August 2006 Archives

I need to take a moment to point out that Seattle is hosting an inexcusably large festival going by the excusably silly moniker Bumbershoot. I'm used to large music festivals that I miss out on, but this is just too much.

Bands include:

The New Ponographers
Spoon
AFI
Rogue Wave
Of Montreal
Badly Drawn Boy
Erase Errata

and so on. That's not very many bands. I really could care less if none of them were there, utterly thanks to the following acts:

Upright Citizens Brigade
Chuck Pahlaniuk
Dave Eggers

I'm sorry, what? Fuck music. Live UCB? Pahlaniuk and Eggers? I would kill my grandma to go to this. Eggers founded a Non-Profit Organization called 826 Valencia. It's a Writing Workshop/Pirate Supply Store that gives artistic youths a venue to be published and to develop literary/English skills. Since its inception other 826's have been opened, two of which sport stores that cater to Superhero's and Monsters. Bumbershoot is a large benefit to raise funds for the 826 Seattle location, and as such Dave Eggers is involved.

Does anyone want to start 826 Milwaukee? I'm in. There's an 826 Chicago already, but no go on the Pirate Shop.

(Note: In researching the link to 826 Chicago's website I found that last week Thursday they had a benefit that featured Dave Eggers, Ben Gibbard [Death Cab], and John Roderick of The Long Winters. I am very upset.)

*

So, to finish the tale of woenoeing.

Adam and I had carved in the sand on the camping beach an inscription; a parchment of sorts for future explorers to base their religions and moral courses on. It was this, in the style of ancient heiroglyphics: Pizza [Hearts] Pitcher. And it does. Pitcher also hearts Pizza, but it likes to play coy.

Waking up in the morning I was surprised to find that this Sacred Tome had weathered the night. The spot where we had parked our canoes had not fared so well. Most of us had emptied our canoes and pulled them up to shore, then flipped them over to spare ourselves dealing with rain water. Adam's had been knocked on its side and became a little container-like, while Jay's had not been overturned and as such was enjoying a brisk morning float while the other canoes slumbered. It hadn't gone anywhere, luckily, and after a brief oar recount scare all was well. Adam and Steph decided to take off earlier and nobody really argued too much. Adam had a map and, well, Steph's mouth seemed to break the laws of thermodynamics and as such did not seem to have a finite output. They left around 8 and the rest of us packed up camp, had us some Starbucks coffee (courtesy Jay) and we were out by 9.

It's that point about 20 minutes into the second day that you realize you still have 4 hours of canoeing left and that you are sore from the first day. Even further, sore from sleeping on not-soft sand and using a towel for a pillow. Regardless, I had taken the relatively sand-free canvas of our tent and made up a feast of PB&J Sandwiches and our canoe's cooler was pretty good and full of snacks, caffeine and alcohol.

The second day was a lot more relaxing than the first, we canoed past large bluff-ish hills that were home to several expensive abodes and for the most part Jay, Emily, Laura and I drifted casually around. Laura and I picked up on a better rhythm of hitting currents and avoiding sandbars, taking the more risky path of canoeing next to the rockside so that we could hit the faster paths. The downside to this last one is that there many more hidden rocks and logs, but by this point it was becoming pretty easy to see depth changes and anything disrupting the stream and we were adequate enough to avoid everything.

Jay and Emily were not, however, and they became beached on a very large rock. At first they were concerned something had grabbed on to their canoe and was pulling it backwards, until they realized the scenery was static and so were they. Laura and I drifted quite a ways up and talked to other canoers, Mike and Maya got stuck on a beach trying to avoid the fate Jay and Emily had succumbed to and after a bit of a wait everyone was freed and caught up.

There at one point came a split in paths on the river, and while the main one was quite obviously to the right Jay and I grew curious as to the hazards of the left and decided to chance it. Mike and Maya were a ways back and we yelled that we were exploring and risking the side stage. It turned into about 30 minutes of a narrow channel with a lot of low-depth traps, beaver dams and turtles on logs, just chillin'. It was probably the most interesting part of the entire trip. Mike and Maya were a little concerned, but we kept a fair distance so that it wasn't infectious and just before our resolve could wane we were back on the river proper.

Thirty minutes later we knew we were hitting the end of the trip so we stopped on a sand beach about 10 minutes away from Bob's Canoes. Just before this beach we had noticed a distinguished-looking building that was obviously of Frank Lloyd Wright's design and made a mental note to check it out. On the beach Jay fished, we all had some sandwiches, and Mike and I played some Bocce. We finished up and returned to the beginning of our trip, unloaded the canoes and posed for a picture, then loaded up the cars.

It was about here that we realized Adam--who had left an hour before us and (we assumed) stayed on the main and less adventurous river and not pit-stopped--still had his car in the parking lot. We called and left information on how to get a hold of those of us who had cell phones in range of working towers, gathered information on the Wright building (The Talesien), washed up and took off. It was about 10 minutes to cross over to Hwy 23 where The Talesien was and we stopped, got some information, had a look around and sat down for some food. I had me some good Vegetarian Lasagna and for the first time scored myself a New Glarus Uff-Da Bock beer, which was easily one of the best New Glarus beers I've had.

