Here are some things to think about at home:

1) Hitchhiking in this country is still a viable option. It is easier the further south you go. In Helena, Arkansas, we hitched three rides and didn't even stay the night. One guy even came back to apologize for not picking us up. "You know," he said, "I passed you back there, and I got up here, and suddenly I realized, 'Gosh, those boys wanted a ride.'" Pick-Up trucks are best. And everyone is friendly. If they aren't, don't worry! They won't pick you up.

2) Mark Twain is dead.

3) That said, you can still read Huckleberry Finn. And you can still paddle down the Mississippi River. A majority of people, however, given the choice, would do neither.

4) Meanwhile, paddling is an act so simple sometimes it makes you want to cry. When was the last time you were moved to cry about anything? When was the last time you were truly moved to feel anything at all?

5) On that note, when was the last time you stood entirely naked outside the comfort of your own home?

6) It is so hot out here that it actually ceases to matter. You just sweat and sweat and give up on caring what it looks like. Also, after a while it ceases to smell. Then it is just you and your body, beyond the civilized world of image and social expectation, just doing the things that your body was meant to do.

7) Because of the heat, you appreciate the rain. The weather patterns that flooded eastern Texas and Kansas have now moved onto Arkansas and Mississippi, and huge thunderheads will roll through, lighting up the entire sky, raindrops as big as dimes splattering across the river, endlessly, until even your rainjacket is useless and you just stand there, entirely soaked, water dripping from your hair. People who have alternatives to being outside usually hate the rain. But when you just stand there and let it dump on you, there is nothing to actually hate. It is just water. And after a while, when the rain stops and the sun comes back out, you dry off. Invariably, this is a wonderful process. You were wet, and now you are dry! And the sun is so warm! Because of the rain, you appreciate the heat.

8) Perhaps you are now thinking, 'That seventh thing to think about at home was pretty (fucking) sappy.' But the eighth thing to think about at home is that every sappy river truth you've ever heard is actually true. Some examples: "The river of life has many bends." "You can never step in the same river twice." "No matter what, the river always wins." The United States Army Corps of Engineers has sunk millions, if not billions of dollars into the Mississippi by way of dams, levees, and flood channels, in an attempt to disprove this last fact. To an incredible extent, they have been successful. But then things happen. Take, for example, Hurricane Katrina.

9) Some people do trips like this to see how fast they can go. They climb Mt. Everest, swim the English Channel, they race hot-air balloons around the circumference of the entire planet in eighty days. To the best of my knowledge, people do such things to conquer them; to be able to say that the thing has been done. On an entirely unrelated note, some men spend their entire lives making sport out of sleeping with as many attractive women as they can. Draw your own conclusions.

10) One thing I like to do out here when I am upset is shout "Fuck!" or "Shit!" or "Cock and Balls!" as loud as I can into the air. I do this because it makes me laugh. And then I am not upset anymore.

11) On a related note, one thing you can do out here is whatever you want.

12) But back to you: let's play a stupid game. Ready? Okay: try to think of the last time you realized you were alive. Like you were just sitting there, maybe cutting an onion, or checking your mySpace profile, and suddenly it dawned on you: Gosh, I'm alive! When was the last time you did that? Out here, sometimes it's all there is to do. So regardless of how long it's been, let's do it right now. Think to yourself: Gosh, I am alive. Holy Fucking Shit!!! You're alive!

13) Well look at that.

- g

"I had a good uncle, my late Uncle Alex. He was my father's kid brother, a childless graduate of Harvard who was an honest life-insurance salesman in Indianapolis. He was well-read and wise. And his principal complaint about other human beings was that they so seldom noticed it when they were happy. So when we were drinking lemonade under an apple tree in the summer, say, or talking lazily about this and that, almost buzzing like honeybees, Uncle Alex would suddenly exclaim, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is." So I do the same now, and so do my kids and grandkids. And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.'"

- Kurt Vonnegut

***note: this was supposed to post two days ago, but apparently did not. Apologies for the long delay, but we'll make it up to you with...back to back posts! That's right! Two posts for the price of one! And now without further ado...

We're back, America, coming to you live from the middle of a lightning storm, on the deck of the Memphis Yacht Club in Memphis, TN! We hope you've somehow managed in our absence, but we're again here to be your emotional crutch in our country's time of need. Let's catch you up! Let's catch you up:

We woke up early the morning of July 4th, intending to paddle quite a ways, 47 miles, in order to make it to Osceola, Arkansas for that evening's festivities. But after pounding out thirty miles, we decided to stop (just for a moment) to enjoy the holiday and drink a beer. Once we finished the first, we thought what the hell, we'll have a second, and after that we may or may not have had a third. This is great, we thought. We're drunk Americans, floating down the Mississippi River. What could possibly be better? While reveling in such basic freedoms, two guys in a pontoon boat pulled up and asked us if we wanted a cold beer. We shook our cans at them and told them we wanted a tow. "Well come on then," they said, and we paddled over.

