Camping

Yeah, so my brother and I were sitting at the bar of veggie galaxy when our minds, whipping about furiously and making the woop-woop-woop-woop noise of an off kilter gyroscope pushed into a calorie crazed high, spit forth the idea of canoeing (at least I think that's what mine mind was doing. I mean, its hard to remember exactly, and such a mind state would explain alot). It went something like this.
   "We should, we should like, like totally go exploring. You know. Like scientists."
  "YES"
   "Can we do that? Please?" (I'm pretty sure this question was asked by my brother in an effort to substitute his own self conscious, which would here be responsible for self preservation, with mine, which he may have been thinking was more lenient. Obviously my self preservation was on vacation)
  "YES"
  "WE COULD LIKE, GO TO THE WILDERNESS"
  "YES"
  "YEAH!!!"
  "LIKE, WE COULD GO TO ICELAND"
  "um. maybe we stay in the U.S."
"right, yeah"
"WE COULD EVEN TAKE A CANOE. THEN WE COULD REALLY GET AWAY FROM IT ALL"
"YEAH. HECK WE COULD EVEN BUILD A CANOE. A COLLAPSIBLE CANOE. THAT WE COULD MAKE"
"CAN WE DO THAT?"
"THE INUITS MAKE CANOES ALL THE TIME. AND THEY USE WHALES- WE COULD TOTALLY MAKE ONE WITH MODERN MATERIALS."
"YES"

My brother doesn't seem to remember this conversation exactly, and since we hadn't anything to drink that night, which would be one explanation, I think he must have been drunk on science. I was drunk on engineering. So, anyways, we decided to build a canoe. This was in February. Now, an interesting thing happened. Now, i'm pretty sure that if it was only me invested in this project, it would have failed. This is the kind of project where I would have designed the basic canoe, and then thought- am I really doing this? maybe I shouldn't do this... not for any specific reason, mind you, but just a nagging evolutionary instinct to let the project go for my own well being. However, we two people, the much stronger evolutionary tendency to "group think" overtook my weak survival instinct, and my brother and I were able to take take turns lying to each other when we asked each other, "Is there any good reason we can do this?" because no one's going to say, "I dunno- I've just got this feeling"
      And pretty soon we were committed. After several concepts and variations and CAD mock ups and even a full scale foam mock up, we sunk a hundred dollars into aluminum. We had to keep going now. The mad ball of Juggernauting mutual assurance was unstoppable.
   The general design of the canoe was to make a metal skeleton out of aluminum pieces, and wrap that in a tough, tear resistant tarp, kinda like a birch bark canoe. The aluminum pieces could be unscrewed and packaged, along with the tarp, in a fairly small bundle that we could mail ahead of us to Michigan, where we would take a bus (from our hometown, boston) and pick it up at the post office. That was another major hurdle- we bought bus tickets for a 27 hour long bus ride to Grayling, Michigan, where we would "put in" (just using minor canoe terminology makes me feel all nautical).
     So we made the canoe- I machined the aluminum and My brother and I made the skin from a second hand tarp that used to be a billboard. It had a very large and colorful chicken on it. Our canoe ended up being 12.5 feet long (originally 10, but I added another section when I realized how small it looked).
Yep.
We tested it on the Charles river, which was a bit hairy, cause its kinda a big river, and when it gets all windy and tippy, you feel like you might die. Um. But it seemed to work, and leaked very little. One thing that bothered me was we never had time to test it with the amount of cargo that we would need to carry down the river. Oh. The river we choose was the Manistee river, which has 85 miles of what the internet described as "beginner level" water. Here are some pictures of the canoe, under construction on the river bank, or in testing on the Charles river:

I'm not wearing a hat in these pictures.

   So. Besides a canoe we also needed to plan for everything else camping wise. We bought sleeping bags, tent, propane burner, first aid kit, life jackets, loads of bug spray (the good stuff) and many other things. One thing we wanted to get right was the food. We didn't want to run out, and we didn't want to hate it. We decided that we would never get sick of pancakes, so we prepared pancake mix that was just add water+oil. We brought lots of rice, and these indian food packets to put on the rice, with chickpeas and onions and such. We also brought smores materials, `alf a kilo of Belgium chocolate, and "cookie butter" which was a jar containing all the deliciousness of cookie dough, without the healthy flour that normally goes into cookies. When we bought it the Hawaiian shirt bedecked checkout dude was like,
"Have you had this before? no? Its gonna BLOW YOUR MIND"
I'm inclined to agree with him.

We printed out big maps on nice stock from the MIT print shop place, and put them in a waterproof bag, which my brother was originally against- "How are they gonna get wet? Its not like we're gonna drop them in the water", but this bag turned out to be critical.

In the end, I think we had maybe 130 lb of equipment, meaning that my canoe, weighing ~30 lb had to carry ~410 lb, or 13.6 times its own weight. This was not tested until we got to Michigan.

The building excitement was quickly overcome by the frantic madness of finals. I had a final on Monday and Wednesday, and were planning on leaving Thursday morning. By some crazy fate, about a month before we left, A friend of my brother and I said he was driving through Michigan the exact day we were taking a bus there, and offered us a ride. Thank goodness. Looking back, that bus trip would have been terrible, and the extra time it would have taken would have made us pretty time crunched on the river in trying to get back in time. This is just one of the mad life saving coincidences on this trip.

So. where was I. Right, finals week. So, on Wednesday I had a final that ended around 4:30. Then there was a bit of a party thing that lasted from 6:00 until 10:00 or something. I had yet to pack up the rest of my things, and move them to my brother's room. (since he was a senior, he could stay in his room longer for graduation) Bottom line, we met at 3:30 am that night, after going to bed at about 1:00 am.

And proceeded to drive for 15 hours.

It was pretty mind blowing. Fortunately our friend, who was driving the rental car the whole time, was a seasoned road trip driver. The car was very efficiently- this doesn't mean there was lots of space in the car when we finished- it just meant the car had ALOT of stuff in it. The rear sagged visibly.

We stopped at a couple of gas stations along the way, listened to music, and talked, but the best part was stopping at Niagara Falls. This is a destination in my book not worth the cost of plane ticket or the time to drive in order to visit, so this was probably the only way I would see it in any reasonably configured universe, and I'm glad this is the universe I inhabit. It was pretty epic. The shear volume of water and the roar of the falls in incredible. Also, we got there just at lunch time. Pretty epic timing. I carried our lunch in a pillow case cause our backpacks were filled with camping stuff. Slung over my shoulder, I felt like a viking carrying his loot.

Then we went into Canada! Did you know that's a shortcut to Michigan? You just cut though Canada! Also, something I probably wouldn't see, except by airplane, was Lake Ontario and Lake Huron (up until just a few seconds ago, I didn't know their names.) They looked like oceans. Also amazing. We drove along the coast for quite awhile.

Around 5:00 pm we made our way into Grayling Michigan, a tiny little town near our starting point. We ate big plates of cheap, greasy, fried, delicious Chinese food at a little restaurant. Then we went and found the campsite. Our driving friend brought his camping gear, and camped with us that night, before leaving the next morning to his final destination (a mere 5 hours of driving).


As far as the "American Camping Trip" goes, that night we nailed it. 


We had a roaring campfire. We had tents set up in a little wooded area by a river. We had s'mores.  We had our friend playing and singing songs on his guitar. We had stars. That was a pretty awesome night. 


The next morning our friend left, and we began the arduous task of assembling the canoe. It has something like 45 total pieces, and over 150 bolts. We laid it out on the grass, and like a a zombie whale, it went from scattered rib outline carcass to a reanimated water craft. It only took us about 2 hours. We carried it down to the river bank. We loaded everything into garbage bags (for dryness). We hauled all gajillion pounds of it down to the bank. I prayed that the math gods hadn't changed the rules since I calculated the buoyancy and stiffness of the canoe.


This was it.


We loaded it up. 


It held.

We got in.


It held.


We pushed off.


It held.


We started paddling.


It held.

We discovered we were terrible at canoeing.

You see, we practiced canoeing on the Charles. Taking the canoe out on the Manistee River was like a kid starting his driver's license test in a stick shift in Boston when his previous experience driving was in an automatic on a salt flat.

The river was about 2 feet deep on average. The winter had clearly criss crossed the river with a manege of branches, and although the river bottom was two feet down, there were deadly spears of branches looming up from fallen trees a good bit higher than two feet.
My brother and I spent most of the first day on edge, none-to-subtly blaming each other's canoeing ability.
Did we crash?
Yep.
Did we stab holes in the boat?
Yep. 

For example, and this is just one example, we were heading for what, by the last day of canoeing, should have an easy left turn, but we botched the turn, and the current caught the side of the canoe, and rammed us up against a fallen tree on the river bank, stabbing a quarter size branch through our canoe, just below the water line. We hastily abandoned ship, and dragged it to the river bank, and patched it with duct tape. 


By the end of our trip, our canoe was a patchwork quilt of duct tape.
That stuff is amazing, and incredibly water proof. That patch from the first day lasted the entire trip easily. 


Despite the hectic learning curve for canoeing, The scenery was so nice. The tree lined banks. The calm water. The wildlife. The entire trip, bug were never a problem on the river.


We ended the canoeing on that first day when fate gave us a not to subtle sign. We were passing under a low hanging branch, with our heads ducked, and a trig caught my glasses strap, and ripped them off my face. I cried out to stop so we could grab them, and in the commotion of twisting about, we fell out of the canoe, and nearly capsized it too boot. Amazingly, my brother found my spectacle by chance underwater, which was too stirred up with silt too see into. 


We set up camp- IN THE WILDERNESS!


We put our tent like 100 feet from our food and campfire, in case of bears. We made a fire- there was so much wood laying around. I mean, alot of wood. I dug out a big hole for the fire, and cleared away the loam so we wouldn't burn the place down. I lit the fire with a flint and steel and magnesium blot, first try (ever), like pro. We had s'mores, and pasta, and we read from our kindles, and I even started some poetry (level one shaman skill- writing poetry in the wilderness)


We went too bed, and learned that at the next campsite, we need to clear the rocks out from under the tent better. 


The next day we canoed like 8 hours. We stopped at a real campground, with peoples. Everyone was very interested in our canoe. Throughout the trip we would pass people with a house on the river bank, and they would say, "I ain't never seen nothing like that"- Yay engineering!


We stayed at this site for two nights. The first night it thunder-stormed, but after we went to bed, so it was fine. The next day the wood was wet, but a nice guy was leaving the site next to us, and he gave us a bunch of wood that he had kept dry like a pro. We kept all our gear dry by storing it under the canoe, which worked amazingly. 

It was the fourth day, I think. We looked at our maps, and said “Let’s try to make it to this campground area today”. According to the map, it should take us about seven hours. It took us nine hours of constant paddling. My arms are truly amazing- they just kept paddling and paddling, without any sign of discontent. I think perhaps they took the pain sensors off the line early on, having a better view of the future than my brother apparently did. Now, despite the long day, in which we crashed and nearly lost the canoe once or twice, and had to pull it up onto the bank a few times to repair it, I won’t focus on that part. I will focus on the end of the day. We were, according to our magic GPS and maps, very near the campground. Ten minutes, we should see it. The boat was leaking like molten metal through a plastic colander. My brother was bailing gallons of water every five minutes. Minutes passed. Then many more. We passed what might have been a campground, but it was unlabeled, and looked like it may have been private property. Twenty minutes of paddling past what should have been the right place, we were getting desperate. The sun was going down, and tensions were going up. I was driving my brother insane, asking him how much farther, and how much longer, because he had the GPS and the maps. Eventually, the canoe wallowing like a wounded sow, and only an hour of good daylight left, we decided to pull over. Struggled out of the boat, and pulled it to the side of the river and up on a river bank that was covered with tall grass which was in turn populated by more spiders the size of silver dollars than my mind could comfortably deal with, so I didn’t look down. We were on some guy’s private property, which isn’t to say the landscape was landscaped in any way. According to the map (ha) there was a little road a few hundred feet north, which would then lead to the campground, or at least public land where we could camp. We just had to get there. Abandoning our canoe on the river bank (more like a swamp) we more inland though the most dense jungle I’ve ever been through. It would have probably be possible to navigate comfortably if you were, say, and small rabbit with a hover board. We had little choice but to painfully and slowly make our way through about a hundred feet of swampy forest before it opened up. We found the road, although I think it was probably just a long driveway that happened to be where our frantic minds believed a road was supposed to be. We walked up it, avoiding patches of mud above which creepy little blue mosquitos hung in the air like the fishing flies of hell. After maybe 20 minutes of walking we found a flat camp spot area. We decided to go back to the canoe and walk it up stream to the spot (the river being only two-four feet deep) With the sun dropping below the tree line we made our way back to the canoe, ignoring about twenty private property, and turn around now signs. I think I saw a wolf. When we got back to the dense swampy forest we were in for a real treat. Somehow, on the way back to the river, we delved into an area completely populated by horrible thorny bush/tree type nightmare plants that clawed at our clothing and tore at our vulnerable flesh. Trying to veer away from these plants, we soon became lost, which is ridiculous because, as mentioned, there was only about one hundred feet of this swampy forest. Never the less, looking around, the visibly was so low in the dense hellish undergrowth, I couldn’t tell which way the river was. We did the next best thing- we struck out at random. In a feverish state of delusion I crashed my way pell mell through the vicious undergrowth. Amazingly, we found the river only about twenty feet upstream from the canoe. We went back to the canoe, slid it back into the river, loaded it up, gritted our teeth, and stepped back into the river which swallowed our feet in ankle deep, probably leach infested silt. We grabbed hold of the canoe, and tried to drag it up river. Rivers, which at first seem quite tranquil, are actually quite strong it turns out. After about ten minutes of little progress, in which it was hard enough just to walk forward, let alone drag the canoe, Brian made the executive decision to just make for the opposite bank, where we could see a little flat, clear spot, and camp there for the night. The sun was kissing the horizon when we hauled the canoe up the bank, unloaded it, and frantically made camp, putting up the tent, and grabbing a couple of energy bars form the packs. The mosquitos were quite dense, although not a huge problem, because we had sprayed ourselves with enough deet to slay a passing bluebird. We loaded the tent quickly with sleeping bags, dry clothes (mostly), stripped off our wet clothes, and dived into the tent, sealing out mother natures as fast as possible. It was now dark out, and we ate energy bars by flashlight. Then it started raining. In fact, it didn’t rain so much and thunder. This was hands down the most impressive thunderstorm I have ever witnessed- it was essentially strobe light of lightning, accompanied the constant tremendous rumble of god like thunder. Fortunately our tent held up dandy, with little leakage. We slept poorly, on uneven ground, until morning, when fortunately the raining stopped. We then packed up our bags, ate an energy bar breakfast, and hit the river again for seven hours. The next campsite, thankfully, was amazing, and we stayed there for three nights.   