After this we took off and with the exception of one gas station pitstop the canoe trip was ended. Adam finally answered his phone and turned up in Madison, after overshooting Bob's Canoes by 8 miles, banking his canoe and hiking through the woods for a mile or two, and then hitchhiking back to Bob's in Spring Green. I have no sympathy. Apparently Steph shortly into the day just gave up on canoeing and laid down to sleep, also all of their belongings were left behind until Bob could retrieve the canoe. Apparently people missing the landing zone isn't an unusual occurance.

The M&M's and I dropped off Laura and hit up my parents place, returning any camping items I had borrowed and hanging out to catch some pizza and watch Degrassi. I've seen three episodes of this show--the three that have Jay and Silent Bob. These were the three that were on again. I think after watching them both The M&M's and my parents were fairly interested in what happens next in the show, so I may have inadvertantly turned some people on to Candian Teenage Melodrama. I just erased like six Canadian puns and I'll leave it as is. That's right; they were tossed oot.

Damn it.

I don't have any in conclusions but canoeing--them's some good times. We got to Bob's quicker than I liked, I could have gone for another 2-3 hours. This was the longest canoe this place offers, next year we might look into some place farther down the river so that we can score like a 35-mile trek.

Also, Kilimanjaro Trip, March of 2008. Just click that link if you think I'm joking.

This is the first part of the much-anticpated Canoe Trip 2006 [2k5] blog, previously entitled River Sharks Ain't Got Nothin' On Us. I don't have any pictures to prove it. Sorry. You'll have to just trust that my fantastical tales of whimsy are as awe-inspiring and thought-provoking as I make them.

Abridged:

We canoed this weekend. The End.

Unabridged:

When I was Fifteen and Sixteen (not simultaneously) my parents took my cousin and myself with them and my Dad's Ultimate Frisbee team to do a 23-mile canoe down the Wisconsin River, from Sauk to Spring Green. Good times were had. Seven years later I brought up the idea to them of doing it again and they provided me with the information. I made some calls and told some friends and pretty quickly had fully taken over the trip.

Eight of us took off Saturday morning, Six of us returned Sunday.

Friday night three of us (Myself, Jay and Emily) were out drinkin' until 3AM, Adam was doing what I assume was the same out the Madison way, and Mike and Maya were playing the card of responsibility. 6AM Saturday I tried to figure out what the hell was going on when Mike and Maya kept trying to get me up and going, once I realized I needed to be up I did so and we took off. Laura was picked up en route from Stoughton and after a ten-minute stop at my parents place to grab a cooler and a few last minute items we took off and met up with Jay, Emily, Adam and Steph at the West Madison Best Buy.

Adam and Steph were already a little far-gone from drinkin', I was just starting to shake my hangover. We were running about an hour behind schedule at this point and the skies were not looking too promising. We got our bearings straight and got some caffeine and pointed our car-shaped missles in the direction of Spring Green.

We were prepared to call the whole thing off all the while, taking the deposit hit but sparing ourselves a night of being stranded on a beach in flimsy tents while trees got knocked to and fro or a day of canoeing mobile lightning rods through a storm. It stayed fairly mellow, though, and we made our way uneventfully to Bob's Canoes, checked in and unpacked. Bob drove us 24 miles Northwest to Sauk to the loading dock while Adam and Steph threw down on some Breakfast of Champions and the rest of us made fun of kids with down syndrome or something. We got the dock, packed up the canoes, and set off.

It's that point about ten minutes in when you realize how slow-moving canoeing for eight hours is and start to wonder why the hell you would pay to do something of this nature. It's about an hour and a half in that you start to get a natural rhythm going and think it's not so bad. It's about two hours in that you risk stopping at a sandbar and eating some food.

It's also at this two hour point that you realize canoeing and camping is a messy business. Peanut Butter and Jelly is all good and fun, but Sand is an ingredient that requires strong will or stubbornness. After getting layered in sand, covering our food and stomachs in sand, and filling our bags of possessions up with sand we became sick of our new bee friends and set off again.

It's about two hours and fifteen minutes in that you once again wonder why you are paying for this and realize how far finding a place to set up camp is.

About an hour later we came across one of the frequent topics of conversation for the day: The Nude Beach. Again--I apologize. No Pictures.

The Nude Beach is a place that I somehow missed the other two times that we did this trip. A lot of people thought they had the right to mock me for this until I pointed out that by their own descriptions this was a beach of Old Naked Men and that as such I didn't feel I was particularly losing anything by missing out. This year, however, we kept an eye out, found our mark, and purposefully canoed right by the beach gleefully point out all the naked people.

It was still Old Naked Men.

There were three women Adam and I took note of, all three were older women--complete with sagging, sponged-up flesh. It was hot. After we passed everyone seemed a little amused and a little disturbed and Adam posited the question of etiquette. As he pointed out, there were groups where it was something like seven naked men standing around, shooting the shit. He said he didn't think he could casually stand around with his friends, naked, talking about the weather (which, by this point, was bold enough to go sunny). We were all a little curious: In this situation, what if you happen to glance down, even for just a moment? Well I just don't know what the outcry would be. I assume it's something that goes undiscussed and accepted. My bigger question is: What if there was a bee? If I just absentmindly swung out and struck my buddy in the nuts, trying to spare him a bee sting, how would that go down?