They introduced themselves as Ray Webb and Bill something (can't remember; sorta drunk), and hauled us a couple miles downriver before pulling up next to several other motorboats, beached along the sand. Ray grabbed us beers while we mingled with the forty-odd people there from Ripley, TN, telling them as always about our journey and receiving more of the same exclamatory responses. "We're trying to make it to Osceola tonight," we told them. "Why the hell you trying to do that?" they said. "There's nothing there." Ray thought it was such a bad idea that he offered to drive us back to his house, 15 miles off the river, and let us sleep in his backyard. "We'll have a barbeque and everything," he said, "And you can meet the whole town." We thanked him for the offer and told him it sounded nice, but we really had to make the miles. "We'd love a tow though," we said.

Fifteen minutes later, we had our canoes tied up behind the pontoon again, this time with Ryan and I sitting in the canoes to steer and Danny and Kevin relaxing in the boat. Ray sat up at the steering wheel with his tobacco pipe and a younger guy named Ben, clamoring about this and that and generally bearing a striking resemblance to Robert Duval in "Apocalypse Now." "You ready?" he shouted, and off we go.

Oh for a second it's just great, riding behind that pontoon! We're going so fast, and sort of surfing on the boat's wake, and I open myself up a beer, not so much because I want it, but because I can. Mippi sits in her cage meowing viciously at me from the speed, but I toast to her and tell her to calm down. What great time we are making(!), and what a beautiful day(!), and God what a great country, America(!), where you can paddle down its biggest river in canoes and get rides from drunk pleasure boaters blowing tobacco smoke out the back. I take a sip of beer and smile foolishly. And the boat takes too sharp a turn and my entire canoe flips over.

"Damn, my beer!" is my first thought. It's floating upside down in the river. But just as fast there are packs everywhere, loose gear floating off, the canoe on its side filling with water, the dry bag with all my valuables caught upstream in the eddy, and Mippi's cage, submerged completely in water. I grab the cage and pull it up to the surface. She is crying out and frantically clawing at the front grate, trying to get out. I hold the cage out but it keeps going under, up and down, as I tread water and try to grab as many things as I can. Ryan throws a lifejacket toward me. It catches in the current and floats away. Danny jumps in the river and starts swimming after things, the pontoon slowly turning around, Kevin jumping into the other canoe with Ryan and shoving off, paddling furiously, reaching me finally and grabbing the cage, water pouring out everywhere and Mippi meowing lividly, completely drenched and shivering, eight more lives to go.

While we right the canoe, Ray and Ben fish our things out of the river. The casualties are Danny's lifejacket, my sandals, our cook kit, half our spice kit, our coffee maker, fry pans, tupperware, and about two-thirds of our food. "Damn eddy," Ray keeps saying, and offers me another beer. They tow us a couple miles further down, and drop us off on the bank. "Don't forget us now," says Ben, "Ray Webb and Ben Wilder. You better write that down."

The day, however, was not over. We finished up the paddle to Osceola, and paddled up a narrow inlet, where we threw our things down quickly on a sandbar across the channel from town. We decided to forget the whole ordeal over a good holiday dinner in town, but to get there, we had to ferry across the channel. We'll all just load into one canoe, we said, which was an extremely stupid idea with all the gear still in it, because we made it fifteen feet out and the canoe tipped over again.

We wade into shore and now everything is really soaked. My cell phone is broken, my wallet dripping, our pants and shoes covered in sopping muck. On top of that, it is getting dark, and the mosquitoes start coming out. "Fuck this, let's get out of here," we cry, and tear off in our canoes (two this time) for the other shore, thinking the absurdity cannot grow any bigger. It does though, because as Ryan and Danny near the opposite shore, huge fish start jumping out of the water in huge arcs, all around. They start jumping clear over the canoe, and smacking into Ryan's paddle. "Shit! Shit! Shit!" Danny is yelling, ducking and dodging with his head, and the two paddle as fast as they can into shore. Flying Asian carp. Who knew.

By now the whole thing is simply too ridiculous to really fathom and we're tired and hungover too and the mosquitoes are out and our things are wet, so Let's cash in our chips and get a motel, I say, and we start walking into town. On the way, we are lucky enough to hitch a ride, squeezing the four of us into the backseat of a car that is already carrying five, Kevin's feet sticking precariously out the back window. The car drops us off at the Judge Motel, where an old, first-generation Indian couple (how does an old, immigrant Indian couple come to own a rundown motel in Osceola, Arkansas?) gives us a $35 room with a leaking roof and blood stains on Ryan's mattress, men with prostitutes in the rooms next door, and July 4th, finally done.

Two days later, we pulled into Memphis and lit up the town. Alli flew in to spend the weekend with me, and the five of us roamed all over the place, reveling in our weekend of R&R. We watched the Memphis Redbirds play the Albuquerque Isotopes (baseball; triple-A). We drank Mint Juleps in the Peabody Hotel. We visited the National Civil Rights Museum and saw the Lorraine Hotel, where Martin Luther King Jr. was shot (dear god, this spot, right here), and spoke with the black woman outside holding huge signs that read "The National Civil Rights Museum Supports Gentrification and Ethnic Cleansing." We visited Graceland, drove past the Heartbreak Hotel, saw Elvis's planes (from the outside only; far too expensive to go into any of it- $30 - what the hell is wrong with this country), and learned that next year, 50,000 people from China and Japan alone were expected to visit Graceland, in addition to 100,000 Americans, in commemoration of Elvis's 30th anniversary (of his death). We!
ate at D
enny's, we saw "Transformers" (movie; bad), we walked along Beale Street, the night a swimming collage of tourists and blues bands and humidity, and did things better left unsaid (shoutout to Hope and Holly).

Now we are back to the river, canoes already like an exotic species, July 4th and Memphis there and then gone. It is the final stretch now, less than three weeks to go, and we can't thank you all enough for following us this far along. If you've been slacking lately, it's alright - so have we, but now it's time to ride this thing home. We hope you'll follow along, and tell your friends about us, and one day, hopefully, us about your friends. Looking forward to speaking with you all soon. Take care everyone, and goodnight.

-TMP

"...dead in Iraq. Elsewhere on this, our 231st anniversary of independence, people are hunkered down in trenches across America, waiting in line to purchase the new iPhone. And presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama continue to amass millions, to the shock and secret relief of the nation, further solidifying the inevitability of Democratic takeover in 2008.

"And now, for our special interest piece, we go to our correspondant in Tennessee, Crapper Reason. Crapper?"

" [chhhh chhhh chhk] It's actually Osceola, Arkansas, Bob! Or actually ten miles up, floating on the river! Motorboats are flying past, shouting 'crazy motherfuckers!' to us, and the project members are drunkendly belting Shenandoah. And I don't know what to tell you! They're being rather difficult...[chhh chhhhh] Utter mayhem... [chhhhhhhhh] ...taken me hostage... [chhhhhhhhh] It's hard to describe... [chhhh chhhh] They've come down through Kentucky now, camping on sandbars, and now there's... [chhh] [chhh chhh]The whole dynamic's become rather odd, as you can see behind me they're just sitting there shouting obscenities into the air, apparently as a means of entertainment... [chhhhhhh] Earlier they were swordfighting with foam swords and speaking in French accents, and dropping the cat in the water... [chhhhh chhhhhh]"

"You're breaking up, Crapper."

"Bob? [chhh] Bob? [chhh] Can you hear me? [ch] As I said, the project members are refusing to speak... [chhh chhhhhhhh] Holed themselves up last night in the tent and said they'd talk if I brought them women... [chhhhh] It's extremely difficult to tell if they are being serious... [chhhh chhhhh] One keeps talking about tolerance and self-satisfaction, and refering to them all as a Possible Generation... [ch] Nonsense, I suppose... [chhh chhh] They keep saying that there is nothing to say and too much to say, that what they are doing is far too simple and boring and good for the tastes of our time, not enough explosions and special effects, I think they said, especially for the internet, [chhhhhhh] which they seem to be hinting is the fundamental irony, Bob, [ch] their journey being documented on a blog, a medium entirely polar to what they are experiencing, essentially 'using the internet to talk to people about escaping the internet...' That's a direct quote... [ch] 'And th!
at's at d
oing it only every three days, for godssake...' [chhh chhhhh chhhhhhhhhh] The small-town adventures are a nice touch, but just one side of the coin, and at worst a distraction, and still not nearly enough to keep up with YouTube clips of 'Dancing with the Stars.' 'The shimmering water and moving meditations get sappy in print' [ch] ...that's Gabe speaking, and quote, 'we can't continuously serve ourselves up on a platter of excitement and grit...' That's another direct quote... [chhhhhhh] How frightening a prospect, a world where the Mississippi River hardly exists, except online...[ch chh] Oh, wait... [ch] Hold on, wait! We've got some action! [ch] One of them is standing up! It's Kevin! He's leaning forward... [chhhh] He's... [ch] Yes, he's doing it, he's picked up a beer...And yes, he is, as you can see now he is in fact sitting down to open it... [ch] I repeat Kevin has decided to open a beer! [ch ch] [ch]. We'll update this story as it continues to develop... [chhhhhh c!
hhhhhhh]

