October 17: Victory lap and roll call

There was so much to do at Lake Itasca that I had to stay for a full day.  Plus it was good to have a kind of "rest" day.  How to do that but still spend it biking and hiking around the lake?

I unhitched the boat from the Brompton, snapping off all the bungee cords and cutting out the duct tape and rubber that had been the cushion between them.  The bike was so fast, so small, and spritelike without a canoe to tow that it was a long time before I left top gear.  It was exciting how nimble the thing was around turns.

Itasca State Park is like a national park in disguise, considering the quality of its trails and boardwalks, its centers for interpretation and commerce surprisingly well staffed and stocked for the late season.  It was a relief to me, the large quantity of field guides and free maps of the upper Mississippi at the gift shops.  And compared to many of the provincial parks I have been to, not many recreational vehicles.  The gift shop is state owned and the activities here more culturally similar to what I am used to, I suppose.

I bounded up and down the hills, taking a complete lap around the lake, as I saw the largest white pine, and what was left of the largest red: real record-holders.  I walked down to a lake slowly silting into a meadow, and hiked the Dr Roberts trail, 2 miles through a bog with a certain Beatles song stuck in my head.

The bicycle portage was the most difficult thing I had done (until the upper Mississippi) and it was as hard on my equipment as it had been on me.  The following parts gave their lives in the effort:

8 spokes, 1 axle and bearing set, 1 tire, 6 patches, 1 paddle, 1 inner tube (rubber for cushioning), 1/2 roll of duct tape, and that license plate got beat up pretty good too.

Day 118 ended: Mississippi Headwaters Hostel

October 16: Jeremy Davies

Some regions seem to breed people who are into every little thing, who have not just their finger on the pulse of the community, but compose one or two chambers of the heart, seemingly with no realization that's what they're doing.  I mean, more likely the reverse is true, that the people breed regions where things can happen.  Some say that's what Melissa was to the church we went to, and so it gradually dissolved after she left.

I can't know for sure if Jeremy Davies plays the same role for the area around Bagley, but I suspect the answer is "Yes," and if it wasn't for the natural scenic beauty of the place everyone will just move out, shutter their homes and cabins when he goes.  He actually spends most of his time running camps for prisoners, and perhaps children, and also driving around checking on canoeists.

First encounter: he was driving around in a van filled with kids, stopped by just to see what I was up to.  He told me to stay on the Yogi Lee Trail that night and stopped by with his father Keith later.  He actually gave me this ground cloth he dreamed up while he was in Iraq so he didn't have to share a tent with any officers.  This ground cloth was made of some heavy material that wrapped around your sleeping bag, for some warmth but also to replace the floor of a tent.  Your roof would then just be a rain poncho with cinched hood and staked down corners.  Make a tent like that and you wouldn't have to worry about officers taking it from you.

He showed up again the next morning to exchange contact information.  Who knows, maybe he just thought I was up to no good.  But he set up an exchange for the bent-shaft paddle I broke while using it as a lever for my canoe on the road.  Not too bright, that.  So later on I waited at this park until he drove up in a blue Beatle he was driving across the state for a friend, and got me an aluminum paddle.

That was the last I saw of him, but at the end of the day, just a mile or two out from Itasca, I heard a loud "shpuh!  Shhhp," coming from the right-side of my canoe trailer, as the last of my patches gave out.  Knowing that motorists never stop to help cyclists, I was shocked beyond belief when the next car pulled over on the side of the road, and out came... Jeremy's parents, Keith and Judith.

They drove me to their place, they fixed up my wheel with their big air compressor, they gave me strawberry yogurt.  Judith, mute from ALS, wrote on her whiteboard in red marker that I should really stay at the hostel at the state park.  I had hardly any cash, and no working debit or credit cards, but I found out I did have some checks linked to a checking account with a bit over $100 in it.

Day 117 ended: Mississippi Headwaters Hostel

October 15: Your special place, the mind

I am riding my bike and I am riding it and I am going places.  And going and going and getting places, not getting places, and one place that I have not gotten to yet is a place special to you.  You may be surprised when I say where this special place is, because it may not be special to you yet, but it should be.  That special place is -- wait, let's not get there yet, this is personal.  This blog is all about you so let's take our time.  Your time.