These are deep questions.

Also: Volleyball was probably a bad idea for them. *shudder*

The weather went back to grumpy and with a little over four hours of canoeing down we spotted a decent beach and set up camp. By this point it was around 5:30 and we were all a little weary. It happened to be the exact same beach as Mike and I had camped on seven years earlier, which I think is a little amazing. It was very spacious, and sand is very hard. Laura passed out pretty quickly, I assume consumed with satisfaction at having shelled out $30 to what amounted to eight hours of manual labor, sandy sandwiches and a visual affront of Old Naked Men, and Adam and I took up to playing catch with the frisbee. Shortly after there was a Bocce Ball game, a gathering of fire wood, and then an eventually-successful attempt at starting a beach fire. I had a not-so successful encounter with cooking grilled cheese on a fire, which I found myself satisifed with a second attempt on Jay's portable stove.

It was about this time everyone realized that bugs are attracted to the light. Also, spiders are nocturnal. Even yet, sand spiders are large and camoflauge themselves. Further, camoflauged nocturnal sand spiders can run fast and jump high. I ignored the whole hoopla and continued to set my beer down, forget about it, and come back to find it sand-encrusted and home to what I can only assume were inebriated, happy insects.

I also urinated for the first time since the trip began, and it was good. Then we all slept.

Sand is not soft. Towels do not make good pillows. I paid for this.

Last Saturday Mike, Maya and I loaded up the car (with... ourselves? I guess no loading took place) and headed down to Chicago to try and catch Kevin Smith and one of his Q&A sessions at a convention in Rosemont. I've hit this up two other years in two other groups (once in 2001, once in 2004) with the exact same goal--failed all three years. One year I did get to meet Jason Mewes (The Jay of Jay and Silent Bob) and that was pretty cool, and I usually walked away with some free shit and a bootleg dvd or two. This year we got there too late to get tickets to the Kevin Smith dilla (again) and then tooled around the booths that were selling random shit and looked at the artwork on display from various artists in attendance. The booths had absolutely nothing, it was all junk and old toys. They had a small halfpipe to promote some new Tony Hawk game. We couldn't tell if it was actual paid skaters making use of it or random convention people, it seemed like it was paid skaters that just weren't that good. A couple of them had some decent stalls going on, but the rest kept tanking off the board as soon as they'd drop in. We did get to talk to one of the CG animators for Reboot. Mike and Maya dug talking CG and programs, I just loves me some Reboot.

After the stench and the people started getting to us (about an hour and a half in) we said screw it, took off and got some Giardelli's Pizza. I don't know if that's the right name at all but it's some delicious Chicago pizza. By this point the 2 hours of sleep we all had the night before was catching up, Mike and Maya were passing out and I jumped in on the driving action, gunning for the city without a plan in the world. I played the "look for tthe tallest building in the city" game to navigate our way to the Sears Tower and after doing a drive-by of the lakefront and Lollapalooza, we parked and hit some elevator action up.

Shooting up 100 stories in an elevator is a little hair-raising for someone whose afraid of heights, the gravity is a little much for anybody, but to top it all off they had this awful Billy Crystal monologue running the entire way [shudder]. Up top was nothin' but Urban Sprawl and a clear view of the craziness that was Lollapalooza. Before this, while waiting in line to get up the Sears Tower, Steve Holland returned a call I had left him earlier in the day about how to navigate Chicago. Turned out he happened to be a block away. After we came back down 100 stories and braved another dose of Billy Crystal, we all met up and wandered the city.

While wandering we became aware that we could easily hear the bands playing at Lollapalooza. With this in mind we made our way to Grand Central, pausing occasionally to laugh at the people being trained on how to use a Segway and the guy getting busted for looking like a hippy and having contraband to walk the walk. After throwing down on some Animal Crackers Holland had his wits about him and called out the band playing as The Flaming Lips, so we walked towards the direction of the sound and found the stage was in clear view from the sidewalk. There was a small grouping of people who had also noticed this, and a couple of security guards at the fence who seemed simultaneously irked that we could enjoy the concert without having paid to get in and also in complete indifference to this same fact. The same woman walked past and said something about us not being able to hang out right at the fence a few times, at which point we took four steps back to the sidewalk and that seemed to take care of that. It was a good show, they had a chorus of dancing Santa's and a mass of giant, blown-up blue balls being bounced, bashed and blocked by the crowd.

Post free show we wandered down to Milennium Park to check out Cloud Gate and these strange Labyrinth-esque waterfalls that would display random faces every thirty seconds or so.

And after capturing some pictures with both the caveman-like cameraphone and Holland's Digital Camera we wandered the city back towards the direction of our car. Mike, Maya and Myself took off, gunning for Milwaukee which now seemed quite a bit smaller than it did before. We hit up the Oasis for some food action on the way out of town and it was a day.