Pre-Trip Tomorrow

We will open the meeting with an Arts and Crafts project. This river inconveniently cuts northeast to southwest through four different USGS topos so there is some cutting and pasting to do if you want your own map. Which you do because there are two different campsites to find not to mention a put-in and a take-out, neither of which are bridges.

We'll also talk about departure times, what trucks are going, canoe and tent counts, etc. The river is lower than the Dow Jones so we'll share our drought strategy (it does not involve canceling or changing rivers). The chefs, who had their own pre-pre-trip meeting, will announce the menu plans.

Time: 7:30 pm

Place: Aladdin's.


Proof that Hookah makes you smarter:

A: Al fakher Honey

B: "My nice brand new Hookah"

____________________

Also heard a rumor that Big George is coming for the first time since Elk River/Fall '06!

Phil is confirmed, too. Is there room for two huggers on one trip?















~

Packing Up

The time has come to graduate from the simple gear assignments of our early trips and put together a formal packing list for the RRCC. We need a master document we can work off of.

Here's the first attempt. Expand it with the button in the upper right corner.





This has less to do with Utensilgate last fall on the Buffalo and more to do with our ongoing effort to stop doubling up gear. If people don't get with it, our next space saving move will be to ditch the coolers and adopt the Feldman Rule (brown liquor only). That's gonna be hard on you in the middle of a hot day on the river.

Also note that stuff like suncreen and bugspray are not on here. All you EPLs with your giant camp chairs who think beargrease and fire smoke aren't good enough can smuggle some in.

Soap is on the list, although we've never seen anybody use it.

And an update on Loading Up....

Get your canoe on. You're already up to the second level.

Loading Up

Sometime in the next 12 days all canoe owners need to bring their boat over and put it on the trailer. There's a strong incentive to do it early because we've installed the 10-place extensions and those last spots are really high.

You won't be the first though. Josh is already loaded.

Did everyone notice that the pre-trip meeting was moved to Wednesday, October 1?

We really need 100 cfs at the Whitwell gauge. http://waterdata.usgs.gov/tn/nwis/uv/?site_no=03571000&PARAmeter_cd=00065,00060

That may be too much to ask for in the fall, but since we cancelled because it was too high in the spring at some point we're just going to have to do it even if the water level isn't just right. There may be some dragging involved, but as long as we're not carrying any heavy items we'll be fine.

~

The video director and his entourage:

Video Killed the Radio Star

A. "How Was It?"

B. "Come on, Roy!"

Announcing Fall Trip 2008

The Fall Trip will be Friday, October 10 to Sunday, October 12. That is exactly one lunar cycle away from tonight's full moon, so there should be plenty of light for the cooks around midnight. Too bad the trip wasn't under this full moon, because "Tonight, Uranus shines all night long." Oh the possibilities.

This will be a genuine two-nighter, meaning both nights will be ON THE RIVER. The Friday night bunkhouse tradition has been fun but it's making us soft. The Rebel Rivers Canoe Club is about Rivers and Canoes. If we keep staying at all those fancy barns and B&Bs we'll just be "engineered for patio living..."


Potts lingered, watching me and the boat and glancing up toward my camp. It looked great, what I was doing, he said.

"Well, it is if you like that kind of thing," I said.

"I guess I would," he said. "I never did much of it. It looks like fun."

There was a poignancy about him, spectacled in a green corduroy sport shirt that looked wrong against his pink-gray skin and the hollow way he held his chest. He kept picking, cranelike, first on one leg and then on the other, at needle-grass spears in his thin green socks. He said he got most of his exercise mowing his lawn, and the winter before had built a picket fence around his back yard. . . . That was what he told me, or rather told himself in answer to the discontent that sat plain on him as he looked at me and the boat and the Brazos River.

He said: "There's never enough time."

Sluicing loosened mud from the propped-up canoe, I found myself wanting to tell him that for God's sake there was plenty of time always, and why didn't he come along with me. . . . But the parent Potts seemed engineered for patio living, and probably would feel the cozier there for having seen me lean and filthy on the river.

Goodbye to a River, pp. 257-58.




Patio







Patio









Another patio

UNACCEPTABLE!




The distances are worked out so it will be a short, 2-mile float (about 45-minutes) on Friday afternoon but it will still require a mid-day departure on Friday the 10th. Plan accordingly.

Our Destination: we will take a second shot at the Sequatchie. A perfect debut for the new Long Ranger canoe trailer. We will ride triumphantly over Monteagle and down into the Sequatchie Valley like Hannibal with a big blue elephant.





























See the posts before our aborted trip last Spring here and here for details about the river. But it's really all about The Valley.





Other announcements:

1. There will be no more e-mail communications. This web site is your sole source of information for the trip. Other than the pre-trip meeting.

2. The pre-trip meeting will be at Aladdin's Hookah Bar and Lounge (address and directions) on Wednesday, October 1 at 7:30 pm. The first rule in the Rebel Rivers "Rules of Order" is that anyone who has an agenda item or wishes to be heard has to be at the pipe to speak.








The first agenda item at the meeting will be approving the new "Rules of Order".
The second agenda item will be selecting our trailer balls.
There are no other agenda items.


~

Addicted to Welding

Buying the trailer was half the fun. The other half will be using it on an official RRCC trip. But the third half is messing around with it to get it just right, which is the stage we're in right now.

Getting it "just right" means fixing some minor problems, adding special accoutrement, and otherwise pimping out the trailer. Almost everything it will ever need can be done at Nashville Spring Servce on 8th Ave. and their machine shop next door, behind Arnold's meat-and-three.



Every time we hook it up and pull it over there, some excited member calls on their cell phone and says they saw it driving down the street like a Mardi Gras float (twice this week alone).


Here is a current progress report.


1. Fix 10-piece extension. The weld debris left by the manufacturer on the trailer towers kept the removable "Ts" from sliding into place. They also forgot to drill the bolt holes for the extensions. MO Trailers has agreed to reimburse us for the cost of fixing these.

Status: done.



2. Adjust the right lid latch. Screws set too low to secure it easily.

Status: done.



3. Repair faulty brake light.

Status: done.




4. Install trailer jack.

In this case, a 2,000 lb., industrial, swivel-mount trailer jack.
















Status: done.





5. Add "water" cooler rack.









Status: Purchased, not installed. Back to NSS for more welding!



6. Get a cooler.





















Ordered.



7. With cups.







8. Buy 6" drop-hitch for truck receivers.

This is necessary to get the trailer level when it's being pulled by one of the tall trucks in the rolling stock of the RRCC.

Done.



9. Airbrush "The John Lee Pettimore" on both sides.

Or go with the more Gilbert & Sullivan "H.M.S. Pettimore"



10. Pick out some nice truck balls.

A perfect agenda item for the pre-trip meeting. May even justify its own pre-trip meeting.

___________________


The only other issue to think about right now is whether the 10-place extensions will be pushing the minimum standard bridge height on the Interstate highway system, to say nothing about all the low county road bridges we'll be going under.

We need to decide what our method is going to be: approach slowly and measure the clearance, or not worry about it and just make sure the new guys' canoes are always on top.

Fundraising Update

"Big Daddy Skillet": $1,000 +

- Stuart Frankel
- Jim Mullowney

"Chuck Box": $500

- Rob Harrington
- Skip Hindman
- Josh May
- Tim Niarhos

"Crosscut Saw": $250

- Your Name Here

"Washtub Bass": $100

- Your Name Here