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.
Q: How is the Scouting Bobber used?
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Weebles wobble, but they don't fall down |
A: The NRS scouting bobber is used to find the best lines in a new rapid. It packs nice and small. All you do is inflate it and throw it into the flow of the river, and watch how it goes downstream. If it doesn’t hit too much stuff, you have a good shot at following that route successfully. However, if it gets stuck, you should probably line the rapid. It works on the same principle as the Playskool Weebles from the 1970s – it is weighted at the small end so the larger end will stick up in the rough water, making it visible all the way down. By the way, IMHO, NRS should have made the Scouting Bobber hot pink or lime green instead of water-colored blue.
NOTE: Recovery of the Scouting Bobber after deployment remains an unresolved challenge to this day.
Q: Are there any medical emergencies you have not had to deal with because of your prior preparation?
A: Yes, in fact, on the trip we just completed on the Buffalo River, we were a couple of days into the remote wilderness portion of the trip when, at a break, I handed out oranges to all participants, and not one of us contracted scurvy on this trip. Isn’t it great to be able to absolutely prove something every once in a while?
Q: We learned from Cindy Bartos in last month’s HCC general meeting that birding is an excellent parallel activity with canoeing and kayaking. How good of a birder do you have to be to be considered a birder in a canoe as opposed to a canoiest commenting about birds?
A: The general guidelines suggest that I am a kayaker that occasionally sees birds in the course of a paddle. I can identify them as small (sparrow, warbler, finch, swallow), medium (bluejay, woodpecker, roadrunner, osprey, ibis, green heron, cormorant, sissortail flycatcher, duck, hawk, puffin), large (bald eagle, great horned owl, harrier, anhinga), larger (vulture, great blue heron, egret, spoonbill, flamingo, stork, goose, turkey, peacock, magnificent frigate bird), and huge (ostrich, emu, albatross, condor). I can also identify some by color (cardinal – congratulations are in order). At this level, no matter how many Nikon optics I haul around with me, I can never be considered a real birder (sigh). A real birder knows every bird on the David Portz Bird Identification Card. When a real birder sees a bird, he immediately knows how old it is, if its plumage corresponds with the season and its age, what it eats, how many toes it has, its genus and species names, its flight characteristics, if it prefers to grasp or stand, its calls and songs, and which it likes better - strawberry or chocolate milkshakes.
Q: What did English clergyman, author, playwright and poet Barten Holyday say about rivers?
Q: What are these girls saying?
A: “It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s . . . . . . a bird.”
WORD OF THE MONTH:
Photo illustrating Word of the Month antonym
And a related bonus word of the month . . .
Used in a sentence:
“My canoe storage shed is in a tohubohu, and I can’t find what I need quickly in the gallimaufry there.”
GOOD ONE:
MUG O’ THE MONTH:
OVERHEARD . . .
PARTING THOUGHT:
