#7. Two Fires

#8.    Solo Canoes

#9.    The Upside-Down Kitchen Canoe

#10.   Floyd and Lesser Dogs

#11.   Gravel Bar Music

#12.   Mrs. Cooper's Pavilion

#13.   Proud Mary

#14.   Demolition Derby

#15.   Chicago River Trip

#16.   First Stop Bloody Marys

#17.   Brown's Diner

#18.   Dutch Ovens

#19.   November 19, 2005: VU 28 - UT 24

#20.   The Two-Man Crosscut Saw

#21.   Big Swan Creek

#22.   The Green Mule

#23.   Knee-High Rubber Boots

#24.   Phil's Warehouse

#25.   The Nine Man Log

Nobody knows when we first did this, or whose idea it was.  Some genius somewhere.  

There is a big difference between a cooking fire and a camp fire - not just in size but also in terms of the activities in and around them.   Once we realized that, and that there was no law against having two, everything changed.  

The kitchen fire usually begins with Mullowney digging out an "Irish oven" in just the right spot (See No. 9).  The social fire also needs to be just the right distance away from the kitchen fire - far enough to avoid interfering, but close enough there can be interaction between them and an easy transfer of coals to the kitchen fire with long-handled shovels and fire gloves.   Cannibalizing of the social fire for the benefit of the kitchen fire is part of the circle of life on a gravel bar.  One has to balance the desire for warmth against the desire to eat.  Knowing the coals from the social fire will be used to cook (See Nos. 13 and 18), it makes the selection of the type of wood and the initial building up of a big fire very important (See Nos. 20 and 25).   This is not always easy. Sometimes people forget they are going to want more wood later because it doesn't seem that important at the time (See Nos. 11 and 16).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

#8. Solo Canoes

#9.    The Upside-Down Kitchen Canoe

#10.   Floyd and Lesser Dogs

#11.   Gravel Bar Music

#12.   Mrs. Cooper's Pavilion

#13.   Proud Mary

#14.   Demolition Derby

#15.   Chicago River Trip

#16.   First Stop Bloody Marys

#17.   Brown's Diner

#18.   Dutch Ovens

#19.   November 19, 2005: VU 28 - UT 24

#20.   The Two-Man Crosscut Saw

#21.   Big Swan Creek

#22.   The Green Mule

#23.   Knee-High Rubber Boots

#24.   Phil's Warehouse

#25.   The Nine Man Log

REMINDER:    Our pre-trip meeting is this Wednesday the 28th at 7:00.  Brown's Diner.   Rob gave birth to a bouncing baby appendix last week and is recovering so if you see him wandering around on Blair Blvd. all oxy'd up wearing a breezy hospital gown bring him inside.

_________________________________________________

Lots of people paddle canoes solo, of course, but they normally do it when they're on solo canoe trips.   If you see us on the river, it's a long, slow parade of solo boats, and that comes as a surprise to other paddlers who assume that if you've got two seats and two people, that's how you're supposed to ride. 

This may not be an innovation so much as just a practical reality for us.   If we paddled tandem we'd have half as many canoes, and there's no way we could do that with the amount of gear we carry.   But it's also a preference.   When everyone is captain of their own boat, they can choose their own speed, drop back, paddle ahead, paddle side by side to talk, or even hang out for hours by an afternoon tea fire.  As long as the first guy knows where to stop for the night, there's little chance of missing the campsite on a river regardless of how far behind you get.    

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

#9. The Upside-Down Kitchen Canoe

#10.   Floyd and Lesser Dogs

#11.   Gravel Bar Music

#12.   Mrs. Cooper's Pavilion

#13.   Proud Mary

#14.   Demolition Derby

#15.   Chicago River Trip

#16.   First Stop Bloody Marys

#17.   Brown's Diner

#18.   Dutch Ovens

#19.   November 19, 2005: VU 28 - UT 24

#20.   The Two-Man Crosscut Saw

#21.   Big Swan Creek

#22.   The Green Mule

#23.   Knee-High Rubber Boots

#24.   Phil's Warehouse

#25.   The Nine Man Log

This is in the innovations category.   Turning the Grumman upside down for our kitchen work space may not seem like a big deal, but the RRCC holds the patent and it is not the kind of thing that would even occur to beginners.

