The result: a half-dozen delicious red Bartlett pears, perfectly ripe. 

Sometimes you have to stop and just wonder. 

Wait, In complete seriousness: W the actual F?

An angel in heaven is advising us to be concerned with (or possibly to find complacent self-satisfaction in) the pursuit of wealth?  I stopped going to Sunday school early, but I seem to remember the point of Christianity was -–– not this. 

I had viral encephalitis as a young person. I woke up in the ICU with my priorities rearranged (I was thenceforth incorrigible at school, since really –– what discipline could compare with the creeping onset of full paralysis and unconsciousness?) and lingering issues with language processing.

​These five words are parallel to what I sometimes hear when when people are talking.
  

I will hand it to Old Milwaukee for claiming its stake, but does this not beg the question?

He talked about the storms and heat and the nice lady who nearly insisted on calling an ambulance for him. He shared survival tips, like, if you can't get to sleep, you're not tired enough.

He lent guide books and told the guys where they might best employ a fully-rested daylight reconnoiter to save trouble later. Such as the bypass for the Class III whitewater rapids of Big Shoals. They took notes and planned accordingly.

The scouting adventure started in the pre-dawn hours, when I dropped the fellas off at the Fort Clinch boat ramp. They headed upstream (pushed on a flooding tide) toward the Georgia border.  

Our planned rendezvous was a little boat-access beach at the Route 17 overpass –– an isolated and frankly sketchy location about 19 nautical miles* away. What is it about waterfront parks that leads to so much graffiti, used condoms, and empty beer containers?  

​Rhetorical question.  

​Discretion being the better part of valor, I betook myself to a cozy coffee shop and hitched up my trusty interwebs machine. All the better to track their progress. 

After crisscrossing the Florida-Georgia line an estimated 294 times, we achieved St. George, Georgia. This tiny town is the southernmost named settlement of Georgia and has the happy privilege of marking the start of the Ultimate Florida Challenge's 40 mile portage.

So each time I spell "40 mile portage," it seems like a) a typo, or b) an episode of Alone, wherein our heroes must carry their barque through the woods. Even to me.

But nope. It's c) a roadside slog on a country highway frequented (but not too frequently frequented) by logging trucks.

At the end of the forty miles (37 miles? Who the hell's counting?), one reaches the auspicious village of Fargo, Georgia, population 321 (as of 2010), home of the Stephen C. Foster State Park.

Which is where, naturally, you can get down (way down) upon the Suwannee River.
​  

Sooookay, back to the actual Suwannee river and those –– who knew?! –– a Class III rapids. Big Shoals, by name, visible on satellite maps, and, I am relieved to report, avoidable by a 150-or-so-yard portage to skip the worst of the whitewater (and rocks).

The guys took off from Big Shoals State Park a mile or so upstream of Big Shoals and came ashore seven or so nautical miles* downriver at White Shoals, Florida after walking AROUND the alarming rocks.  

They did locate several pieces of landscape in the lesser whitewater of Little Shoals, and the newly named (more anon!) canoe bears a minor scar or two. 

Team Spawn gathered enough intel to keep the two sailors chattering all the way back to Jacksonville. Not the least important bit was what culinary delights await them at the distal point of the 40 mile portage...

*Why nautical miles? A nautical mile is first and foremost a minute of latitude. And even though our team is almost never going to go 1.5 land miles without a change in longitude, it's navigational tradition.

 

Training for the Ultimate Florida Challenge adventure race has been ramping up around here. Slowly. We all know how long it takes to recover from a simple bout of tendonitis. 

Over the summer at the Farm, Captain TwoBeers hiked a few miles every morning (minus a couple of lay-days for fishing and sailboat racing), and each week we tried for at least one tandem kayak trip. ​

The tandem boat is an excellent addition to our summers. Instead of tethering my kayak shamefully to Jeff's when the mileage on my hinky shoulder is up, I've got built-in rescue propulsion. AND it feels like I am contributing to his fitness regimen.

​Each time I set down my paddle and pick up the camera, the binocs, the Googlemaps, it's for the Spawn team effort.

I'm not just dreamily contemplating the scenery, dang it, I'm coaching. 

But as summer passed, we stepped up. Jeff hunted down and ordered a racing canoe made of Kevlar®.  The supply-chain kinks felt palpable as the small factory in Wisconsin kept us apprised of when/if they were able to start building again.  

Our faith in capitalism was rewarded when a nice fella drove up in his truck and unloaded the as-yet-unnamed canoe one sunny October day.

Thanks to the advice of young Chip Clifton, the team will be using kayak paddles on the canoe –– a seemingly small distinction, but one that should save mileage on everyone's hinky shoulders.

So while Moresailesaid and TwoBeers are working on their physical stamina and paddling skills, as well as sailing all sorts of boats in all sorts of events, I am thinking about the ground-control challenges.    

It's an unsupported adventure race, which means that between stages, our heroes are on their own. They can stay at hotels if they want (they won't, but they could), or eat at a fancy restaurant along the way (they might, weather dictating). And at the end of each stage, I can meet up with them, replenish their supplies, usher them into hot showers, et cetera.  

​There will be a lot of road to cover chasing the team, which also translates into a lot of tourist-y opportunity for me.  Fort Clinch, for instance, is a race check-in point, and ALSO where they switch from sailing Spawn to paddling the as-yet-unnamed canoe.  