You can probably guess what I'm not going to say -- I mean, not with any high probability or anything, but there is some probability.  I'm not going to go on and on about how beautiful and/or handsome you are, although we all suspect this is a subject that remains of interest to you, and may continue to do so as long as we agree this is a socially acceptable topic and not yet too awkward.  Nor will we discuss your cleverness, stick-to-it-ive-ness, and your popular attitude and demeanor.  

No!  The subject of you is the mind, where we live today.  I am standing in your mind, hand in grotesquely exaggerated hand of your cortical homunculus, staring around in awe at the thoughts that are conveyed from place to place on those imaginary belts as waves of neurotransmitters vibrate strangely on their quest of cats.  You have many interesting thoughts.  I reach out and take one, and your homunculus checks it out on the tip of its distended tongue.  Your first thought: Is this entry going to continue like this?  Because this is really weird.  But... imagine if the author really did get the canoe trailer rolling, and managed to bike a long ways, like 50 miles...

Why, I am flattered.  For the next thought in your wonderful imagination, instead of all the things that are normally there like bus schedules and little people and the boiling point of mercury -- you are imagining me there!  "I am shocked," I say, "Shocked.  I put this entire blog together to talk about you in particular, and how wonderful you are and special and so on and yada yada yada."  The homunculus nods its massive head.  "-- but it turns out your special thoughts are just going to be about my canoe trip?  Well, then..."  I sigh and sit down.  I suppose it's time to talk about myself for another 40 pages.  Why don't you sit there and imagine with all those special thoughts of yours...

I am riding and I am riding 50 miles today because everything is hunky dory and the wind is in the right direction and even the bike trailer which I made and was specially cursed ahead of time by the angels at creation is actually working.  I did not want to stop for anything, not fame or glory, or 30 pounds of potatoes for only $10 or a restroom break or spare inner tubes (oops) or even a banana.  I mean, the wind was with me, and I wasn't trying to be rude to the reporter who waved me down but that's kind of a big deal.  So I chewed up the last of the amazing haul of apples the Rothkes gave me while answering him with annoyance as he jotted words down in his notebook: [SAFF.  CALGARY.  ST LOUIS.  YOUNG.  HEALTHY.  SINGLE.]  Every tickle of the air as I stood there still was a lost moment of motion --

No, those words of the reporter were not his assessment of me but my assessment of myself, the reasons I gave for the trip.  They were as good as any I could give at the time.  Five years later, writing this, I still don't know what it was about, but I know it was good, and it's over, and I sometimes sorta want it again, but it wouldn't be the same.  Old hat now.  I know exactly where my physical limits are.  It's important, maybe one has to be fully animal before being fully human.  Likely not -- I got no answers here, just a collections of days, stitched together to fill time.  Who am I? is a question that matters more to others than yourself: you're just you.

Day 116 ended: Yogi Lee Trail

October 14: Miles per hour

Twenty-eight.  The earth is a menace.  It comes and keeps coming, tossing its rocks and branches at you in fits until it sits there silently wondering why this creature is to weak to strike back.  For a second, only, it renews its attack.  The wheels are friends that keep rolling, jumping around on the gravel, twisting left and right as they fight to hold on to this raring planet.  When the road and the trees line up there isn't infinity there, just The End being pushed this way through no will of its own.

Twenty-nine.  After each horizon another takes its place, but who can say this goes on?  A horizon of color is left behind and no one can say now what color it was.  A horizon of space beside me, and time, still, in the future.  Some.  Lives slip past.

I'm holding on to the handle, not used to the rumble jumble sliding around on a bucket seat.  Safety belt on but I can't check the drivers.  There's no thought here, just sensation.  Thirty.  Thirty miles per hour riding in Scott's car back to Thief River Falls, the fastest my body had been in months.  It would be too perfect to say my soul had barely left the canoe -- but certainly my thoughts were there.

Slowness and standstill the rest of the day, I fought a more visceral battle with the ground as it chewed up spokes and inner tubes -- legs kept spinning.