"They've asked me to pass along a couple notes... [chhhhh] although I can't say I understand them... [ch] They're asking everyone to, quote, stop asking about the damn cat, it's just a cat, and likely to end up eaten by alligators anyway... [chhh] They are, quote, still searching for the Snickers Well, and making progress, end quote. Also, quote, to those fuckers Peter True and Kevin Redmon, they should have pulled their pants up and gotten in the goddamn canoes. They don't know what they're missing, or maybe they do... [chhh chhh] And also, quote, America, fuck yeah...happy 4th of July, celebrating being able to do whatever we goddamn want, from the middle of everything, so far away. End quote. [chhhhhhhhhh] Back to you, Bob!

"Ah, thank you, Crapper. We'll keep you updated as this story goes on. In other news..."

Thanks for the Ride

Paddling like a trance. Humidity that creeps in until you forget it is even there. Trees with leaves that bend down as if dripping, morning gray and burning afternoon haze, meals in bars in towns that run together, dim red lights and country songs, and baseball games on tv, the days a blur of paddling and thinking, and the river, always, your whole entire world.

The current has increased and the pace has slowed, and still days will flow by without you ever realizing they were there. Sit with your thoughts for hours in the canoe and listen to the way your brain works. Reflect on the past, make lists for the future, remember that you are paddling, again and again and again. Watch your thoughts crest and subside, feel your body speaking to you, become intimate again with your own existence. Meditate. Daydream. Space out. Forget you are even alive. Remember you are, and rejoice. Try to remember such and such song. Watch the water flow. Let go and go with it, and let it carry you downstream.

Pull up to camp in Commerce, MO, population 99, and get approached by a man in an old pick-up truck who drives down from his house up the way. "This is my boat ramp," he says in a low voice, emphasis on the 'my.' "This is private property." He has yellow teeth and weathered skin and a cigarette in his left hand, and I ask if we can camp there anyway. "Yep," he says, and nods. "Don't leave any trash around now."

Later, he comes down and Danny gets to talking, comes back and tells us the guy's a Vietnam vet who hates Bush and disapproves of the war in Iraq. Danny says we're going to have to fight again for our liberties, and the man says, "Oh, it's comin'. Not in my lifetime," he says, "But maybe in yours."

Have a hard day in the canoe and feel the heaviness of my aging body. "Are you out of your mind happy to be alive?" asks Ryan, in camp, reading a book, and "Well, in theory," I say. He shakes his head, puts down his book. "No. Are you out of your mind happy to be alive right now?" he asks. "No," I say, and feel both the weight and release of such a simple response, and stare at the river with my chin in my palm. "You're rounding a turn," he says. "This is just a bend in the river." We sit and read and think, Danny nearby, composing:

Manequins in windows look like people in stores
Heaven is in limbo while the reaper is forged
We sell passion for art just to pay the rent
'Cause we can only see our hearts when we hang our heads

I went down to the river with my mind on the clouds
To ask all the questions that couldn't climb out my mouth
I put my hands in the water and my feet on the banks
And saw drops of humility bead on my face

That's when the water turned to oil and the current reversed
Spreading out to show the soil where a person emerged
I said "Let's know the truth and kill disparity
But I won't hold the noose when you're staring at me."
It said, "It'd burn our bridges, and turn art to life
'cause I am the anonymous archetype."

In Cairo, Illinois, reach the confluence of the Ohio and the Mississippi and stand at the point, taking pictures: the Ohio, blue-green, slow; the Mississippi, muddy, rushing, Kentucky spread out for the first time across the way. Reflect on how far we have come, on Bemidji, MN, so far away, and walk the mile up into town. Cairo is dead, a heap of abandoned buildings and wide, empty streets. Such a prodigal name, such a prodigal place, at the confluence of two great rivers, and this instead, a ghost town.

Find the first restaurant we see and sit down. It's called Fat Boy Bar and Grill, a dark bar with POW-MIA shirts on the wall, six separate confederate flags hanging all around, an antique cigarette vending machine, and a fake slot machine that takes quarters and says "For Amusement Only." One man at the bar has a confederate flag on his hat. Another has an eyepatch. We sit down and order a cheeseburger, a mushroom and swiss burger, a chicken strip basket dinner, philly cheesesteak, chile cheese dog, grilled cheese sandwich, two orders of cajun fries, onion rings, three beers, and a twelve inch sausage pizza. It is the Mississippi diet, and not something we suggest trying at home. During the day, Danny and I wolf down Snickers bars (him much more than me, plus Reeses', Sour Skittles, M&M's) and discuss where we can find a Snickers well, in which case we would abandon the whole Mississippi shindig and just haul up black nougat gold from the ground, gorging ourselves and making!
millions
We talk about this to great lengths in the canoe and Danny asks me how far we have gone. Ryan sits in the stern with his feet up on the gunnels. "Can you please stop focusing on the mileage?" he says. "We've already established that time and space don't exist."