What did I know about Fort Clinch? Absolutely nothing. I might guess it's a former military outpost, probably historical, possibly a good spot for making out.  

NOTE:
​The Ultimate Florida Challenge begins on the first Saturday in March at sunrise at Fort Desoto beach.  Depending on what time a person keeps, either the clock is ticking or the drums are calling...

<Insert sound of fife and drum>

Does anyone else see a saluting soldier sporting a tricorn hat?  Respect from above the treeline.




This day was formerly known as Armistice Day, marking the end of the "war to end all wars" back in 1918. 

So steps.  

I meant to just put a couple of flagstones into the ground, but then the stones started piping up and the hill was asking for more...

Foodies have "amuse-bouche." Readers have flash fiction. Writers make up little stories about whatever comes to hand. 

She wasn't Betty Boop, not exactly, though that unsettling glint in her eye suggested she warn't no Campbell Soup kid. 

She'd maintained an over-the-shoulder flirtation with any old observant gaze for –– let me count this out –– more than 75 years. Didn't a glamorous little thing like her just get tired of her role? Didn't she want to shake out her hair, shrug those shoulders square, and frown from time to time?  

At least she was out of the closet. Nobody likes to spend a lifetime –– a literal lifetime, if you do the depressing math –– holding on in the dark.  And whether she was the vivacious creature she appeared, or if, like Jessica Rabbit, she was just painted that way, that face made it harder to shut a bifold door.

So she there she hung in the window. Peeping. A coquette such as she must peep, surely. With that coy, art-deco fan of cloth –– a peignoir draped over her shoulder, I think with matching wee mirabou mules on her off-screen baby feet. 

Maybe seven decades gave a gal perspective along with a few chips and pallor.  She might have burned as wooden matches, or splintered as a chair polished by generations of school-children's sit-upons. She could have backed a mirror or a dresser drawer. She might have moldered in an attic or ended in a bin.

Instead, she waited liminal, looking in. A few characterless companions for company. The time passes.  
​

As many of you readers know, each March brings the Everglades Challenge, which is an unsupported, human-powered adventure race of some 300+ miles along the left coast of Florida. Vessels of astonishing diversity push off the beach at Fort DeSoto at dawn on the first Saturday in March and make their various ways south and across the Everglades to Key Largo, Florida.

What is the Ultimate Challenge? Just a lot more sleep-deprived, salt-encrusted, navigationally puzzling ooey-gooey goodness!

Spawn will (knock wood) depart as usual from the beach, but instead of ending in Key Largo, their race will continue for another 900 miles, up the right side of the state, across the top of Florida, and then back to the beach where it started.

1200 miles in a small boat. 

Wheeee!

The big twist? Once they approach the Georgia border, they'll switch out of Spawn and into a canoe. (I know! Jeesh!). There's a long paddle through narrow and skinny water (possibly less skinny, but still narrow, depending on the preceding weeks' rainfall. There's even some Class III whitewater.), which prohibits both Spawn's mast and her generous width. 

The event's rules permit sailors to transform into paddlers mid-race, as it were, and, naturally, requests they change back when the course permits...which will happen AFTER the 40-mile portage.

Forty miles! Pushing their canoe! On a country highway!

​Wheeeee!

Training started this past summer. 

This will be a world of difference from the two-day sprint of past Challenges. 

The team's goal is to get it done.  In under three weeks.

The laundromat: a hotbed of outrage.

Maybe it's a North Country thing, this expression of grievances. Every day is Festivus and they have a problem with you people. 

I've resisted the impulse to post the rather frequent road-side rants –– partly because I have very little access to the web, but also because it seems so unkind to broadcast these beefs or private tragedies any farther.

The farm with the big hand-lettered sign about the "Careless Driver who Ran over our Dog..." or the beautifully manicured lawn with the sign: "Community Propane SUCKS!!!!" or, the one I can't quite read and am afraid to stop for a photo or a closer look, which starts "This is NOT a parking Lot! It's Private Property..." and ends with "Now get OFF my PROPERTY."

I visited Saratoga Springs as a 15-year-old on a 4-H trip of some stripe. I suppose it had to do with Horse Bowl or another equine-related activity. It was meant to be a treat, spending the day at this classic horse-racing center.

​I don't remember how we got there, or why we were sitting in a dining room listening to some adult talk about something or another. For seemingly eternity.

But what I do remember, with vivid, visceral detail? The sensation of the tiny packet of catsup between my restless fingers. I flipped that packet between my fingers the way a magician moves a coin from knuckle to knuckle. It had a particular squeezy resistance to pressure when I flexed a fist.

And then it didn't.

A small packet of catsup, I have every recollection, can be propelled by hand to a distance of two banquet tables.

The teaspoon of tomato-based condiment can, demonstrably, touch base with at least five innocent bystanders. And for the remainder of that day in Saratoga Springs was divided into thirds: first third: horror and mortification. Second third: silent apology. Third third: suppressed hysteria.

I competed in a horse show at Skidmore College when I was in college. I don't remember anything about the horse I rode, or how I performed, but I can recall exactly the swoop and sway of the car on its way. The upperclassman driving us in his car talked to his audience of student sardines with liberal use of both hands, regardless the conditions of the road.

This time, the trip Saratoga Springs was just delightful. 

A pleasant drive. The Saratoga Lake Yacht Club welcomed us with extraordinary warmness, our visit to the racetrack was unmarred by condiment incident, and we came home with the sailing equivalent of blue ribbons...

​