adventures of a canoelover

Actually, Kelly Blades needs this.

http://www.dannabananas.com/?q=node/633

It has been cold but this past week things have come roaring back into life. One of the reasons I love Wisconsin is the distinct seasonal change that accompanies every month.

I have a large patch of Trout Lilies in our backyard. They’re up for about a week and that’s it, the leaves last another month maybe. While they’re up, they’re my favorite.

…and it was lovely (but cold). The Current River is awesome.

A really cool place we ran into was Elephant Rocks State Park.

As with a lot of folks who like to be outside, I have been frustrated with tents as shelters. Sure, they’re necessary, especially in buggy and rainy climes, but I always felt like I had gone outside, only to climb in a cocoon of nylon and aluminum every night. My favorite time to camp was early spring and late fall, before bug season here in Wisconsin, when I could sleep under a tarp or just out on a sandbar, watching satellites fly over during a new moon.

Don’t get me wrong—I appreciate a good tent when the weather turns nasty or when the bugs come out for a feeding frenzy. It’s just that I lose a connection with nature when I an ensconced in a floor-to-ceiling enclosure, which is usually not a color I’d paint my house walls. My old SD Meteor Light was a great design, but it was blue. Spending a rainy day in it was enough to cause major depressive episodes.

Then Dan Cooke from Cooke Custom Sewing sent me a really cool shelter. Called the Lean 2 Plus, it combines the things I love about tents (bug netting) with the things I love about tarps (no floor), plus it’s white, so spending time in it is about as cheery as spending an afternoon on a screen porch. You can button it down when the weather gets nasty or create a front porch by staking out the front door flap. I’m still experimenting with it to get the pitch right, but I think I’ve found tent nirvana.

If you’re tired of wimpy sand stakes, make your own. All you need is a hacksaw, a file, a drill, and source of T-6061 aluminum 1″ extruded T. I used www.wiedenbeck.com, my local steelyard. The results are impressive. 🙂

It’s Spring, and we went paddling on the Badfish from Cookesville to the confluence with the Yahara just upstream from Highway 59. David had a few swims but the weather was lovely.

Solo canoes are the perfect craft for these little twisty rivers and creeks that abound in southern Wisconsin. We had to do a few limbos under a few cottonwoods but all in all, a rather perfect day.

Madison is a very bicycle-friendly town, certainly better than L.A. where I grew up…there, bike lanes were nonexistant, and more than once I was yelled at to “get on the sidewalk where you belong.” Sad, because in L.A. you can ride 360 days a year. It’d be cool if Hwy 101 became a six-lane bike path.

Even with bike paths and such everywhere in Madison, we still see reminders that when it comes to mass vs. mass, bicycles lose every time. This is a brand-new bike path, a few months old. On the way to work yesterday I saw this and shot a quick picture.

I am not one to see Elvis in a rotten tomato or the Virgin Mary in a moldy tortilla, but you gotta admit, this does sorta look like Greenland.

…and they be lookin’ fine. A Wenonah Prism (16’6″, 35 pounds in Kevlar with wood trim), and a Wenonah Argosy (14’6″, maybe 45 pounds in Royalex). They’re going south with me next week to start filming an instructional DVD. Astute observers will notice the ice and snow all over them. That’s why we’re going south — it’s 72 degrees in Birmingham, AL today.

Y’know, it’s sorta fun driving around town this time of year with two boats on the car. I get weird looks, thumbs up and smiles, head shakes, and of course, the British response (do nothing to indicate anything is outside the norm, thankyouverymuchindeed). Reminds me of a friend who paddled a canoe from London to Scotland using the canal system, and while portaging through Birmingham, mid-day, in a crowded street, not one person gave him a second glance, as if shaggy-looking people waltzed down the throughfare daily with canoes on their heads.

For the first time in my life, I am actually glad to see cold weather even if it isn’t snowing. The frost makes for good picture taking, but that’s about it. I just got a new camera (new to me anyway), a Nikon N90 with a nice set of lenses…a 24mm, an 80mm, and a really bomber 80-200mm 1.8 ED that looks like a small telescope. A friend is going digital (100%) and I still like the grain of Ilford Delta 400 B&W film, so I’m trading him for some paddling gear. I already have a Nikon N90s body and an 80mm macro and a 50mm. So my trusty Canon F-1 and lenses are going to school with my daughter who loves B&W too.

The recent warm spell allowed me to shoot a bit at Governor Dodge State Park, so I got my 2007 State Park sticker and went for a nice walk in the woods. It was almost 40 and no wind…I should have brought a canoe, the lake was mostly open.

A good family day…a nice break from work, which has become all-consuming lately…