In Hickman, KY, start finding the southern twang infectious and meet a great young guy named Dusty who looks me in the eye from the first. He agrees to drive us to the nearest bank and sits in his truck with Danny while we pick up some beer and tells Danny he's never left Hickman, never will. He works on the towboat sitting in the harbor and makes $125 dollars a day under the table, supporting a wife of eight years and an eight year-old daughter. "That's Bud's," he says, passing a resaurant. "It'll be jumping around nine o'clock." And right down the road, "There's C&J's. That there's a black place." Get dropped back off at camp and start talking to a biker who says that his son's got a soccer scholarship to some school in St. Louis, and that paddling the Mississippi has always been a dream of his. "Do it," we say, "But trust us. Bring a motor."

Later, have dinner a few drinks in at a gas station and flirt with every girl working in the whole place including the cook before getting a ride back from a guy who wants to show us old town Hickman, and loads us into his van with a bed in the back and kitchen too. I sit on the bed because there aren't any more seats and decide I'll take this one off, lie back and stare at the sky through the back window while the man goes on about house prices in town and hunting Sasquatch in all seriousness (there's already been four sightings around these parts) and river towns taking a dive since the steamboat days. "That there is where I went to school through third grade," he says. "Now it's a funeral home." He takes us back and I climb out from the bed. I shake his hand. "Thanks for the ride."

Infinite Points Between Two Points

Hello everyone from Trail of Tears State Park in Missouri! It's great to check in with you all again! As always, thanks for all the comments, and Tuyo, please call Mrs. Fishman - she needs your address so we can get back our security deposit.

Leaving St. Louis, we passed through the St. Louis Port, and it seemed that all the naysayers who had warned of industry and pollution on the lower river were right. Huge barges stacked six wide and long powered up and down, with wake ten feet high blowing off their back. Towboats motored this way and that, dropping off shipping containers and picking up new ones, rows of unattached containers lying anchored midstream, the water bouncing off them. Empty soda cans and rubber scrap floated alongside the canoes. We ducked and dodged them all, looking over our shoulders anxiously, riding through waves six feet over our heads.

That night, we camped at a boat club in Crystal City, MO. I walked up to talk to some old men working along the shore, and one came over and bellowed, "Where ya comin' from?" "Minnesota," I said. "Not a bad place to be comin' from!" His name was Bob somethingsomething (somewhat incoherent), and when I asked about restaurants he told me to take his truck into town. "The keys are in there," he said. "Don't you need it back by a certain time?" I asked. "What are you, going to go pick up some girls?" he bellowed. "I tell ya, you can borrow the truck, but I don't want any spots on the seats!"

Later that night, he comes down with another guy and pronounces Missouri Missourah and sits and talks with us about the other folks who have passed through making the trip, and how the boat club was once the site of the largest pane glass company in the world, and about where we are planning to stop further down along the river. "Whatever you do, don't go to Cairo," Bob says. "It's about ninety percent colored," says his friend, "And the whole thing has gone kaplatt."

But outside of the St. Louis Port, the naysayers have been wrong. The river here is beautiful, poplar and maple and oak trees bending in from the banks, and huge sandbars jutting out from where it bends. Since the port, we have hardly seen a soul outside of towns, and the solitude is enchanting. Ryan and I paddle and concoct a wild scheme to caravan across America in a schoolbus before the 2008 elections, causing scenes on college campuses and registering people to vote. We talk about the sad state of our generation, and note that it is both the most connected and most apathetic generation in the history of this country. "If only you could mobilize that," I say, "If only people would get excited and do something important with their lives." We talk about how great it is to paddle the Mississippi, to create a goal and live by setting out to accomplish it, and in doing so, create time for yourself. "Really," Ryan says, "How many people do you know who take the time to just sit!
and thin
k? It's a dead pastime." We paddle for a long time in silence, and water pools to the surface as if thoughts forming in the current, spinning, crashing into other thoughts and raging at the edges, downstream and then gone, swallowed again by the river, part again of the whole.