Day 115 ended: I did not record the place

October 13: Kevin's little floating adventure

My notes during the portage are a bit disjointed, but this newspaper article had it together: Written by April Scheinoha for the Northern Watch Online

He is biking and canoeing his way to New Orleans Five hours. Usually, the 17-mile trip from Newfolden to Thief River Falls doesn’t take that long. For Kevin Saff, it did.  “At one point, I was a mile or two away, and I thought I was not going to make it,” Saff said. He was probably grateful that Hardware Hank and Anderson Power and Equipment are located on the west side of Thief River Falls. Saff is traveling via bike and canoe from Calgary, Alberta, Canada, to New Orleans, a trip of about 2,500 miles when traveling on roads. He rides the bike when he can’t travel by canoe. Prior to heading out, Saff put his rig together. The rig consists of the bike, a boat trailer and the canoe. The bike folds up for those moments when Saff can actually canoe. Besides the rig, Saff brought along a tent for those moments when he wants to sleep. He also brought along other necessities like a journal. The arduous trek is actually meant to be a break for the former Missouri resident. “It’s a fun thing to do,” said Saff, who has lived and studied in Calgary for three years.  This is the first time that Saff has participated in anything of this magnitude. In Missouri, he participated in a nine-day bike trip. He has also participated in “little bike trips here and there.”  On June 22, Saff began the largest bike – and canoe – trip of his life thus far.  In his words, he threw his boat into the Bow River in Calgary. It took him three months to travel to Winnipeg, a trip of about 825 miles when traveling on roads. From Manitoba, he made his way into the United States.  Saff plans to travel down the Mississippi River to New Orleans. He expects that the Mississippi River leg will take about three months. “I’m just hoping I beat the freeze,” said Saff, who has read about similar travels on the Mississippi River. However, in Saff’s case, he may face difficulties that those travelers haven’t faced – darkness and colder weather.  Saff has already faced some formidable foes that would have forced less hardy folks to abandon the trip. There was the foe known as the Red River. Saff was traveling upstream, when he encountered a set of rapids. Of course, then a wind gust blew him 20 feet backwards. The next day, it rained, and Saff was so sore that he decided to stay in his tent all day.  Later, Saff continued making his way to New Orleans. On Sunday night, he found himself in a different city with “new” in the title: Newfolden. Saff was staying at the Newfolden City Park, when he was approached by Pastor Phil Rokke. “I thought I had to see this thing,” recalled Rokke, who noticed Saff’s rig. Saff looked like he needed to warm up, so Rokke invited Saff to his house for food and a place to spend the night.  On Monday, Saff was off again on his trip. That’s when an axle broke on his boat trailer. It was hard for him to pedal, but he made it to Thief River Falls five hours later. At about 4 p.m. Monday, he arrived at the businesses Hardware Hank and Anderson Power and Equipment.  Employees tried to find Saff the necessary parts to fix his trailer. They were unable to find the parts in Thief River Falls. Then employee Jim Voytilla salvaged some parts from his farm in Viking. Some spare tires were also given to Saff. By the time the parts were found and put into place, it was about 8 p.m. It was too late for Saff to put up a tent.  Instead, Saff stayed overnight at employee Scott Hemingsen’s home in Viking. In the meantime, Saff’s bike and canoe were safe at Anderson Power and Equipment.  On Tuesday morning, Saff was off again, leaving an envious employee, Lyle Hanson, in his wake. However, before leaving the city, Saff went to the Thief River Falls Public Library to check his e-mail and write in his blog, “Kevin’s Little Floating Adventure.” The blog is available by logging onto http://kevinfloat.blogspot.com. Then he was off again – on his way to the Mississippi River. One thing she didn't mention was Jim's side of the story.  He had seen me at a gas station and driven a good ten minutes down the road before thinking "That guy's canoe said Calgary.  I bet he's in a lot of trouble."  He turned back for me and in the end it was the bike wheel in his garden that had what I needed to make it to Itasca. Day 114 ended: Scott Hemingsen's home in Viking

October 12: Iron Man

Jeremy H, the uncle of two of the boys, helped me out in an incredible way: he loaded me up with an extra jacket, donuts, canned food, a pair of tennis shoes for cycling, and all the cash in his wallet: $12.  I decided to leave the gopher trap the boys wanted me to have.  I pedaled out hoping for a 50 mile day; the leaves and grasses glowed in the rain, more golden than the sun.

