adventures of a canoelover

Despite appearances, one of my legs is not shorter than the other.  But you shouldn’t be noticing that; you should be noticing those gorgeous resurrected-from-the-grave hiking boots.

1. Hosed them off with warm water and removed dirt and grit with a vegetable brush.
2. Saddle soaped the leather, which dirtied up the rag rapidly.
3. Nor-V-Gen oiled twice.  They soaked up a lot.
4. Saddle soaped again.  They were still too dirty.  Rag was cleaner this time.
5. Hand-rubbed in two coats of Smiling Mink.
6. Hand-washed the laces in dishwashing liquid.

Total time: probably two hours.  They’re on my feet and they feel fantastic.  Not so much heavy as substantial.

I know some boot aficionados don’t like mink oil. They claim it causes the leather to stretch, disintegrates lacing, causes warts, boils and possible death.   I dunno.  Maybe Sno-Seal is better, but remember, gentle readers, that these boats boots are 34 years old.  They have been mink oiled since I got ’em. If mink oil is harmful to anything but a mustelid, I sure can’t tell.

I think I’ll leave these on for a while and let them get some foot time.  After all, it has been a while, and my boots need some reassurance that this isn’t a passing fancy.

Respectfully submitted,

Canoelover

…sort of.

The edict has been pronounced.  I have until Wednesday night at 6:00 PM to complete my gear sorting and reorganization.

<yul>So let it be written.  So let it be done.</yul>*

Bear in mind this is only the small stuff.  Not shown are tents, sleeping bags, all the portage and backpacks, tarps, other shelters and of course, the tipi.  It also doesn’t include any paddle gear or clothing, paddles, PFDs, and footwear.  Two of the four Rubbermaid containers are also still unopened.

As I said, this has been like this for over a week.  I married up.  Anyone who knows Wife 1.2 knows that. Who else would let their husband vomit gear all over the living room floor for two weeks?

Respectfully submitted,

Canoelover

P.S. Update on the Vasque Hikers: going for a second saddle soaping. The first one was pretty gross…a lot of cave mud came off.  The leather still has some dirt embedded and I’m trying to get at least some brownish tan color back.  Right now they’re chocolate brown, and I mean dark (72%) chocolate.  But I’m in no hurry.  My boots are like a faithful hound and won’t stray far from the homestead.

*My inner geek expressing its obscure self.

When my younger friends talk about how old they feel, usually at some imaginary milestone (like thirty) I often joke that I have a pair of hiking boots that are older than they are.

In truth, I’m not joking.

In 1976, at the age of 14, I walked to the Red Wing Show Store in Fallbrook Square, Canoga Park, California and bought a pair of Vasque Hikers.  That was, for those who have trouble with math, 34 years ago.  So if you’re under 34, my boots are older than you.

Even at 14 and 105 pounds, I wore a size 9.5. If my shoe size had paralleled my weight gain, I would now wear a size 18 shoe.  Luckily, I bought size 10 so I could wear two pairs of socks, the rag-wool itch monsters that saved our skin and irritated it at the same time.

These boots took fifty miles to break in, so I wore them constantly all Spring so they’d be ready for Summer hiking.  In those days, we bought moleskin by the yard, though for some reason I always avoided blisters.  What a sight I must have been.  Something like this (sans turtle).

These boots carried me many, many miles throughout the High Sierras, Los Padres National Forest, Anza Borrego, the high desert in Mojave, and countless other places.  This is before lightweight Gore-Tex and synthetic boots; these are heavy duty.  And, well, heavy.  I did the old “get on the scale with and without things” trick and they came in over 5 pounds.

No wonder my quads were in such good shape.

Once I bought a pair of Vasque Sundowners back in the early 90s, my Hikers have been relegated to top-shelf-in-a-Rubbermaid status. I still used them; they became my caving boots.  During the current and ongoing gear purge/reorganization, I decided to pull out every piece of gear I own to catalog it to make sure I knew what I had, so out came the old boots.

They smelled good; a little musty, with mud from the latest cave stuck in the tread of the classic Vibram sole, an odor that you can’t really describe to someone who hasn’t been in a wild cave. I decided to take a break from the sorting and took my old friends outside for a picture.  They look a little shabby, but they’re still good to go, after some time at the boot spa.

So far they’ve been scrubbed and saddle-soaped and I’ve applied a good, sopping coat of Nor-V-Gen oil.  In a couple of days I’ll give them another slathering of Nor-V-Gen if they look dry, and a couple days after that I’ll add a coat of Sno-Seal, and my old friends will be back in tip-top condition.

I know it doesn’t make much sense to wear them around town, but neither does driving an open-top CJ5, an original FJ or an ancient Land Rover.  These old friends are being resurrected as I write this, and I’ll wear them proudly, despite the burning sensation in my quads when I go up flights of stairs.

Respectfully submitted,

Canoelover

Once in a while I work with a paddle manufacturer to create new designs.  Apparently I’m okay at it, since the last one I worked on became one of their best sellers.

