Clowntime is over

Lately I've been clowning around, taking the easy shots with various clown-themed posts. I haven't been visiting other blogs much, and when I did visit I probably didn't comment.

I apologize.

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You might ask what's roused me out of my early summer torpor. I'll tell you what:

Alligators.

While I've been plodding along, ignoring my duties, there have been terrible developments in the ongoing struggle I like to call World War G. And I'm convinced that at least one of these incidents is due directly to my own lack of attention.

On Friday I decided to take advantage of a friend's offer to spend the afternoon canoing down the upper Des Plaines River in Lake County. I'd just worked the annual carnival detail for two nights in a row and I figured I could use the time relaxing in the outdoors. It sounded like a simple proposition: throw the canoe on the car, quick drive north up Milwaukee Avenue, put in, paddle, hop out and drive home.

Ask anyone in my family and they'll tell you I'm a hyper-prepared traveler, especially when it comes to outdoor trips like camping or canoing. I make checklists, I lay out the gear for inspection before packing, I spend hours going over weather reports and maps. I have never gotten lost in the woods, I have never had a tent blow down or leak in a storm, and I have never gotten dumped out of a canoe.

My preparation for yesterday's paddle consisted of looking at the weather.com website and cutting the tags off a camping hat that MizBubs gave me for my birthday. The thunderstorms that hit the area passed by around 1:30, the sun came out and we were on our way.

So here's what happened. I dumped the canoe the instant we put it into the river. I fell out sideways, cracking the side of my ankle on the gunwale, and went in up to my armpits. My partner who was already seated in the bow got thrown in headfirst, directly down into the brown water under the canoe. He bobbed up quickly, spitting water and gasping for air, relieved that he didn't get brained by the canoe.

We righted the canoe, drained the water out, and started over.

Pretty soon I noticed that there were a lot more mosquitoes than I'd thought there would be. I was not wearing repellent. Within 20 minutes we arrived at our first obstacle--dead tree limbs and debris totally blocking the river. We got out, crawled over the logs and dragged the canoe over without incident and resumed paddling. The current was fast, faster than I'd expected, and it had a way of whipping the canoes across the river every time you rounded a bend. There were quite a few strainers and submerged logs, and it was a more challenging experience than I'd expected.

We ended up having to get out of the canoe two more times, at one point wading through knee-deep water and muck for about 100 yards before we could get around the deadfall and back into the main channel. Ironically, we were able to get in and out of the canoe and maneuver through all these obstacles without tipping the canoe once. I helpfully pointed out to my companions that at least we didn't have to worry about alligators or venomous snakes.

Then the storms came. There's nothing like paddling by a golf course and hearing the lightning warning siren sound as you sit, exposed, in a boat out in the water away from any shelter. Since I was already soaked and half-caked in mud from our initial dumping, there was no need to put on the rain suit I brought with.

We saw a lot of nice birds, though--herons, waxwings, woodpeckers, a Cooper's Hawk and some goldfinches. And when I got out I was miraculously free of ticks and leeches. Still, throughout the afternoon it seemed like something was out of whack, and I couldn't figure out what.

Until I got back in the car and heard the news item: an alligator was discovered in the Chicago river. You heard me right. A marauding scout gator, right in my own backyard.

I've gotten sloppy, letting them get this close. Rest assured, it won't happen again.

Tick-proof and ready for adventure

Ticks are disgusting.

Nothing ruins an outdoor adventure family fun day like the discovery of these disgusting little parasites on one or more family member.

Here in the midwest we mostly worry about catching Lyme Disease from these guys; out west it's Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. But did you know ticks also transmit tularemia, tick-borne relapsing fever and, for those of you south of the Mason Dixon, something called Southern Tick-Associated Rash Illness?

The Centers for Disease Control offers a helpful page on ticks and tick-related diseases. It includes this handy chart on relative sizes and stages of development of common American ticks:



You might want to consult this chart, or the CDC pages I've provided, next time you decide to take a restorative stroll through the fields and meadows near your home. I'm just saying.

The eldest and I are setting out today on a quick run up to Wilton, Wisconsin, to meet some people from our church. We're going to camp overnight, cook a big pot of campfire chili, and then spend tomorrow canoeing down the Kickapoo river. Even though I have the cautionary words and advice of Grant Miller echoing in my head, I'm still looking forward to being out of touch with the rest of the world for a day or so.

Before any outdoor adventure I always treat our clothes with my favorite outdoor product, permethrin. Since finding out about this stuff, I have not found a single live tick on anyone in our family. It keeps off mosquitoes as well. And we no longer have to slather ourselves in DEET, which makes kissing MizBubs while in the middle of nowhere a lot tastier.

Starting Monday I get to cross another career goal off my list. I will be in school all week, being trained as a firearms instructor. This is the third or fourth time I've requested the training, and for some reason this time I didn't get blocked because of politics. This is shaping up as a perfect week: camping, canoeing, and non-stop shooting with a break on Wednesday for a trip to a tiki bar.