Functionally, it makes the kind of real cooking we like to do possible.  Nobody takes a 17-foot kitchen counter into the wilderness.   Equally important though, it transforms the kitchen into a real place and defines the boundary between that space and everywhere else in camp.  If you wander in there, you have some reason to - for official kitchen business or at least to visit a cook and offer some unsolicited advice, or perhaps smoke a ready-roll with them.   It is the cooks domain and they have the right to shoo you out, though they rarely do.

As soon as we touch shore and the announcement is made that this is where we'll camp, the very first task is to survey the place for where the kitchen canoe will go.  Everyone knows this has to be done and how to do it.   Ideally what we're looking for meets the following criteria: 

(1)   low and flat

(2)   small gravel or sand under foot

(3)   as close to the water as possible

(4)   as close to moving water as possible

(5)   by a bank or elevation change for one side of the upside-down canoe
(6)   with a view.

Like this:

If selecting the right spot is an art, stabilizing it is a science.   The recurved stems of a canoe are not made for resting flat upside down, but getting it level and making sure it won't shift is critical.  Sometimes it requires extra engineering and the pointy ends can actually be used to your advantage if you either dig out space beneath them or put logs a few feet toward the center depending on the terrain.

Whatever you do, make sure it's always the Grumman.   They used heavy duty aluminum back in 1948 when it was originally supposed to be used for a B-52, and that makes a heavy, solid platform.  Plus if you set a hot pot on any fancy modern canoe material like Royalex or Kevlar the pot will be on the ground real fast - right through a perfectly pot shaped hole.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

#10. Floyd and Lesser Dogs

#11.   Gravel Bar Music

#12.   Mrs. Cooper's Pavilion

#13.   Proud Mary

#14.   Demolition Derby

#15.   Chicago River Trip

#16.   First Stop Bloody Marys

#17.   Brown's Diner

#18.   Dutch Ovens

#19.   November 19, 2005: VU 28 - UT 24

#20.   The Two-Man Crosscut Saw

#21.   Big Swan Creek

#22.   The Green Mule

#23.   Knee-High Rubber Boots

#24.   Phil's Warehouse

#25.   The Nine Man Log

He was an affable little brute, impractical but comic and good to have with me, philosophical under scolding and the occasional sleepy kicks he got when he wriggled too much in the bottom of the sleeping bag at night.  In a few days he had developed more than in weeks in town, giving up his abject station at my heels to run about the woods on our shore excursions, learning to evade the cold by staying in the tent or by hugging the fire, sitting like a figurehead on the food box in the bow as we slid down the river in the long bright afternoons.

Goodbye to a River, p. 82.

We have brought plenty of affable brutes along, and they have all been good to have.   Everyone knows a canoe looks better with a dog in it. 

 

 

 

 

 

There's nothing impractical about Floyd though.  He is RRCC through and through.   He has swum more river miles than most of you have paddled and had a better attitude doing it.   He stops eating a week before each trip when the gear starts coming out.   Around the campfire, when Rob threatens to slit his throat for not looking him in the eye, or when we discuss the plans for his river burial right there in front of him where he can hear, he never says a word.   He also never complains about how many miles to the next bridge or about dinner being served after midnight.  And he would never, ever, question the choice of a campsite next to a beautiful waterfall just because it was "too snakey."   That's why Floyd is in the Top 10 and gets a 3/5 vote in all elections. 





 

 

 

(Floyd's first trip, Fall 2005)

 

 

 



We would be remiss if we did not mention Floyd's predecessor as the alpha brute.   Charlie's last canoe trip was the first one we took with the Big Daddy Skillet and members of what became this club.  He blazed a trail down the river for Floyd.