe three hundred times. On the corner of Monroe and Regent, Kipp's is easy to see but for me, sadly, easy to drive by. Kipp says a lot of people drive past all the time but they're always on their way to work or on their way home. Today we decided to stop there. I have no idea why, but we did.
We were greeted by Tiffany. When I asked if I could take her picture, she asked "Who me? Why?" It should be obvious why. Then Kipp came out and we introduced ourselves. He said he'd pose too. Tiffany is the smiler in the group.

We ordered the Friday fish fry special ($7.25) which included two nice pieces of fish, a cornbread muffin, cole slaw (good!) and either regular or sweet potato fries. It is served with a genuine spork.

It takes some (but not much) courage to try a new place for lunch when there are so many familiar places and "safe" places like the aforementioned restaurant chains with industrial-strength food that tastes the same in San Diego as it does in Bangor (i.e., boring). Me, I say take a chance. The worst thing that can happen is your meal is about the same as it would be at Outback Steak House.

The best thing that can happen is that you get to meet Tiffany and Kipp, and your meal is really, really good, and your cash stays in the community.

So given that, why on earth would you eat at any restaurant where there are 1,500 locations nationwide? To be safe? Comfortable? Boring? A little more adventure would suit us all, methinks.

Flags Sell Gas Guzzlers to Stupid People

My mechanic has his shop around the corner from the Hummer/Cadillac dealer. As you might guess, it's a ghost town without the tumbleweeds. I can't think of a single sane person who is in the market for a 12 mpg vehicle.

When I drove past, I noticed that all the vehicles had little American flags on them. I don't see these little flags anywhere else around town—Ford, Chrysler, Toyota, Mazda...no flags. But the Hummer/Cadillac dealer has flags galore.

There is, of course, the mother of all flags flying over the dealership, a flag the size of a football field, which is, to be honest, gorgeous. It flies 24/7 except on football Saturdays, when the giant Wisconsin W flag flies (after all, one must have priorities). It apparently has spawned thousands of little flags that have attached themselves to these gas-sucking symbols of affluenza.

It is embarrassing. Hey world, not all of us Americans are conspicuously consumptive pigs who think putting a fifty-cent flag on a $50,000 vehicle makes you patriotic.

Of course, even as I write this, the Senate fiddles while Rome burns.

A new species for me!

This was fun...I saw this winged creature and took it for a moth because of the body shape, but it is most assuredly not a moth. It's a Silver-spotted Skipper (Epargyreus clarus), the largest of the normally little skippers, which is why it took me so long to identify it.

He was shy so it took a while to sneak up on him. I got pretty close. You can't see the silver spot unless you get a side view.

This is a product created especially for MK.

If you know Megan, no words are necessary. If you don't know Megan, then it can't be explained in a blog posting. Suffice it to say that Megan will be ordering several cases of this if it's still in stock.

Yes, friends. Canned bacon. Ten year shelf life. 40-50 pieces per can. Just heat and eat.

From our friends at MRE Depot. While I am intrigued, I am not sure I am $109.95 worth of intrigued.

It's sorta pretty in its abstract form...

...except when you're in the middle of the red and yellow stripe. And you have been for a few days now. And you're trying to film a DVD on kayak fishing.

Stuff White People Like...

As of February 2008, white law requires an Obama 08 bumper sticker to be placed on the back of every Prius. Though these stickers reach peak effectiveness during an election year, it is acceptable to leave this sticker on the car until the next election regardless of whether or not the candidate actually won. If it’s a disputed election like in 2000, the sticker can be left on for the life of the car.

If a white person does not feel like supporting a candidate, they will likely select a bumper sticker that tells other people what to do. Some popular ones include telling people to Coexist and to stop eating meat.

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/05/21/100-bumper-stickers/

Rain has its upside too.

There's some good paddling to be had on the Lower Wisconsin. Sadly, there won't be much good camping as the sandbars will all be under water.

Strange how my affect often follows the same trend as the water levels...

The Fart Machine (II)

After the last "heavy" posting, as one of my friends called it, I felt that I should put some yin in there with the yang.

I bought six fart machines.

Sam, who is staying with us for a week or so, had a conversation last night with Stephanie that went something like this:

Sam: "So what's it like being married to a man who buys fart machines in bulk?"

Stephanie: "Actually...he bought them for me." (Stephanie teaches middle school.)

Sam: "I retract the question."

So this morning Sam tells me about the conversation and asks me, "So what's it like being married a woman who wants fart machines in bulk? My answer: "It's a helluva lot of fun."