At this campground, which on a steep hill, overlooking the river, was just a few cleared out spots where people could camp, but besides us it was deserted. This was my favorite campground. We got all of our stuff dry by the fire, and cooked loads of food. By the end of staying at this campground I finished "Mort" by Terry Pratchett, and "Jurassic Park" by Micheal Crichton (I think they are my favorite two authors, though Douglas Adams is a close third) 
We even found dinosaur footprints- that or they were from an emu. Which seems unlikely.

The next day, my brother said we should paddle the last two hours of the river, despite the light rain and wind. On the river, the sun’s warmth completely consumed by clouds, and harsh wind picking up vindictively in the opposite direction of our travel, and clothed in only T-shirts and shorts, we took the leaky canoe out on the river, its stern sagging like a wet laundry line, we headed out, although not before I literally shook Brian by the shoulders, shouting, “ARE YOU CRAZY?”, we took off. Thirty minutes later, with the rain picked up to a nice health downpour, I was the coldest I had ever been in my entire life- the next minute broke that record, and so did the next ninety minutes. While at first my legs fell painfully asleep, this eventually ceased to be a problem as I lost feeling altogether. On the delirious verge of hypothermia, we put on the hoodies we were keeping in a sack so we would have something dry to put on later. These were soon soaked as well. I am not a cursing man, but for the last thirty minutes, the wind blew away a steady stream of increasingly potent explicatives, muttered under my breath. At some point I was literally crying in agony, which has the small benefit of warming my cheeks a few millikelvin. When we reached the boat dock (something I feared we would never see, at least from a mortal perspective) I found out what it is like to walk with prosthetic legs- I was definitely sending the “walk” command downstairs, but I think my hips were doing nearly all of the work. The rest of that day was spent under a little pavilion as the rain continued unabated, in the mad pursuit for dry clothes- my feet did not have feeling returned to them until I made a rock and sock soup over the propane burner we had. 

The next day, we got a ride to town, and stayed at a hotel for two nights. We got some Chinese food, watched Avengers a second time, and also MIB3. We went to book stores, and organized our stuff. We then packed up the canoe and mailed it home.

The rest of the story was the 27 hour bus ride.
I'll just say, I am so thankful we didn't have to do that on the way there as well.

If I had to describe the whole thing with one word, that word would be "Adventure"