AUTHOR’S NOTE: This column is intended to be entertaining at the expense of truth and accuracy, but I sneak in some good information as well. It is up to the reader to distinguish between entertainment and reality.
(Click photos to enlarge)
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Assortment of
Portages |
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Tequila |
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Pepto |
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Tums |
Q: What is a portage?
A: A portage is a portable breakfast food, a favorite of hard-core canoe campers. It is a form of dried out porridge that resembles a granola bar, and is virtually indistinguishable from cardboard in flavor and texture. Believe me, it is an acquired taste! In serious canoeing circles, it forms the basis of a secret ritual wherein the old-timers and the uninitiated gather around the campfire, and a previously designated old-timer stands holding a pouch full of portages high above his head, and, with a deep and foreboding voice – wait a minute, if I tell you, it won’t be a secret ritual! You’ll just have to imagine the rest of it, with the understanding that a great many portages, añejo tequila, Tums and Pepto-Bismol figure prominently in the ritual.
Note: A secondary use of the portage relates to its resemblance to cardboard. If you find yourself paperless and need to write something, you can write it on the portage. But you have to be careful to keep it dry, because, just like cardboard, if it gets wet, it will disintegrate and your wisdom for the ages will be lost forever.
Q: How close can you get to wildlife in a kayak?
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| Close Encounters |
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Wildlife - You
Never Know |
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Klingon Bird
of Prey |
A: This is the wrong question. The real question is, how close will wildlife come to you? The wildlife is in complete control of the encounter, and often you will not even be aware of the animal until the last few milliseconds. Please note the surprise that registers on the woman’s face and her defensive posture in the photo with the dolphin. Notice that she did hang onto her paddle. Well done!
What I want to know is, how did the photographer know when to be ready for this and the whale tail photo ops? This leads to a host of other questions, such as, was it CGI? Was it staged? Was there someone with a whistle just off camera? Did the photographer have a drone circling the area and projecting the action from above? Was the dolphin really an alien? Was a hijacked Klingon “Bird of Prey” class battle cruiser in the area at the time? Was the whale’s name “Gracie”? Did the photographer and the dolphin know each other from some previous encounter? Was someone from Sea World pulling the strings? Makes you crazy!
Check out this other example of a close encounter here. If you’re in a hurry, start it at 45 seconds.
Q: How do you pin the bow of a canoe or kayak?
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| Starting Out |
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After Several Years
of Collecting |
A: Pinning the bow of a canoe or kayak is when you attach trophies from your paddling history to the bow – kind of like a hood ornament. You are always finding stuff, and as you enlarge your collection through continued paddling, you have to change up the objects you show off, thus requiring additional pinning skills. Generally, newbies are pinning golf balls or fishing lures or petrified wood to their bows. Those are the most frequently encountered objects – the “low-hanging fruit” of pinnables. It is no small task to pin a golf ball to the bow of a canoe, so not only finding artifacts, but skill is a part of the challenge. The most impressive pinning I have seen is the head of a water moccasin with its mouth open and fangs extended. It gave the kayak a kind of “Viking” vibe. NOTE: After several years of collecting and pinning the bow, the objects pinned to the bow can become hindrances to paddling, as in the second photo. Amy’s tendency to collect large specimens of driftwood leads to some interesting, and sometimes serious, compromises in “paddlability”.
Q: Who was it that made the COVID observation about travelling long distances, “It is not worth the while to go round the world to count the cats in Zanzibar?”
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| Hank |
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A cat in Zanzibar |
A: I believe it was Henry “Hank” D. Thoreau in his book, Walden. This treatise provides an especially cogent perspective in this strange time when many of us want to go to bigger, better places to do our paddling (I know I do), when in our own back yards, so to speak, are treasures we walk by every day. Well, maybe we don’t exactly walk by them, and certainly not every day, and they aren’t actually in our own back yards, but you know what I mean. And Mr. Thoreau has not convinced me that I can, nor should I give up my cherished Buffalo River and Big Bend trips and use the time gained for introspection. Hell, I’ve done just about as much introspecting as I can this past year! My navel has been thoroughly mapped out and I’m ready to go someplace else to stimulate my inner musings of transcendentalism. Try breaking that word down: On the other side of 100 dentists. But I digress . . . Anyway, at the end of the day, why should I take advice from a dead felon?
Q: I have heard about the great paddling there, but where, exactly, is the famous city of Uncertain, TX, and what is the origin of its name?
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| Uncertain |
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Uncertain
City Hall |
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Uncertain
Information Board |
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Uncertain
Flea Market |
A: I’m not sure . . .
Q: What words of wisdom from Winston Churchill apply to canoeing?
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| Sir Winston Churchill |
A: This is one with which I am personally and especially familiar:
"Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm."
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| One Failure |
Sir Winston’s quote for people who go on trips with Bruce is especially enlightening:
"Everyone has his day, and some days last longer than others."
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| Some days last longer than others |
Q: Why are alligators so ugly?
A1: Relative to what? What is “ugly”? A philosophical argument could be made that there’s no such thing as universal ugliness. According to Steven Heller (contributing writer for The Atlantic), “What is approved as beautiful in one era will be disdained as ugly in the next.” Therefore, we are, at most, only one era away from alligators being declared beautiful by those who nudge and ultimately govern our herd tastes.
Furthermore, it can be argued that, like beauty, ugliness is in the eye of the beholder, and is only skin deep. This is an interesting observation, and confirms the dynamic nature of ugliness in that many designers (Calvin Klein, Fendi, Michael Kors, Giorgio Armani, Vera Wang, Coco Chanel, etc.) consider alligator skin as the premium material for their “beautiful creations”. It would be nice if someone could ask Hank what he thinks of all of this, but he’s still dead. Returning now from that tangent . . .
The question, dear reader, goes back to you. Why are alligators so ugly to you?
A2: If you had a skull encasing your brain like an alligator’s, you would be ugly too.
MUG O’ THE MONTH:
OVERHEARD . . .