I really feel sorry for the kids in her classes today, It's going to be total carnage. The fifteen farts are all good stuff, really different from each other. Gourmet farts. I don't know who the fart model was, but they were quite talented. The addition of the sub-woofer to the unit (I am not kidding) makes them resonate nicely.

So as you see, I am not always Mr. Philosophical.

Respectfully submitted,

Canoelover

P.S. Yes, I gave one to Weidman. Against my better judgement. Nancy hates it that I gave him one, which is probably behind my subconscious desire to do it.

On being important...

"Most of the trouble in the world is caused by people who want to be important."
— T.S. Eliot

For the longest time I attributed this quote to the great Benjamin Disraeli, as it got stuck in my head that way and frankly, it's the sort of thing he'd say. So the man who brought us Cats also brought us this little nugget of wisdom. To be fair, it was Andrew Lloyd Webber, not T.S. who mangled a perfectly good little book on silly cats into a Broadway spectacle. But I digress.

I have known a fair number of people who wanted to be important, and frankly I'm dealing with a few of them now. They are totally unconcerned for being effective, but simply want to hold power so that they can fill some sinkhole in their psyche that can't be filled by anything else. It's a false premise anyway, as those who seek power inevitably lose it in some manner or another.

The other sort of difficult person is someone who needs to interact only with important people (or more correctly, people they think are important). So the sales reps who skip the staff (the people who potentially sell their stuff), the sales managers (the people who direct the people to potentially sell their stuff), and skip "right to the top" are deluded, misguided souls. They somehow think that they can short-circuit the process by cutting out the people who run it. I might sign the checks, but if the salespeople don't sell the product, those checks are worth as much as a Schrute Buck.

I'd like to ask the inhabitants of the world to consider this question—would you rather be effective or important?

The answer you give yourself is most telling.

"The more you are talked about the less powerful you are."
— Benjamin Disraeli

Now that's a true fact.

Respectfully submitted,

Canoelover

I miss Jim.

Jim Fietzer, storyteller and friend, moved to Chattanooga a few years ago and I don't see him enough. The last time I saw him we went paddling and stopped to get pie and hot cocoa on the way home, and we were throughly chilled. I set the camera down and took this timed picture of us. Jim is flirting with the waitress, but in a southernly gentleman sort of way that made her feel appreciated.

That's because Jim has a talent for making people feel good, like everyone would be interested in their lives, if they just had more details. Probably because Jim believes this with all his heart.

Then I left the camera on the counter. I had to go back and get it and we just barely made it before they left for the day. They were happy to open the door after they were closed because it was Jim, and they were delighted to see that friendly guy once again.

Anyway...I miss Jim. He's loony. The good kind of loony.

Monday Paddlin' Blues

I got up this mornin'
Stumbled outta bed
Drove to work on the Beltline
But had a kayak in my head
I got the bluuuuuesss....
I got the Monday mornin' paddlin' bluuuuuuuessss....

Today was especially Mondayesque. Don't know why, maybe it's a lack of time off and a gorgeous morning combined with the knowledge that I was destined to sit at a desk most of the day and do all the stuff that business owners have to do but would rather not.

Sam Crowley is in town, doing some contract work for Rutabaga, teaching future folks how to be instructors. Pretty cool, as Sam and I were in the same ACA IDW* course back in 1995 in Bayfield. Sam went on to be an IT (Instructor Trainer) and teaches all over the Midwest. The shame is that we see Sam at least twice a year, he stays at our house, and yet we have paddled together exactly once since 13 years ago.

Today we fixed that. I took off from work early, and Sam and I drove up to the Wisconsin Dells. Known as the place "Where Nature and Fun Collide" (no kidding), the Dells are best know for this, but there is some lovely scenery—and it goes unnoticed by most of the folks who visit. Only kayaks can slip into these holes in the limestone.

We only paddled an hour and a half, but it was 90 minutes more than I would have paddled otherwise. The Dells have some lovely grottoes and rock formations, and the early greens that are so bright The tour boats were mostly pleasant and polite, giving us a wide berth. One huge jet boat was emblazoned with huge red letters across the side—THE WISCONSIN DELLS EXPERIENCE. That's funny, because their experience could have been had in any body of water, including but not limited to the Madison Metropolitan Sewerage District holding ponds. It was all about the speed and splashing and stuff.

Anyway, the jet boats created some nice tasty wakes when they blasted by us. They didn't even slow down the second time they passed us, a nice compliment in a certain way, and we got to surf in the wakes they left behind.

I think we had a Wisconsin Dells experience. Maybe I'm a snob but I think our experience was of a better quality.

*For those who are not familiar with the alphabet soup that is the American Canoe Association, IDW stands for Instructor Development Workshop.