Another successful float, in the books.  Yeah, we got rained on a bit, but after the monsoon conditions we’ve endured the last few years nobody was complaining.  (Actually everybody was complaining, just not about the weather for once.)  The trip started on Wednesday evening, when I met up with Munkirs & Bruce out in Grandview.  We consolidated vehicles and started the arduous trek southeast, finally getting there some five hours later.  When we arrived we found a pretty sizable crowd already on site.  We quickly located our sect by the rather hulking presence of Zim’s brand spanking new motor home, and commenced to campin’.

Thursday morning I peeled my carcass off Zim’s floor, stepped over a few still-inert bodies, and walked out the door to find a beautiful morning waiting.  It was an easy decision to get on the river this day, certainly couldn’t pass up the weather.  (Turned out we were at least partially duped, as it rained on us a bit;  Not bad though.)  We enjoyed some breakfast sandwiches and got on the river at the crack of noon with a small four-canoe barge.  We floated from camp down to Dawt Mill that day, which was about the right length, especially considering our late start.  Highlights of the trip included seeing some bald eagles, and the “river dog” story.  To summarize the River Dog tale:  We’re merrily floating along, maybe half-way downstream, and we come up on another large bunch of our group.  They’re taking a break over on the bank, and there’s this brown dog running around with them.  The dog sees our barge and immediately dives in the river, swims over to us, and starts circling our canoes.  The other group starts laughing at us, and saying “He’s yours now!”  Hmmmm, what’s that mean?  I kid you not, that dog swam with us for at least two miles, until we finally hauled him in a canoe.  Turned out he’d been swimming with the other guys for quite a while too.  (And we quickly figured out why they wanted to get rid of him;  He’d been skunked pretty good.)  So, end of story, we took him back to camp and a few guys drove him back up river looking for his home.  A few campground owners said he was a stray that had been hanging around for a few months.  He was a good dog, (Aussie maybe?) and one of the guys ended up taking him home.  After all that excitement, we settled in for a tasty chicken dinner and called it a day.

Friday we got around a little earlier, as we were planning to head up to Hammond Camp and float back down.  It’s two miles longer than the trip down to Dawt, so we have to plan for, ohhhhh, about an extra three hours.  The weather was top-notch again, and quite a few guys turned out for the trip.  Munkirs and I quickly settled in the center of a good sized barge, with a generous five-canoe buffer on either side of us.  For those not familiar with the fine art of barge-canoeing, this is generally recognized as the safest place to be.  You really can’t effectively “steer” eleven canoes lashed together, so they sort of pinwheel down the river, and the canoes closest to the outside tend to absorb the most punishment.  What we hadn’t planned on was being tied up next to Todd and Bruce.  It’s a tight race as to which one of them has the worst luck in a canoe;  Suffice to say I don’t believe either of them has ever stayed dry an entire trip down the river, and there is usually a lot of collateral damage involved with their mishaps.  (Whose bright idea was it to throw them in a canoe together anyway???)  Sure enough, not too far down the river, they hit a rock full on and punched a 12″ hole in the bottom on their canoe.  Good grief.  On one hand, one could term that sheer bad luck.  On the other hand, why is it always the same guys?  I’m suspicious.  With their vessel out of commission, we agreed to haul Todd the rest of the way down the river.  Well, maybe “agreed” isn’t the right word;  He wedged his boots into the side of our canoe and we couldn’t pry him out.  After all the shuffling and re-barging, we ended up on the very outside position, doomed to an afternoon of getting slammed off rocks and trees.  Further proof that no good deed goes unpunished.  The rest of the trip was blissfully uneventful though, if a bit painful.  I snapped a few pics of our day Friday, and even got them posted already.

We got back to KC on Saturday afternoon, and I spent the rest of the weekend nursing my various wounds.  For Easter, we met up with both our families at The Well for a very passable brunch.  After a weekend of camping, a big meal was just what I needed.

Wow is it Wednesday already?  It still seems like Monday to me if that makes any difference.  So, in my head, I’m right on time.  Not that I have any news anyway.  I’ve certainly flushed the memory of the weekend from my mind, so that’s not an option.  The last few days I’ve been getting ready for my big annual Float Trip, as you may have noticed from the counter on the main page of this site.  As I type, it reads 15 hours from now, which is not entirely accurate.  I will be on site, all going well, in more like ten hours.  (Not that all has ever gone well, as far back as I can remember.  Every year brings renewed hope though.)  Naturally rain is in the forecast, right on cue.  Gee I can hardly wait.  The last two years have been total mud-fests, I’m not sure I can stand another one.  Then again, once you get there you don’t have many other options so we are effectively stuck with whatever comes.  And we’ll LIKE it.

They are coming fast and furious this week.  I finally have a “smart phone” after a decade using a flip-phone.  I’m SOMEBODY now!!!  Oh by the way I don’t have any phone numbers, don’t be offended if I don’t answer your call.

If it can be helped,  please don’t ever use the phrase “Just sayin” in any form of communication with me.  Your cooperation is appreciated.

I think I woke up on the proverbial wrong side of the bed.  There is no good reason for this, it just happens sometimes I suppose, and most commonly on Mondays.  What can ya’ do.  I shall type up an obligatory update anyway.

So, beginning with Friday:  You guessed it, an afternoon at my favorite local haunt.  By all rights I should have just gone home, given the weather.  I sort of look forward to it through the week though, and I didn’t want to start my weekend off on the wrong foot.  So, I headed down and took up a perch in the “duck blind” with several other guys.  That’s the small, covered part of the patio attached to the back of the building, which gave us a bit of respite from the drenching rain.  Our excitement for the evening?  Well, we were sitting there rehashing the weeks woes when we saw a big freaking rat about the size of Kane go slogging through the water.  Eww.  We promptly procured some chips and went about chumming for him, and then trying to crack him with a piece of firewood when he’d come out.  Ahhhh, good clean fun.  (Nobody had good enough aim to bag him though, rats.  HA HA HA, get it, “rats.”  Oh boy.)

Saturday I don’t much recall what I did.  I hit the gym around noon and spent a good amount of time there.  Given the wonderful weather, I’m sure I did something incredibly fun and exciting after that, but the details escape me.  After I got done doing whatever it was, I went and watched basketball games and bad horror movies on the couch.  Donette, meanwhile, was up north at a slumber party with a bunch of hens.  Not exactly as fun as chucking firewood at a rat, but every day can’t be that exciting I guess.

Sunday I mowed the yard.  Woo hoo.  The second mowing of the season, and it was way too tall.  I expect I’ll be cutting it again Wednesday if I am to keep up with it.  Sigh.  After that I headed out for a little spin on the bicycle.  To mix things up a bit, I headed straight north up Main and kept going until I hit the river.  Nice ride I think;  Got a few good hills mixed in and as long as you watch out for potholes the pavement is pretty good.  After that I decided to head down and watch the late basketball game at the Brooksider.  Wow, nice day.  I elected to sit at a table in the sun, which was too bright to really see the TV’s, but I was pretty neutral as far as the game went anyway.  After a liberal dose of rays, we headed home for some dinner.  Fired up the grill for the first time this year and had some good burgers.