Every crank of the pedals was harder than the rest.  I blamed the wind, which angrily shook trees at me and shoved bugs in my face.  I'll admit in retrospect the wind was blameless at this time... Anyway, only 32 miles later in Newfolden, I found another Wayside Rest that had a little dry patch of earth.  I still don't really know what these are; most are little more than a rest stop on the side of the road, but this one was pretty nice.  Inside it had lights and a fan that worked, running water, and on the exterior wall there was even an outlet I could use to recharge my camera.

I had hardly been there a jiffy before local pastor Phil Rokke showed up, insisting I spend the night inside.  I did think about it, and my two thoughts ended up being it's raining and I need a shower.  Phil biked with me back to his house and introduced me to his wife Marlene and their friends Jessica and Darin.  I ended up getting not only a shower, but a wonderful pancake dinner, Iron Man on DVD, and a "Minnesota Mom" or two to worry about me on my way.

The next day Jessica and her 3 kids started out on their bikes with me on the way to Thief River Falls.  One of them, Ruby, spent weeks making canoes out of newspaper in my honor.

Day 113 ended: Newfolden, MN

October 11, Part 2: Brainstorm

Here's how you catch gophers.  Put some peanut butter in this trap.  You can turn them in for $3, or you can eat them.  This guy around here made a living just killing gophers for awhile.  You can have the trap.  Really?  Yeah, my friend bought it at a surplus sale and I won it off of him.

Hey, why don't you just break into that building over there and spend the night?  Nobody's using it.  My tent will be fine here.  It's going to rain again.  I don't think you're supposed to camp at the Wayside Rest.  What's this?  That's my tent.  It's kind of a small tent.

Don't camp on the side of a hill.  My cousin was in boy scouts and it rained and their tent filled with water because they camped on the side of a hill.

What is that?  That's the trailer I built to pull my canoe.  You don't just drag it on the ground?

Here's how you can catch fish.  Just get a stick, some string, and cut up a can to make a hook.  Then what?  You can just let it hang out behind you.  You can probably get bluegill or crappies.

Here's a scar from fighting dogs.  Here's one from climbing a cherry tree.  Um, here's one from riding my bike into a stop sign.  Really?  Cool!

[If you're ever lost outside with no money, then a bunch of 8-10 year old rural boys -- in this case, Brett, Blair, Bailey, and Bryce -- are probably your best bet for a great brainstorming session about survival.  In return I had to field an earful of questions about my bike, my trailer, my canoe, and everything in it.  Every question was asked four times as each of the B's discovered each item.]

Day 112 ended: Lake Bronson Wayside Rest

October 11, 2008, Part 1: Crossing the medicine line

Supposedly at one time the Indians referred to all white man's magic as "medicine," and no medicine was as potent as the 49th parallel.  Crossing this invisible border was a way to earn salvation, a wall unbreached by American armies.

It can still be a place of changing fortunes.

I had always worried a bit about the border crossing.  Crossing on a road meant I wasn't just sneaking over like I considered doing if I cross via the river, but still I was worried what response I was going to get as I walked down the line, pushing my contraption in the long line of cars.  The worst scenario I could imagine was the border agents deciding my vehicle wasn't road-worthy.  In that case they could turn me around and the Canadian agents might stop me too, until someone came to rescue me from the no-man's land between the borders.

As it turns out, I had no problems at that particular point.  The agents maintained serious faces, but I felt like I amused them.  One only asked what the mysterious powder in one of my unlabelled canisters was, and was satisfied by my insistence it was just brown sugar.  The other questioned me at length about my trip: where I had come from, where I was going, and whether I was being treated well on the road.  He spoke at length about his son's trips: walking across Spain, biking across the U.S., and later north from Tierra del Fuego.  In fact, I think I was the one who cut the conversation short, trying to look out for the long line of cars behind me.