Good times.

Sore but happy

I've been thinking of making chocolate chip cookies without chocolate chips. I think that what I want lately is more stuff without stuff in it.

-Youngest Daughter, expounding on her new theories about seeking simplicity in her diet. She said this after a dinner of pan-seared scallops, grilled zuchini and asparagus, and ravioli with a light sauce of butter and caramelized onions. She cleaned her plate while telling us that she prefers "normal" food, and thinks it's a result of the way we cook.

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I still didn't know what to make for dinner tonight when MizBubs, hardest-working gal in suburbia, dragged herself home from the library. Yesterday, while I was at work, she made the first official pork-based Sunday dinner of summer (baked ham, scalloped potatoes, a chilled salad of green beans, herbs and yellow cherry tomatoes, and an amazing fruit salad featuring pineapple, watermelon, mango and blackberries dressed with honey, lemon juice and mint leaves.)



It drove me nuts that I didn't cook any of it, and I couldn't wait more than a day without trying in my very manly and competitive way to match her.

Lucky for me I found a few slices of bacon in a ziploc bag in the fridge, and a frozen bag of Costco scallops in the deep freeze. When you find bacon and scallops you didn't know you had, well--dinner just practically cooks itself.

And I know this is late, but yesterday was also the first mint julep of the season. My bride cleaned up the garden beds, and our mint plant is about a foot tall and a foot around now. We've also got chives and garlic chives from last year, basil, dill, cilantro, marjoram, thyme and some extra lettuce. We've got rosemary, sage, tarragon, lemon thyme and thyme in planters on the back porch. For now the back porch remains the last trashy holdout, so there's no pictures of that.



So, yesterday's official Sunday Afternoon Cocktail is the mint julep:

• 8 mint leaves
• 1 oz bar syrup
• 2 oz Wild Turkey 101 bourbon

1. Muddle bar syrup and mint leaves together (for best results, leave the mixture overnight to bring out a stronger mint flavor)
2. Pour syrup/mint mixture in the bottom of a tall glass
3. Add bourbon
4. Fill with ice (preferably crushed, but we were too lazy to do that yesterday)
5. Top with a splash of water if desired, and garnish with a sprig of fresh mint

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You'll note that the hand holding the mint julep is bandaged and the manicure shows signs of wear. This is because MizBubs, girl dynamo, worked her fingers to dirty nubs this weekend. The de-whitetrashification of the yard continues. We had reached a point a few weeks ago where we were precisely one car up on blocks, one overpriced bass boat and a sofa on the porch away from total trashitude. I briefly considered giving up on cleaning up, and just using the pile of free wood chips as firestarter to end the whole mess.

But we stuck with it, and we're almost ready to enjoy the summer in the yard. The native garden in the front is weeded and doing well:



The vegetable garden is planted with kale, chard, lettuce, haricots vert, burgundy bush beans, Armenian cucumbers, radishes and mixed miniature gourds.

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Want to know the coolest thing that happened this week?

MizBubs, without my knowing, sneaked out to the backyard, back where the biggest bunch of wood chips had been piled. Under cover of night and early in the morning she worked swiftly and silently. With some basic hand tools, a 5 gallon tub of varnish and a sketchy plan from a 1949 Popular Mechanics she shaped those wood chips into a 17 foot long canoe! Boy, was I ever surprised!




On Saturday, when we got done with our chores, we took the new canoe out to Busse Lake and paddled for around an hour or so. Man, did it feel good. We haven't been in a canoe together for about two years, and we've missed it bad. We floated around and saw a raccoon nosing around the water, and saw a bunch of cool-looking birds that we thought were cormorants. Mostly we just paddled around grinning. At one point the wind kicked up and we were paddling directly into it. We both went quiet, and without saying anything we each started paddling harder to keep going into the wind. The feeling of shared exertion, outside, is perfect.

It wasn't until later that night that I realized that following several hours of shoveling and yard work with an hour of vigorous canoe paddling is probably not the brightest idea. Oh well. Sore but happy is not a bad way to go through life.

The little canoe that...couldn't

I just sold the little canoe that could. There. It's done.

We bought the skeleton of a 1937 Old Town HW canoe back in July last year. I planned to spend this summer, and most of 2008, restoring it to its former glory. The goal was to have this beauty ready for water by Labor Day 2008.

Well, things change. I called the Chicagoland Canoe Base to see if they had a bulletin board and ended up selling it to the guy who answered the phone. He came out and picked it up today. At least I know it's going to a good home.

The old me of 5-10 years ago would have left this canoe husk sitting in the garage for years, feeling bad about not restoring it at the same time I let it deteriorate year after year. The new, grown up, version of me recognized that I couldn't possibly start working on this for at least another 2 years and promptly found a home for it. Recognizing the problem and quickly removing it makes me feel almost as good as if I'd actually restored the thing.

Oh, I also made a small profit, and the new owner seemed really happy to have it, so I'm sure I sold it at a very fair price.

Life moves on.