The trick here is to create something that is a good value, but still has what I’d want in a nice entry-level paddle.  It’s actually a little more fun than creating a high-end paddle…it’s more challenging when you have limitations to work with.  In this case, blade width.

Once I laid out the basic pattern, I do a rough cut with a jigsaw, leaving the line for reference. I could use a band saw at the shop, but I’m not a big fan of power tools since the Great Table Saw Incident of 2005.  Besides, using a big noisy thing to trim a few little chunks of wood off a paddle blank seems overkill.

After the rough cut I dig out the patternmaker’s rasps. Nicholson used to make the best rasps, the second cut No. 49 and the smoothing file, the No. 50. Nicholson made the Rolls Royce of rasps and had since the 1890s, but their quality has gone down in recent years.  Some say a batch of them were outsourced to China, and that sullied their name somewhat.

I bought a new set of rasps last year, nice Japanese ones that are, in many ways, better than the Nicholsons.  They work great.  Love ’em.

After the first cuts and rasping on one side, it’s time for more smoothing with the No. 50.   Although I lay out the basic shape on both sides, I only shape one side at a time. It’s easier to make them symmetrical if you get to the final shape on one side, then use a compass to transfer the lines from one side to the other.

More later…

Canoelover

Sunday afternoon Wife 1.2 thought a walk in the Arboretum would be a good idea, and I concurred whole-heartedly.

November is weird, though.  Could be 60.  Could be 20.  Could snow.  Could rain.  Or it could be benign.  What is certain is that it’s between seasons.  Fall is over (no leaves except on the beeches), and Winter is unwilling to really push her luck.  If she comes too early, the people will rise up.  Actually, us upper Midwesterners are pretty stoic when it comes to weather.  If Winter comes early, we’ll just give her the one-finger salute and put on another sweater and maybe a toque.

The cool thing about between seasons is the ability to see structures.  With the leaves off the trees and the snow not yet blanketing the forest floor, you see things.  Like mounds, built between 800 and 1,000 years ago by the Effigy Mound Culture, the ancestors of the First Nations people of Wisconsin, the Ojibway.

Over 20,000 mounds covered southern Wisconsin when the Europeans arrived in the mid 1800s.  Many were lost to the plow, but many more were saved by archeologists.  Very few of these mounds were burial sites, but speculation and observation leads many anthropologists to believe they were for celebration of astronomical milestones.  Loamhenge, not Stonehenge.

There are benches scattered throughout the woods, usually where there’s some sort of overlook.  I can’t really call them vistas, because vista implies some sort of long view, like Cedar Breaks or the Grand Canyon.  Overlooks are smaller, more intimate, and a lot more modest in a Midwestern sort of way.  “Aw, shucks, it looks pretty dere but it’s no big deal…”  The  benches are usually affixed with small plaques that tell the sitters to whom this bench was dedicated.

So it was a nice walk.  I resisted the temptation to make Leaf Angels. Sometimes I think Wife 1.2  has a moderating influence on me.  Instead, we just walked, leaves crunching under our feet.  That’s all I needed.

Respectfully submitted,

Canoelover

We just finished putting in built-in bookshelves in our basement.  This roughly tripled the amount of bookshelf space we have available, so we dragged out everything we had in storage. While digging through the dozen or so Rubbermaid containers, I found my old Life in Hell books, written by a pre-Simpsons Matt Groening. I had forgotten how Groening totally nails it in his book School is Hell.

I remember reading “Should You Go To Grad School: A Wee Test” while I was in grad school.  It was not so funny then as it is now.  Putting about 20 years of distance between me and Meliora Hall, this cartoon has become hilarious.  Laugh out loud funny.

Interestingly, I did not become the Bitterest Person In The World.  I became happy.

As part of the purging, I started digging through the dusty tomes and found old textbooks.  Yes, I tossed my thesis data and such a while ago, but finding stats books made me a little happy. I was a really good geek.  I liked multivariate regression analysis.  I really like factorial analysis.  Eigenvalues make me smile.  Residuals…oh boy.  I got rid of a few books that were a bit dated, but regression doesn’t age. It hasn’t changed much since 1761.

Hey, it’s not like my work life has been smooth sailing since I left Rochester. I’ve had my share of struggles, but for the most part, I’m glad I left academics.

Q: Why do tenured professors hate Wednesday classes?
A:  It ruins both weekends.

Not that academics doesn’t have its perks.

Now I’m just unpacking books, sending a bunch of them to Half-Price Books.  I kept Joseph Campbell.  I dumped Robert Bly.  Iron John is one of those books that PBS viewers bought because of some special during a fund drive.

The best part of the digging: we sorted out 9 lineal feet of kid’s books.  Grandkids will be well-served (someday).  No pressure, Whitney.  None at all.

Respectfully submitted,

Canoelover

The last market of the season is always a bountiful one.  Lots of squash and root vegetables, cheese and apples.  It’s wonderful.  Yesterday was a cold one and the vendors were bundled up like Randy in A Christmas Story.  As Ralphie said, “Like a tick about to pop.”  They were layered.  Smart farmers.