We've taken to paddling through the morning and then floating for long periods of the afternoon in the now substantial current. Doing this yesterday, Danny takes a nap while the rest of us read and space out. When we want to go again, Danny is still sleeping, and I tell Kevin and Ryan to go on ahead and we'll meet them at camp about eight miles down, where there are towns on both sides of the river. "Just pick which side is better," I tell them, and off they go. The way Danny is sleeping, I cannot see him, and soon the other canoe is out of sight. It is so peaceful, alone on the river! I paddle slowly in the back of the canoe, forcing nothing, letting the current carry me down. This is wonderful, I think to myself, and wonder at how in the hell I ever got to be here, where everyone said it would be hot and industrial and awful and instead it is quiet and beautiful, and me just slowly paddling the Mississippi River, reveling in the simplicity and the solitude.

When Danny wakes up, we paddle the rest of the way into camp. We pull up on the Illinois side because it seems more populated, but realize once there that Kevin and Ryan have pulled up on the Missouri side of the river. After an extended yet uneventful interlude where an old couple drives us into town and we buy groceries, learning along the way that Chester, Illinois is the home of Popeye, I call Kevin and tell him to come over to our side of the river. He tells us to come over there. Suddenly, it is a standoff. "We've got beer," I tell him. "We've got beer too," he says. "You were supposed to follow us!" he says. "You were supposed to pick the better side!" I say, "There's a town over here!" We argue and argue, but neither side is willing to pack up their things and paddle over. More than that, neither side is willing to lose. It starts to get dark, and Danny and I try to negotiate. "We're willing to come over," we tell them, "If you cook dinner and do the dishes." They ha!
ve alread
y started drinking, and they shoot us down incredulously. "We're not your bitches!," they cry. "The bars stay open till three (!) in Illinois," I say. Ryan gets on the phone and launches into a long tirade about why we are being ridiculous, how the plan was to follow them. "But you picked the wrong side!" I say, and when I can think of nothing else, I hand the phone to Danny, telling Ryan to "talk to my associate." "We have the stove," Danny says. "How the hell are you going to cook dinner?" "We'll get hot dogs at the convenience store." "Fine, well we're going to camp here and walk around our sweet town." "There's no way in hell we're crossing that river right now." "Well fine, stay on your crap side." "Fine." "Fine." "Fine."

Alone now, Danny and I wander up to town to eat and flirt with a cute bartender because neither one of us has the energy to cook a meal. I go up a second time to use the restroom, strike out with the bartender, and walking back down toward the shore, begin to be followed by a tiny kitten. I just keep walking and it won't go away. When I get back to camp, we try to figure out whether it is a boy or girl and give it some water. "Let's keep it," Danny says, and I say sure, because it is absurd and now we have a trip mascot. "I guess this definitely proves our side is better," I say. We name it Parmenides, after the philosopher who theorized an infinite amount of points between any two other points before going insane and saying nothing for years besides 'It is,' because it jives well with Danny's background in philosophy and my interest in Buddhism. "Parmippides for short," Danny says. In the morning, Kevin and Ryan paddle over, but Parmenides won't stay in the box we give him.!
"He'll j
ump out of the canoe. Or he'll suffocate in the box," Kevin says, and talks to a guy in his car who says he can take him to City Hall. We're all tore up, thinking we're going to have to give away old Parm after just one night, and begin speculating that they won't in fact take him in but instead will kill him, little kitten with no one to take him home, but in the 11th hour we convince the car guy to drive us to Walmart to pick up a cage. Danny comes back triumphant with a collar, leash, cat food, play toys and traveling cage, and we load Parmippides in. "Meow," it says. And we're off.

Off the River, onto the Road

So as I said we got into a U-Haul and drove to Chicago. It was not, as some of you have mused, a desperate attempt to flee from the vagrants of Davenport, Iowa. There was a method to our madness. That madness is this: we cannot canoe the whole river in the time we have alloted, and at some point we were going to have to figure something out. Gauging our options, it made more sense to rent a truck and cut off a chunk of the upper river, where the locks and dams slow the current, rather than down south, where the adventures are just waiting to begin. Even worse would have been to do nothing and just paddle, only to run out of time and never even make it to New Orleans. Setting out, our intent was never to conquer the river, to put it on our mantle as some sort of trophy. To think in such a manner is both too common and absurd. We came instead to experience it, and experiencing it we are, as we hope you are, clicking and scrolling along. The U-Haul was something we needed to do, to do what we needed to do.

We rented the U-Haul on Friday and didn't need to get it to St. Louis until Monday morning, and so we decided to drive to Chicago for kicks. What fun, we thought! We''ll hit the big city and go crazy on the town! We'll roll in dark and mysterious and the world will be our oyster! Of course it didn't quite turn out that way.

