Blogs on the Mississippi?

By now, you may have heard what we are doing.

It sounds absurd, but it is nonetheless true: this summer, four of us college students are going to paddle the length of the Mississippi River in two canoes. North to South, headwaters to delta, we are going to travel the 2,000+ miles from the Minnesota top to the Katrina-ravaged bottom. We might ride barges part of the way; we might hitchhike. At some point we will need to get back to school. But however it works out, that is our plan. We have no particular reasons for doing this.

This is our blog. It is being kept via a wireless Treo 670, courtesy of the Kelly Writers House and the University of Pennsylvania, who are generously sponsoring this project. In addition, we are using a collapsible keyboard that plugs into the Treo, and a solar panel that hooks up to both Treo and iPod and powers them through a built-in USB port on the side. Throughout our two months on the river, we'll be posting here straight from the river with dispatches, photographs, videos, mp3s, and whatever other digital voodoo we can figure. We're looking forward to playing with it. Feel free to check in. Hopefully, it'll be a worthwhile read.

As I said, there are four of us partaking in this endeavor. There's me, Gabe, a Berkeley, California native and English major at the University of Pennsylvania; Kevin McNellis, a Twin Cities native and recent graduate from Whitman College; Ryan Stoa, originally of Winona, MN, and currently studying at the reputable McGill University in Montreal; and Danny Rosenberg, Phoenix native, transitive college student and talented MC of the hip hop group Entropy, whose music will likely make its way here at one point or another. All told, we're a youthful bunch. We are, after all, blogging down the Mississippi River. Or, to look at it another way, canoeing down the Mississippi River in 2007. Either way, we know. I warned you. Absurd.

But so it begins. Tomorrow night, Danny and I fly to Minneapolis on a cheap, red-eye flight, and before a week is out, we'll be on the river. In the meantime, please make yourself comfortable and settle in. This is our adventure. It should be wild. Stay tuned for more!

sincerely,
gabe