Blog o'the day

Sunday, June 15, Red Wing, MN

Happy Father’s Day to all!  I thought I would delve into the mailbag today and answer some of your questions.  This is a tactic real writers use when they can’t come up with any fresh ideas to write about…

How long do you plan to be on your trip?  For the entire Great Loop, it will probably be about 2 years.  Right now our short-term goals are to: actually leave Red Wing on or around July 7, head for the Illinois River at Grafton, IL.  Google Maps puts it at 471 miles by vehicle, or 8 hours 41 minutes.  I’m thinking 2 weeks-ish or more by boat.  From there we’ll go northeast up the Illinois River, through Chicago and into Lake Michigan.  We hope to see Christie and Zack and the grandkids and stay through September. 

Then we’ll head back down the Illinois River to the Mississippi River, go south to the Ohio River and turn left, then head east to Paducah, KY.  From Paducah we will be on the Tennessee River, and the Tenn-Tom, which is a river/canal system that will take us all the way to Mobile, AL by December.  Christie, who is extremely proud of her North Carolina schooling, says, “I don’t know what any of that means!”  Yes.  Geometry was not her subject.

(Side note here: Back in the early 2000’s, Christie, her best friend Mary, Mary’s sister Heather, and Mary’s mom Marlee, were trying to figure out where Washington, DC was.  The girls were all eduMUHcated in the North Carolina school system and Marlee is a teacher.  “I think it’s in Virginia,” said one.  “No, it’s not, it’s up north somewhere,” opined another.  “Hello!  It’s in South Carolina,” said Heather.  “That doesn’t sound right,” said Marlee.  “Why South Carolina?”  “Well, duh,” said Heather.  “District of COLUMBIA?  Columbia, South Carolina!”)  (It’s hard to argue with her logic, actually)

(Side, side note: I was stationed in Okinawa, Japan from 1994-1995.  I met Phil and Marlee there and they informally adopted me.  It’s a fairly common situation that a married family will adopt a Marine on an unaccompanied tour.  I got to eat a lot of good, home-cooked meals at their place!  So I met Mary and Heather in 1994.  When we transferred to Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, NC in 1998, we started hearing about Christie’s new friend at school, Mary.  Went to a school open house, and I thought Mary looked familiar, but then I saw Marlee and realized that the Marine Corps family was awfully small.  It was hard to tell which family adopted the other girl, because I swear Mary spent the night every weekend for the next 6 years at our house, but Phil says the same thing about Christie.)

Where were we?  Mobile.  We plan to slowly cruise around Florida from December-March, and then head up the east coast to arrive in North Carolina late April-early May.  One of Jed’s neighbors has already offered use of their dock for a couple of weeks.  In all honesty, we are just trying to get to North Carolina.  That will be around a year on the boat, and it will probably be best to pull it out of the water for some maintenance and then see if we want to continue or change our plans. 

This trip sounds expensive.  That’s not a question, more of a statement, but yes.

Well, how can you afford it?  Ah, that’s a question.  Well, with careful planning and a lot of soul-searching, we can’t.  But we can’t afford NOT to do it either.  Actually, if all goes according to plan (HA!), we’ll do okay.

Daddy, tell more stories about me!  That’s not a question, PorkChop, but you should always be the center of attention, I know.

It’s Father’s Day, I told a Christie story, here’s a Jed story, roughly same time frame.  I was stationed at Cherry Point, it’s about an hour away from Camp Lejeune, NC which is where both kids were born.  Camp Lejeune had a race series with a different type of event once a month.  Biathlon, triathlon, 5 and 10K, half-marathon.  One of them was the European Cross Country 10K.  It went all through the woods at Camp Lejeune, included a river crossing and a 200-yard long mud pit.  I ran it in 1999 and Jed said he’d like to do it the next year.

I said OK, but he would have to train for it.  So we set up a plan for him to start jogging some longer distances.  It worked well, as one of his chores was to walk our dog, Catfish.  I’d go with him from time to time, but the onus was on him.  When we started the race he did pretty good.  It was about 1 mile to the river, jump in and get across, and then we had a blast getting through all the mud.  But then it was a slog to get through the woods with wet socks, shoes, mud everywhere.  All the runners that passed us were quick to encourage him, as did I. 

We circled back to the mud and got through it, than back across the river.  Only about a mile to go and Jed-o had kept up a very steady pace the entire way.  We crested a little rise and were 300 yards away from the finish line when he said, “I can’t do it anymore, Dad.”  He tried to start walking. “Jed!  There’s the finish line!  You can’t quit now, come on buddy!”  Other folks were pumping him up so he forced his little legs to move and then he could hear all the cheering from the crowd at the finish line which spurred him on.  He made it across!

Turns out he won First Place in his age group (10-12) and wound up with a trophy nearly as tall as him!  We got cleaned up and went to get dinner before heading back to Cherry Point, and the kid literally fell asleep at the table and his head fell into his plate.

Coming tomorrow: more questions and more blog!  Stay tuned, folks!

Biscuit Photo O'The Day

 Blessings to all ya’ll!!