adventures of a canoelover

Friday and Saturday were Quietwater Films days. We filmed at Devil’s Lake State Park on Friday and on the Lower WI River Saturday. Conditions were perfect, even a little wind to show the importance of trimming your canoe properly. We ran Gracie into the ground, she’s been sleeping nonstop since yesterday afternoon. She’s not a puppy anymore, but if you pull out a tennis ball or a Frisbee she goes back to an 18 month-old Lab pup, and pays for it the next day just like the rest of us middle-aged people.

Damon the Cameraman, a freelancer from Chicago, was awesome. He does a lot of corporate work and said this was the most fun he’d had in a long time while getting paid for it. He is a paddler (coincidently, we didn’t know it when we hired him) and drives an Element. The chap has excellent taste. Except for the goofy hat.

Anyway, it looks like we’ll have Paddling the Tandem Canoe finished by December, just in time for the holiday gift giving season. Everyone needs the trilogy in their stockings…

It was fun to film with Stephanie, my favorite bow paddler. She rocked. She even did a great impromptu performance during the segment on proper splashing technique. Love that woman…she’s awesome in a canoe.

One casualty – a new carbon-fiber paddle that snapped off during a particularly hard sweep stroke. To quote Bullwinkle, “Don’t know my own strength!” Truthfully, I think it was defective.

And what a trip it was. OWL 2007 was awesome, as usual. Jeff’s weather karma was perfect, with a gorgeous full moon and a spectacular sunrise. The sandhill cranes were there by the hundreds. and the cacophony of their morning cries was just riotous. Lindsay called it “God’s Alarm Clock.” I dunno, a full bladder is God’s Alarm Clock too. If you want to get up early, stay up late drinking lots of tea and swapping stories around the campfire.

Pictured (L to R): Carolina Carver 60″, Turtle Paddle Solo Cherry 60″, Sawyer Cedar Egret 52″, Turtle Paddle Algonquin Guide 58″, Nashwaak Cherry 60″, Bending Branches Black Widow Plus 58″, Sawyer Zephyr 52″, Shaw & Tenney Penobscot Spruce 57″, Turtle Paddle Algonquin Guide Flamed Maple 60″

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The food was great, the companionship even better. Lindsay’s wife Amanda made gourmet foil dinners that were nothing short of miraculous. Brad did the iron chef thing this morning and made a fritatta, which was great as well. Everyone brought too much food. In other words, just like every other year.

Ian paddled solo again…second year for him in a solo. He had a great time as usual, paddling mostly in the front of the pack, sometimes way in front of the pack. The boy likes his solitude.

We missed our friends Chris, Jon, and Brad, and hope they can make it next year.

Respectfully submitted,

Darren
Chief OWL, Order of the Wisconsin River Lovers

Autumn is my favorite season. The temps are perfect, the light is a photographer’s dream, and the mosquitoes are mostly dead, or so slow that within a few seconds of lighting on you they’re no longer recognizable as a former insect.

Today we went up to Devil’s Lake to do some filming for a video project. The weather was of course, perfect, little or no wind, and not a soul on the lake besides us. I didn’t do a huge amount of paddling, but I got to hang around with Nancy and Derrick (and Derrick’s better half, Mary). They’re great people and pretty decent paddlers too.

I sometimes wonder how I got so lucky as to belong to such a great industry. Outdoor specialty retail is a tough way to make a living, but it’s a wonderful business for all the intangibles — friends, nature, and sharing experiences such as today.

Anyway, I got to play around in a solo canoe while Derrick had to paddle a sea kayak. Poor Derrick. Don’t get me wrong, I love kayaking…but sea kayaking in a tiny lake in Wisconsin seems a little sick and wrong. Give me a solo canoe, a paddle, and a star to steer her by.

…and we’re all stoked. Looks like a full contingent — 13 at last count. Last year was 11. I have to do a lot of work before then, so it’s going to be a tough week. Our new accountant starts tomorrow, so it’ll be a good thing but a hard thing.

Ian is about a foot taller than he was in this picture for last year.

My daughter’s a hooker…but it’s not what you think… She’s on the BYU Women’s Rugby team. Hookers are sorta like the center in football. There’s no real close analogy, but she’s in the front of the forwards, in the middle of the action. She’s a really sweet kid, but when she gets on a field of battle (in whatever sport it is) she becomes something of a red-headed monster.