I stopped at the first gas station I saw.  It was my friend Calvin's wedding day and I was determined to get ahold of him.  My calling cards were dead, and I had no American cash or bank cards.  I knew I would eventually have to make it to a Bank of America since I had lost my check card, and I needed to free some of my long-term savings to use it.  I assumed a BoA would be findable relatively early on entry into Minnesota.  In fact, there are no Banks of America anywhere in the state.

So, I decided to withdraw money from my Canadian bank at an ATM.  First, I needed to check how much was available, so I asked for Account Balance, which resulted in the puzzling response "Invalid Operation."  So I blindly attempted to withdraw first $60, then $40, then $20, to be met with, respectively, "Insufficient Funds," "Insufficient Funds," "Insufficient Funds."

Scrounging around in my canoe, I found a few loonies and toonies, and the $20 bill Sarah King had left in the Tilly hat she gave me.  I had been saving it for a special occasion, and this was it.  I bought a phone card and counted my money: $6 US and $13 Canadian plus change.  Money was one less burden on the trip.

Calvin has organized a bicycle flotilla of groomsmen for his wedding; I interrupted their grand ride from a little gas station in Minnesota.

Day 112 continues.

October 10, 2008: I have troubles

I have troubles describing the music that ails me.  That music!  That music!  Won't someone make that music stop!  You all know that music I mean.  That music at night, that's what I'm talking about.  The only problem is I don't know what what what - what what - what what I'm talking about.  It's that music at night that could be trance or rap but is probably just top 40 played all distorted like from a nasty sound-system distorted by the wind as it whips over the tallgrass prairie.  Everyone has had this experience.

So you're biking along in southern Manitoba and you see some kid drive by on an ATV.  He is not the one dragging a sound system, but some other kid musta been -- this is what you figure later.  There's not much to do except set up your tent in the prairie.  This place is called the "Tolstoi Tallgrass Prairie Preserve" and must be named after Leo Tolstoy because there are some decrepit pre-Soviet buildings in the area.  So you're happily pretending your little edition of Hemingway stories is Tolstoy and you're sleeping and you're walking out under the distant stars when the distant booming starts.

It's nasty, pudding on the floor music.  Nobody knows what genre it is so we call it ugly boom-boom mu'sic.

When this happens, you have to put on some pants.  That means you have to find your pants.  And that usually involves several minutes of frantic searching for fresh batteries for your flashlight.  And that usually results in discovering that you're already wearing pants.  Then you put your flashlight in your mouth and crawl through the itchy grasses.  Remember, there's ugly boom-boom mu'sic in the distance and you're itching all over because you didn't put on a shirt and you're crawling through grass, which wasn't very wise, so you're really frustrated and trying to imagine what you would do when you find the kids playing the music.  These are the options usually considered:

#1: Jump up in the middle of their frenzied dance circle, surprising them so that they cry out and the kid who had a joint hanging from his lip loses it in the grass which catches fire.  Everyone starts running from the towering inferno which only amplifies the ugly boom-boom mu'sic in the folds of its flames as it angrily casts evergreens at your naked torso.  Whenever you have struggles in the future you will remember how you nearly overcame them on this day.

#2: You will just stand there off to the side, slowly shaking your head back in forth in disgust.  One by one the kids will see you and shame-facedly walk to their ATVs and drive away silently -- not crying yet, but some day soon they will examine their lives, stop listening to ugly boom-boom mu'sic and apply themselves at school.  They will do well enough to go to university; they will study and become lawyers.  When you meet one of them, years later, you will wonder if this trade-off was worth it, but for now, you slowly fade down the music in the middle of the prairie and pack out their garbage, still slowly shaking your head.

#3: Not ever be able to find them, and realize you are cold, itchy, and don't actually want to be wearing pants anyway.  You'll walk back to your tent and pray for rain.  In only a few minutes the first drop will flick your rain fly, then another until the music fades into the static of the night.  You won't even be able to hear the ATVs drive away, nor pity their drivers.  The rain will put you to sleep, and in your dreams, there is no ugly boom-boom mu'sic.

