Thanks for the kindnesses. It's been a long strange trip for certain and it seems to keep on keeping on. Tom Martin of Grand Canyon fame typed up a little mini-report for the "record" on his River Runners for Wilderness site and Grand Canyon folks are weighing in. (There was even one kind soul who thought the Phantom Ranch ticket so ridiculous he offered to help with the cost!) I certainly don't mind and it's enabling me to tell the tale over and over through phone calls and email and that certainly works for me.
But then at some point this whole lost and found thing starts to get whacky. The boat and helmet and well...
...the story of the GoPro goes back even a little further, and is definitely being related to the GoPro folks. It was initially found by one of our geologists here at work, half-buried in the sand and water on Cape Hatteras. The last video when he fired it up showed the camera strapped to the back of a dog jumping around in the water, and then sliding off the dog, and then rolling around in the sand being pushed around by the surf until the battery died. We don't know how long it washed around in the surf on the beach. When the guy couldn't find any way of contacting the owner, he brought it to work, apparently having no interest in the camera's capabilities, and we bought it from him for a couple dollars to help out with sanitary and storm manhole inspections. (Camera on a stick.) Then we, as a company, acquired a remote TV underground pipe inspection camera and crew and the GoPro lost its relevance and sat on the shelf with the rest of our unused equipment. That's about when I realized it might be kind of fun to play with and I've been attempting to use it ever since. (With mixed results.) In other words, this is the SECOND time the housing for the camera has been replaced, and the SECOND time this camera has spent some time flushing around in the water. I really do find it weird, uncanny, and slightly amazing that this camera simply won't go away. Part of me wants to take it to some random river, say, the Mississippi, toss it off a bridge, and see if it makes it's merry way back to Virginia. I feel like I wouldn't bet against it.
Of course now we all have renewed interest in finding the original owner, which may or may not be totally impossible but would certainly be Carl Sagan kind of Cosmic.
At this point I might even be playing the lottery were it not for the fact that I have a Subaru Outback being worked on by total strangers in Asheville, NC, as we speak, I mean, down where my wife and I blew the Turbo and Head Gasket apart on a trip to one of my favorite of all east coast destinations: Western North Carolina. The Subaru only has 120,000 miles so to me it's worth fixing, but ouch what a bill. (At least it blew up in Asheville which, in case you didn't know, is like the MicroBrewing Capital of the World.) So it's yin and yang. Give and take. The charmed magnetism apparently only works for things lost, not broken. Then again, the shop is run by some spicy and fiesty young women and for some reason I'm not too worried. They call me every few days and I'm hoping to hang out with them when I go back to pick it up. If I'm lucky. Another excuse to head to Western NC.
So but anyway lest you think I've abandoned the writing of the Grand Canyon tale, I haven't. I'm still living it. And there's an interested publishing party tugging on the hook so I'm keeping things offline for the time being. Besides, I'm spilling a lot of words and many of them are unnecessary and I don't want to needlessly clog up the pipelines of the internet. (Forgive me.)
snubber Ya. You're likely to get more of my philosophy here than you bargained for. But I haven't let loose onto the canoetripping forum in a while, so ...
The decision to go without the worry of a pump led to the decision to go without worry or fear and simply pull over and dump when needed which led to the decision to go without much of a bailer which led to the last minute decision (literally cutting off the bottom of a gallon water jug at the put-in with a knife) to take SOMETHING for scooping water. My old mentor used to say find a sloping rock and turn yourself over onto the rock to dump water without detaching from the boat, but he's full of crap. But the whole idea or philosophy behind the electric bilge pump has been rolling around in my head for a bit. I did pick up (also last minute), one of those hand pumps which was almost completely useless. I mean totally useless. And being awkward and long, even beyond useless. (I lost that ridiculous thing when I rolled in Doris Rapid--mile 138--but when I rolled up and saw it floating away I had other things on my mind and frankly, at that point I wasn't busting my butt going after it. Again: forgive me. One of these days I'm going to write a review of the NRS hand pump, but I'd like to hear beforehand exactly what people use it for.) And it's true, the big rapids mostly swamped the boat to the gunwales and I would make my heavy way to the water's edge and dump. Most of the time the running of the big rapids was an involved time consuming affair anyway. I'd get out before the rapid. Look at the rapid. Run the rapid. Get out after the rapid. Look again. Dump the boat. Celebrate. Snap some smiley photos. Etc. I as well underestimated the VOLUME of water, so I was quite thankful for the bailer. One false lean in even the smaller rapids would dump gallons of water into the boat and the bailer was useful for those not-enough-to-get-out-and-dump moments. In the end, I mean, philosophically speaking, in the end part of the beauty and dance of the open boat is running rapids with minimal water intake: keep your sides high and your lean tight and ride up and over. If you can. Hashtag NOPUMPS.
So but I've pulled them out of all my boats now and I'm 100% pump free and really, more than some arbitrary preference, I think at least part of this mentality gets to the heart of the difference between canoers and kayakers. If you've ever boated with kayakers when they gather like maggots at the local dam release, you'll note the herd mentality driving them down the river in gigantic packs, newbies following experts who know the river like nobody's business, long strings of kayaks following the boat in front, again and again, over and over, round and round in their laps, bombing through without pause or interregnum or scout or anything. By contrast open boaters are constantly stopping to bail and dump, scout lines, reunite somebody with their boat, look at the trees, call a safety meeting, duct tape a hole in the RX. The difference is almost palpable. The open canoe pump has to some small degree become for me a symbol of what I don't like about modern paddling. (I know people who have not one but TWO pumps mounted into their NINE FOOT canoes, and they run the river like legions of kayakers. At some point you want to say: just get a kayak and that water won't splash into your boat.) Hashtag LEAVETHEFESTIVALBEHIND.
End rant. By Pearce Ferry that poor gallon jug was beat to heck, disfigured, warped, cracked, etc. But it worked all the way to the bitter end and I never even had to wrap tape around the pop-off lid. It never came off.
By the way: I love a sponge. I never leave home without a sponge in my boat.