She was playing flanker before, which is sorta like a cross between a linebacker and a tight end, but again, there’s no real good analogy. Now she’s moving into the front line where she can do more damage.
BYU women’s rugby team finished fourth in the nation last year, but didn’t attend playoffs due to not wanting to play games on Sunday. I think they are scheduled differently this year so we’ll see…

Side note — I played rugby at BYU 24 years ago. Whitney is a much better player than I ever was.

Gracie is happy today because she got a run, a swim, and ate mosquitoes all afternoon. She’s a good dog. When she’s tired.

Ian is adopting three rats, all boys…they are not ready and won’t be weaned until October 5th. The good news is that they have been handled daily, and they’ll be very social rats. We have a Berkshire (the far right one), a Hooded (the middle one) and a Bareback (the far left one), all from the same litter.

We haven’t had rats since Whitney was a baby, and frankly I’m delighted. Rats are a lot of fun, and Ian is getting excited to have pets living in his bedroom.

We are looking for names. I like Templeton for at least one of them.

This morning came early…I dropped Ian off at school at 6:05 AM so he could ride the bus to Milwaukee for a Cross Country meet…his first official race. I went back home and grabbed a bite, showered and met Dave from Nova Craft at our warehouse to unload canoes. I couldn’t ask the staff to do it on a Saturday, it’s already busy for them, so I just met Dave and we made short work of a load of twenty boats. The it was off to Washington Park.

There were a dozen schools there, and there were six races, Freshmen, JV, and Varsity for men and women. Lots of young, thin people running around and a lot of leathery older folks who are obviously coaches or parents who run too. It was Ian’s first race, so our goal (his goal) was to finish, hopefully under 30 minutes, and not walk any part of the race. He finished in 28 minutes and didn’t walk. We are very proud of him…and more importantly, he’s very proud of himself. Now we start whittling away at his time. 22 minutes by the end of the season seems like a good goal.

He’s now upstairs sleeping it off.

Sometimes you’re walking along the street and you pick up something that catches your eye. A metal nameplate with rivet holes that wore through enough to drop the plate always seems to be too big of a mystery to pass up.

The Fontaine No-Slack was a mystery, but is no longer. You can almost see the numbers, but you can definitely note that the manufacturer of origin is Birmingham, Alabama. These guys make serious work trucks. Think phone company, water utilities, etc. etc.

I’m still trying to figure out what an SL5AWB D254 with a serial number of 119635493 is, but I’ve forwarded this picture to the customer service folks. Stay tuned, it’ll be mind-numbingly exciting, no doubt.

Ian is a Life Scout, and one of the merit badges he needs is his Hiking merit badge. He had everything done except the “Hike 20 miles in one day” requirement. So early this morning, we got up and took off from the trailhead (our front door) abd hiked to the Military Ridge Trail, which runs southwest of Madison. It’s normally a bike trail but we saw quite a few pedestrians too. It was warm (hot actually), with decent humidity, and we’re all drinking like fish to get back ahead of the hydration curve.

Aside from the obvious physical challenge, it was wonderful. 7 hours of walking gives ample time to chat about life. College is four years away, and we talked about school, his aspirations (he would like to invent something that pulls carbon out of the atmosphere and makes fuel out of it to solve global warming and power our vehicles), etc. When he’s not solving the energy crisis, he would like to be a Shakespearian actor. Or an architect.

It is so wonderful to be young and to dream. Whatever he decides, he’ll be great at it, I am sure.

This late in the season, the wildflowers are all dead and brown. Except for a splash of red in the wild rose hips, it’s pretty brown out there, except for this wonderful late bloomer, the bottle gentian (Gentiana andrewsii). These aren’t buds, these are flowers…they don’t really open up. This means that they’re pollinated primarily by bumblebees, the only insect robust (or persistent) enough to penetrate the corolla.*

Anyway, I love them. They are easy to spot in low marshy areas, and unlike the ornamental gentians from the nursery who die if you so much as look at them with a disapproving scold, these self-seed and do quite well, thank you very much.

*Corolla is a fancy name for the combined structures of the petals and calyx. On a rose, the corolla is pretty much an open book. On these gentians, not so much…