Every situation calls for its own judgment; in this case, I went for #3.  The rain did its job efficiently; there was just enough to drive away the party but by the morning it had all dried out.

Day 111 ended: Tolstoi Tallgrass Prairie Preserve.

[Note: my GPS froze and lost its recorded data sometime later on the Mississippi River.  Since it had been some time since I had copied the data into my notebook, there are no precise GPS waypoints available after day 110.  I may later go back and determine approximate locations, but this would have to wait for a book version of this blog.]

October 9½, 2008: City without a face

"You're an idiot," the man remarked.  The "you" was me.  "An idiot," he said, "Idiot."

I put my feet down on either side of my bicycle, my canoe firmly attached behind me.  The man was small, standing in the middle of a small road in a small town that considered itself blankly.

"Idiot.  Idiot.  Idiot."

To my left was a warehouse clad in steel siding.  To my right was a naked warehouse.  These were only the first warehouses on a street of warehouses, none of which, seemingly, were actually warehouses.  They were other buildings -- buildings with no names, windows, or colors.  I was looking for a grocery store.  Was one of these plain buildings a grocery store?

"You're an idiot," the small man noted, to anyone who might be listening.  I could only assume some people were; I imagined them sitting on wooden benches in their metal warehouses, putting their ears to the trumpets of a system of pipes that ran all through the town and also opened, no doubt, to a nearby gate or drain.  The children waited behind their parents for a turn to listen at the pipes for anything to happen, and since all the pipes were connected, they would also hear other children, giggling, and then giggle themselves.  At the moment they were listening to a man call me an idiot.

I decided to stop listening to him.  I already knew how ridiculous it was to be caught, canoeing by bike in October in Canada in this city.  I parked and, eventually, found food.

My method was this: I walked to each warehouse in turn.  I examined the tiny sheet of paper scotch-taped to the side of it with the magnifying glass on my multi-tool.  Each paper showed the approximate times that the store was open, which I would compare to the precise time-of-day calculated by measuring the length of my shadow in multi-tool lengths.  If the store was open, good, I opened the door for a second to determine what was inside:

 - Taxidermy
 - Onions
 - Pets; mostly mice
 - Finally foodstuffs in cans and boxes (which was all I knew how to eat at the time; I did not become accustomed to raw mice until later in the trip)

"Idiot," the man said as I came out with a bag full of food.  Then he put his hand to his brow, stared at the sun, put both hands down in his pockets, kicked a heel, and spun himself away from me, walking down the street.  His shift was finally over.

The next man was perhaps more annoying.  As I tried to sleep in the off-season municipal park, in a cul-de-sac off a cul-de-sac off a strange squat structure that resembled something like a warehouse -- as I tried to sleep, I say -- he circled me slowly and continuously in plain gray steel car, his headlights dancing like ghosts on the walls of my tent right there in Dominion City, MB.

Day 110½ ended: 49*08.460½N, 097*09.081½W

October 9, 2008: Return of the land canoe

As the hours of daylight dwindle, my conscious thoughts are buffeted by cold, by wind, by physical exertion, while my subconsciousness rages at night.  I begin dreaming in surprisingly cohesive, realistic short stories and novels, ensconsed in the warm dark of my tent.

I lay there thinking I would simply recreate the dubious system I used in that initial short ride, patiently repairing its faults at every bump and corner.  In any case I must once again purge all excess weight; get rid of the canoe covers that have always frustrated due to my inability to attach them well; eliminate the warm weather clothes I rarely used even when it was warm; drop the books I have finished with; throw out my Missouri license plate "985-ESC" brought for purely sentimental reasons.

When I came to Calgary, I came in a white, 1989 Cutlass Sierra that my parents expected to die at any moment on the road.  But it was a survivor.  Racing the sunset to a camp site one night I drove off the side of a road in the South Dakota badlands, where one or two hundred yards further on would have been fatal.  I was pulled out and my tires reinflated by a ragtag team consisting of a crippled war vet, a policeman, an Indian, and a dog.  I had a couple flat tires in Wyoming, and although it dropped its muffler somewhere in Montana, I was napping in a pull-out at the time so I easily recovered it and threw it on the passenger seat, where it spent the rest of its life.