We walked the square slowly.  The light was good, and the vegetables were luminescent.

Sungold tomatoes are aptly named.  If bacon is the candy of meats (and I think it is), sungolds are the candy of tomatoes.  They are almost fruit-like in their sweetness, but with just enough acid to give you that wonderful pop of sour to offset the sweet.  If I were on a desert island, I could live on bacon, chocolate, Franziskaner NA and sungolds.

Romanesco is a Brassica, like broccoli, except incredibly beautiful in its symmetry.  Tastes good too, but that’s a side benefit of being mathematical logarithmic spiral.  And it’s self-similar, a fractal pattern that would make Mandelbrot sit up and take notice.

We also grabbed a bunch of sweet potatoes to make sweet potato fries.  During this ultimately successful escapade, I sliced a little bit of my thumb off with the fry cutter, but ultimately it was worth it.  I would have documented the fry portion of the story, but to be honest, they were gone before I had a chance to get a shot.  Trust me; beautiful and delicious.

Wife 1.2 ended up with the backpack, the contents as follows:

1. Madison Sourdough Baguette.
2. One gallon maple syrup.
3. Hooks Cheese: English Tilston Blue, Blue Paradise Double Cream Blue, and Gorgonzola.
4. Bandaged Cheddar fr0m Capri Cheesery.  Amazing.
5. Tuscan Lacinato kale.
6. One bunch of leeks.
7. A giant cauliflower.
8. Sweet potatoes (as previously mentioned).

The apples we carried, from Weston Apples, an antique preservation-oriented farm that grows over 100 unique varieties not found in stores.  It seems Americans like their apples to taste like sand, so long as they look perfect.  Living in an apple producing state, we get the good stuff, like Black Gilliflowers, Golden Russets, Blanc d’Hiver, Wolf River, and my favorite cooking apple, the rare Winter Banana.  Yes, it tastes like an apple soaked in banana juice.  But the Winter Banana bruises easily, so it is rejected by the finicky tastes of American consumers.  The Red Delicious has it half-right; it is the Beverly Hills Plastic Surgeon-ized apple, all look, no substance.

I also carried a huge bag of butternut squash over my shoulder, like a fireman carrying a child to safety.  Ten bucks.

We also got reacquainted with Sarah, the salsa queen of Tomato Mountain.  All good stuff, but Wife 1.2 and I are especially fond of the Chipotle Salsa.  Smoky yummy salsa.  Sarah doesn’t like it.  But, as I reminded her, we’re the customers.

We Madison folks are richly blessed with a wonderful agricultural community.  Notice I said agriculture, not agribusiness. I have nothing against businesses per se, being that I own one and all.   I love the culture of the market, the happy people selling their wares.  I love the southeast Asian families, sometimes three generations deep, their vegetables arranged in beautiful sculptures.  I love the sleepy-eyed teenagers selling pastries and the farmers who still have dirt under their fingernails.  We’re buying the good stuff, and supporting good people who create the culture that makes my adopted home what it is.

Respectfully submitted,

Canoelover

The day after the OWL trip I left for the Outdoor Industry Association Rendezvous in Asheville.  A few days later I left for Portland and a meeting with the folks at Yakima (fun and work — furk?).  I had a pile of work to dig through, so all the gear I used for the OWL ended up deposited on the boathouse floor.  Add to that a remodel that had displaced some stuff from the basement and some other gear that spontaneously appeared, plus a duffel bag of paddle clothing…

My gear is out of control.  I mean, it has achieved consciousness.  If my gear had opposable thumbs, I’d already be dead.

I’ve decided it’s time for an inventory.

If this is the last post on canoelover.com, it was probably the Optimus 8R that did it.  Call this lady, she’ll figure it out.

Respectfully submitted,

Canoelover

One of my favorite books is a bibliogeek’s dream entitled The Visual Display of Quantitative Information written by Edward Tufte. It’s not light reading, but it is fascinating, even for non-geeks.  The point of the book is to explain how to take a lot of information and compact it into a small, easily digestible package.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) produces wonderful graphics, where they put a lot of data in this small space, and it’s easy to follow.  Thing is, you can look at weather.com and get a lot of what Tufte calls “chartjunk,” which is ink that conveys little or no information.  Like this stuff.

Ooh.  Pretty moon with clouds.  Worthless.

This is not worthless.

You don’t have to be a geek to enjoy this stuff.  You can enjoy the patterns; develop the ability to squint at a graph and get a gestalt view of what’s going to happen without having to think about it.  First graders read words a letter at a time; the word is D-O-G.  After reading for years, you see the whole word or maybe even two or more words at a time.  After developing familiarity with these graphs, I look at them and I see the weather patterns in my brain.  It’s cool.

One thing I like about living in the Midwest is the weather. And one thing I didn’t like about California is the lack of weather.  Here, things are weird.  If you don’t like the weather, wait half a day–or even an hour.  A 10 degree drop in temperature is not uncommon when a fast front comes blasting through.

Respectfully submitted,

Canoelover