Thursday's Conference

Judging by the RSVP list, attendance Thursday night will be better than 100% of in-town members. Everyone who went on the trip is coming and even some members who missed.

• If you haven't turned in your receipts or a total to Josh, be prepared to do it Thursday.
• If you haven't paid Josh, be prepared for Josh to kick your ass Thursday.
• The restaurant hasn't bribed the liquor board yet so it's BYOB. Everyone who has leftover wine and spirits from the trip please bring them.
• Savarino's closes at 10:00 pm so don't be too late.
• The Villager closes at 3:00 am so pace yourself. Remember, it's not a sprint, it's a marathon...

Here's Rob making his move, dropping the fourth place finisher in the Chunky, Short-Legged, Women Over-forty class right at the finish line.

~

Meeting is Thursday

The post-trip dinner will be this Thursday, May 10 at 7:30 pm in the private room above Savarino's Cucina. That's the Italian restaurant near The Coop on Belcourt Ave. in Hillsboro Village. The upstairs room is unfinished which is a perfect meeting place in a Sopranos kind of way. Give the RRCC password to Vinny at the door.

~

The pup weighed about twelve pounds, and even after he was grown he wouldn't be a very practical dog, but he was company, too - more concrete, perhaps, than memories and feelings.

"Passenger, you watch," I told him. "It's going to be a good trip."

In the firelight he registered disbelief...

p. 16

In a moment a woman, harried-faced, peeked down at me, and I repeated, trying hard not to look like an itinerant rapist but handicapped by three days' beard, that I was harmless. She frowned.

Beside me the pup started barking, tainting my kindly aura. I kicked at him lightly but caught him hard in the ribs. Bellowing, he lit out for camp. The woman disappeared. I picked up my bucket and carried it on, feeling guilty and brutal and grubby.

p.255

He was an affable little brute, impractical but comic and good to have with me, philosphical 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.

p. 82

Post Navigatio Omni Animale Triste

Is it too soon to think about the fall trip?

Here's the graph showing the water level on the Green. If you think we were lucky to find our 1.25 gravel bars, just be glad we didn't go a week earlier. We would have floated right over Armour Island.







Really enjoyed having the worthy newcomers on this trip:

Roy Dano

Pete Fucking Feldman

The other Roy, who played the stand-up bass on Friday, the hunched-over bass on Saturday, and the sit-down Bass on Sunday, is playing a songwriter's gig Tuesday night at 6:30 pm at Qdoba (corner of West End and 21st Ave). We know he can't be playing his instrument of choice because that's still in the garage stacked full of bloody mary mix and Old Grand-Dad bottles. So is his red glove. But the gig's TOMORROW night (or today depending on when you're reading this) and it would be great to get some RRCC representation there in support. Members who show up drink on Josh.

Of course, there's a lot of gear to be exchanged and that means a post-trip meeting. If we have it Thursday night we can go trailer shopping at 12:01 am, the start of the Tennessee Sales Tax Holiday. But I don't know if we can get the slide show ready by then.

~

Excellent trip. More soon.

Eskimos have thirty-seven words for "snow".

In Scotland they have eleven that mean "rain".

In the Commonwealth of Kentucky they have five that mean "ideal for being on a river with a cold beer and a ready-roll."






Time to go.

~