The car was simply left out back of my first place in Calgary, weathering eight months of winter without a single use, but when it came time to move it started without any problems.  My insurance had expired, but that was okay -- I planned to simply once again pack up my possessions, drive the couple of miles to my new home, and leave it again until the next move.

I left it sitting on the curb that night, and the very next morning the winds came up, and the car was totally smashed by a tree, falling from the other side of the road.

I woke up to the sound of workers clearing branches from it, joking, "The show-me state?  Well, we sure showed him!"

It was a total loss.  I rescued the driver and passenger seats from it, as well as the license plates and the car stereo.  At one time I had the car stereo and motorized driver's seat both running off of a heavy-duty computer power supply, but before this latest trip all that stuff was thrown out, the lone license plate surviving as a souvenir.

As I lay in my warm sleeping bag, almost against my will my mind forms the image of the license plate folded up on the front of the canoe, a horizontal groove placed where it should maintain its place on the back of the bicycle rack.  It's a saddle joint, like in the thumb; this groove allows the boat to pivot up and down, while the notch between the carrier wheels on the bicycle rack limit the side to side motion.  The plate even protects the canoe from being scraped by the rack, as it was the first time.

That business settled, I fell into a deep sleep.

In the morning the thing began to take shape.  The notched plate was fitted over the right place in the canoe, screwed there to prevent its motion.  I only had vise grips to turn the screws into the hull, so they couldn't go in all the way, but this was a boon in the end; the extending screws provided additional points to attach bungee cords, in the most critical place near the joint.  Epoxy putty was placed over the tips of the screws inside the boat to strengthen the connection, prevent them from tearing out the hull under the applied loads.

And so I was committed to trying this thing.  I would make a change here and there, and then bike the thing around the park, over grass, up and down the slight slope.  By trial and error the bungee cords assumed a streamlined shape about the pivot point, until the bike could smoothly turn this way and that, accelerate and decelerate without the slightest jarring.  When I got off once without propping up the bike, and it easily fell down in place without anthing coming undone, I knew I had it.  The plate on the boat and the rack were the bony plates of the joint, bungee cords my tendons, and a carved up inner tube was the soft cartilage in the middle.

I did leave many things behind, including all the curmudgeon's tools, writing "free" on his fence post and leaving it over the pile.

I biked towards the bridge on Manitoba highway 23, hauling my 15.5 foot boat behind me.  A big brown sign told me I was crossing the Red River.  The bridges of Manitoba are generally much better kept than those of Saskatchewan, and even now construction work was going on, and a kid was tending the "stop/slow" sign as I approached.

"How's it goin'?" I asked.

"Alright, how about you?" he said.

"Oh, just doing a little bit of canoeing."

Day 110 ended: 49*08.460N, 097*09.081W

October 8, 2008: All too helpful

The first boat ramp after Winnipeg is at Morris, almost two thirds of the way to the border.  After that, there are a couple more, at St Jean Baptiste and Letellier, before the border town of Emerson.  So much my map could tell me.  But it could not indicate the conditions or slopes of these ramps, which was increasingly important to me as I struggled upstream on the Red.  I wanted to get off the river and onto the road, if possible.

Early in the day I encountered the ramp at Morris.  It was clearly built for a higher river than what was present, a nice gradient down to to a point some three feet above the water, and then as an afterthought, an ad hoc thirty degree slab of concrete leaning into the water below.  It was unclear how this lower ramp was supported, since I could see a gap underneath; furthermore the precarious thing was covered with a foot or two of mud.

There were more ramps further on.  As I passed, a fisherman with outstretched arms was telling his girlfriend a story, and then shouted at me, "Whoah! You came out of nowhere!"  Fighting the current I had second thoughts.  This man seemed friendly enough, he may know what the later ramps would be like.

I parked the canoe and walked over to ask him.  He said, "I'm as new to this area as you are!" which was clearly untrue, since he knew something about the ramp at St Jean Baptiste: it extended down at a forty-five degree angle and he was clueless how anyone launched any boats at the thing.  I decided to make the attempt here.