We got there Friday afternoon and walked up and down Michigan Avenue, taking in the sights and gawking at the skyline, all of us in our stinking trail gear, our unshaven faces and heavy duty rainjackets, anonymous in the face of the rushing city and mad crush of capitalism, people scurrying here and there, buses flying past, taxis, glass skyscrapers, girls in makeup and kids with piercings, all of it as far from Palisade, Minnesota as you could possibly imagine. How is this even the same country, I wondered, How do we manage at all? We walked past Soldier Field and the Field Museum, past a huge public dance class led by a male instructor with a headset up on a stage, past a symphony concert in the park where the conductor spoke of Gershwin, past art installations and department stores and Asian tourists taking pictures, construction sites and billboard ads, lovers walking hand in hand, boats in marinas, sailboats on Lake Michigan, sightseeing tours up the Chicago River, past private tours in a horse-drawn carriage. Trying to save money, we ate at a dive place called Flamingo's that was worth about what we paid for, which wasn't much. It began to become clear to me that we were sorely out of place, and while the rest of the group trucked on, my enthusiasm for the sidetrip and the night started to wane. We walked out along Navy Pier and rode the Ferris Wheel, and I started to get very depressed and think of the whole Chicago idea as a failure and a waste of time. I felt pretty awful, actually, moping hopelessly about my stolen guitar too, and eventually ended up showing it pathetically and railing against the world and acting like a 'big baby,' in Ryan's words, feeling ashamed the next day and wondering what in the hell happened to me. We all slept in the back of the U-Haul, never ending up going out on the town in large part due to my bad mood, and at 5:30 in the morning Ryan woke up and decided he'd had enough of Chicago and drove us straight out of town.

When I woke up, we were in Springfield, Illinois. Ryan wanted to see the Lincoln Presidential Museum, so while he did that the rest of us checked our email in the Presidential Library (never actually seeing anything in the library besides our Gmail accounts and Facebook profiles; oh, the sad truths of our generation) and got breakfast at a tea place across the street. We wandered around and I started to shake off the awful depression of the night before. It felt good to be away from the big city and to be headed back toward the old river. It started to rain, and it started to pour, and it kept up like that all the way down to St. Louis.

In St. Louis, we stayed with Mary and Bill Christman, the parents of a good friend of ours, Sam Christman, who was nice enough to volunteer his family to house us, without him there. We rode the subway and walked around the Loop, and got free $15 gift certificates to a record store for riding around in a new Scion and filling out a survey. We visited the St. Louis Arch, Gateway to the West, and rode up to the top, and watched an old documentary on how the Arch was built. We debated whether the Arch was a symbol of American nobility or egotistical presumptuousness, and decided it was likely the latter. We took pictures and craned our necks back at the thing. "It sure is pretty though," we said, and took the subway back.

Later, Bill Christman took us on a drive around their neighborhood, saying in an unassuming voice that he'd show us his "studio," as if it weren't anything big. It ended up being one of the most astounding places I've ever seen: a huge BYOB called Joe's Cafe with attached stage for Bluegrass and Jazz bands and a massive yard outside littered with crazy found art and landscaped waterfalls, chairs and tables everywhere, and quiet places to sneak away with someone pretty and make out. "I've been doing this for four years," Bill said, "Every Thursday, about 450 people come through and have a good time." We marveled at it all, empty on a Sunday afternoon, and I thought to myself that the whole world should look like this, a place so dynamic and open, that this is how our lives should be. I looked at Bill, and thought about what it must be like to be him, to know you have created such a place, and to know that it is good, and that whatever else happens, at least you'll always have this. "I think this place of yours is really remarkable," I told him, and he thanked me like he almost forgot it was even the case. The next time we come through St. Louis, it'll have to be on a Thursday, we told him, and when it is, we'll have to swing on through.

Now, we are packing our things and gearing up for another day on the river. With June nearing its end, the first half of our trip is done and the second is about to begin. Thank you to everyone who has followed us this far, and I hope you'll stick with us until the end. More than that, I hope that if you have found in our journey something inspiring or even remotely remarkable, you will, as Susie Orr put it, pay it forward. The world needs excited people. This country needs excited people. Please don't be scared to join in the fun.