As I struggled to drag my canoe up the muddy slope, having no firm hold on anything but my rope anchored forty feet away, the fisherman turned his rod away from me and locked his Bronco as a precaution against my continuing presence.  A procession of trucks had stopped at the top of the hill as I did this, their occupants staring or sleeping, until finally one old curmudgeon stepped out of his blue truck and demanded to help me.

I felt there was little he could do.  I already had the boat past the mud, the slope from then on was comparably gentle or dry, but he insisted to tow the canoe up, and then haul my baggage.  I was powerless to resist, and besides that thought it would be too proud of me to refuse to allow this man to help me.

He was 85 years old.  "Nice," I said, thinking that he did not look the octogenarian.

"Yeah," he said, " all of my friends are dead!"

"I hate canoes!" he said as I unloaded my things from his truck, which successfully carted them all of forty feet.  "They're just things the Indians used to drown themselves in!"

"I just had to tell you my opinion," he said.

I told him that I planned to haul the canoe about 200 miles to Lake Itasca, the headwaters of the Mississippi River, or perhaps find someone to drive me there.  He said he'd drive me himself if I could get him the gas money, "about $500".  I thought that was a bit steep, especially since the gas would be a bit cheaper in Minnesota and I figured his truck made more than five miles to the gallon.  But on calculation, it was doubtful if I could pay for the gas given my currently available funds.  I had spent so much money in Winnipeg on bags, clothes, and board, I was down to about $150.  My American funds were all tied up until I could reach a Bank of America.

He left as I tried various configurations for hauling the canoe.  I could put the wheels far back on the boat and bungee the front down to the bike rack, but it was hardly possible to keep this stable enough in turns; the boat wanted to jump out of its cradle.  Balancing the load over centered wheels seemed to be most stable for the canoe.  After all, this is how I got it down from my house to the river in the first place.  But this was alwaysa bit tricky in the joint to the bicycle.  The boat wanted to heave up or down as I started and stopped, or escape to the right or left on turns.  When the bike went down bungees would come undone and need to be reconstructed to continue.

A smooth-faced man came by, his construction vest brightly visible over his four-wheeler.  He seemed quite impressed with my trip thus far, and thought he might be able to find something that would work as a hitch at his workplace.  He would certainly come back and check on my progress in any case.  "See you!" he said before driving off.

"See you later!" I said.

I found a forked branch on the ground and thought I might be able to screw it into the deck of the canoe, and secure bungees or ropes across the fork to secure it to the seatpost.  My screws weren't long enough and the thing tore out of the deck with little applied force.

Some kids came by on mopeds, driving around the park in circles.  I thought this was just their version of staring at strangers, learned from their grandfathers in the trucks on the hill, so I ignored them.

The curmudgeon came back and was not impressed by what I was doing.  He started throwing things out of his truck that he was sure would help me.  A huge rusty C-clamp, a giant vise-grip, heavy metal bolts, a fence post, a 1x6 board.  As he dropped things into and beside the canoe I could just imagine this thing growing massive without bound, until its inertia prevented me from getting started on even the flattest ground.

He noticed the kids, and yelled "Get off the grass!"  He got out his camera to take photo evidence of their transgressions of the park.  They eventually left after an interval timed to indicate that the curmudgeon was not their boss.

He was a blacksmith, but all his tools were 12 miles away, he said, so there was nothing he could do to build a proper hitch for me.  He measured the fence post on the board, and declared it "not long enough", though for no purpose clear to me.  He was partly deaf, and in particular deaf to my hints that he might not actually be helping me much.

Finally it was time for him to go home for the night.  He was leaving for BC in the morning, to celebrate the Thanksgiving weekend.  All day it had been growing overcast and bitterly cold.  "Winter is coming, young man!"

He offered his final judgment on my plans, after playing at help all day.  "If you ask me, it's a s----y outfit.  It's too small!"  And then he drove away.

I set up camp in the cold, dark "Scratching River Campground."  It was a waste of another day.

Day 109 ended: 49*21.138N, 097*21.053W