Best wishes and enjoy the pictures.
Love,
TMP

Notes from Iowa

There are a few things that have happened to us since we left Dubuque:

Two days ago, we rode down with Tom and Susie to Clinton, IA, and camped for the night on a sandbar in Illinois next to a huge electrical tower. While we unloaded the canoes, Danny and Ryan went to check it out, and came back saying they were going to climb it. It was the sketchiest thing ever, but I guess that just got them more excited about the prospect. "Don't die," I told them, and recorded their final wishes. "Spread the word of Marx," said Danny, and the two of them started to climb. At first they are just pulling themselves up by nail-like pegs stuck into the side, sticking their bodies out into the thin air. Maybe 50 feet up, they reach a tiny, encased ladder stretching up the rest of the way that is padlocked shut at the bottom. It is the type of ladder that seems like it will never end. They angle out and around the encasement to get by the padlock, and they start pulling themselves up, rung by rung. The ladder creaks and shakes as they go, and they keep calling d!
own that
this is the scariest thing they have ever done. While they climb, I jump in the water and swim out far enough so that the world looks flat all the way around, and by the time I get out there, the two of them have made it to the top. "This shit is crazy!" they scream, and take tons of pictures. Danny climbs up one final ladder that isn't even encased, that goes out over the water to the actual electric wires themselves, and reports back that it is absolutely insane. Up there, 300 maybe 400 feet, they look so small. I yell to them from the water, and we yell back and forth, nothing in particular, mostly just admiring at how great life is, at how high up there they really are.

Afterwards, Kevin finds a radio station playing great song after great song with no comercials, and the two climbers come down and we have a fire in the sand. The music gets us going, and while we talk I get up and start to dance around. That gets Ryan dancing, and that gets Danny to pull out his glowsticks and do a lightshow, right there on the sand, spinning and wheeling his arms so fast they become a blur of yellow and green. Barges pass up and down the river, their spotlights protruding miles out ahead. With the river dark, the lights are like little salutations, tiny affirmations of existence as they slip by us on their way. Danny spins the glowsticks in his hands, and the radio plays, and we talk into the night, making tiny affirmations of our own.

The next night, we get into Davenport and walk around downtown in the middle of a lightning storm. Heading back to camp, Ryan and I decide to run, and since my shirt is soaked from the rain, I take it off. Coming across the parking lot to our camp, I spot a bum rummaging through our things and I start running at him fast, yelling "Hey! You! Get the fuck away from my stuff! Hey!" Ryan is right behind me, and the bum backs off like he thinks he is going to get jumped, swearing when we confront him that he was just putting the packs in a pile, and spreading the flag over it. "If there was something to eat, I might have taken it," he says. "But what am I going to do with dried pasta?" While Ryan watches the bum, I walk over to two old men fishing across the way, and they say about two dozen people have been picking around our stuff. Meanwhile, two separate cars sit right next to our camp with their drivers just sitting there, doing nothing, just watching the whole scene. We stan!
d in a gr
oup, staring warily around, on guard as a young guy on some ill-advised combination of drugs staggers by our camp, his eyes doing crazy things behind his eyelids. We tighten up our gear and put it right between our canoes, as if to make a tiny bunker. Eventually the whole scene dies down, but the mood remains, and Kevin and Ryan go to sleep with the mace and the butterfly knife and one eye open.

Still, it is not very late, and Danny and I don't feel like sleeping, so instead we walk back up a couple blocks and wander around. We are sort of shook up, but mostly just exploring for a minute and walking around. When we decide to head back to the tents, a train comes along the track, heading south. "It's not going very fast," Danny says, and I look at it going by, sizing it up . I get a little jog going, and soon I am running right with the train. I jump and grab onto the car ladder and hoist myself up. I look back and Danny is on the next ladder down. "This is fun!" I yell to him, and he yells Yep back. When we get back to camp, we pass the young intoxicated guy trying to break into some woman's car. He somehow manages to slip his arm through the window and unlock the door, but it sets the car alarm off. Rehh! Rehh! Rehh! it goes, blaring into the night. But the guy is so fucked up he doesn't know what to do. He gets into the car and just sits there in the driver's seat!
, fiddlin
g with the stereo and ignition. The two old fishermen stand right there, just watching. Danny and I keep our distance and take down the license plate number in case we need to call it in, but right as Danny is about to call, the woman whose car it is runs up and yanks open the front door. "What the hell are you doing in my car?" she yells, and her boyfriend runs up behind her. The fucked up guy stumbles out. "Stay right there," the woman says, and the guy is so messed up and harmless he just puts his hands in the air. "I'm noottt, I'm not going anywheehreeioewa," he says. The boyfriend calls the cops, and soon they show up and have the guy with his cheek pressed to the ground. We walk back to camp and pass the fishermen, just fishing, harmless observers, minding their own business, not doing a goddamn thing.

In the morning, we go through the stuff and realize that my guitar is gone. I don't really realize it until I'm fully awake, but once the realization hits, I sit very depressed and stare at nothing for a long, long time. Ryan, Danny and Kevin have gone off, and I imagine them eating a hot breakfast without me, being served by a beautiful young waitress. There is another guy parked right next our camp, just watching me, and I sit in one place and don't move. Finally, Ryan, Danny and Kevin come back with the U-Haul, and they bring me a coffee and donuts for everyone. We load up the truck, and start driving to Chicago.