Saturday morning I wake to James Brown. (“Papa’s got a brand new bag!” bring-a-linga-linga-ling! “OW!”)
“That’s nice” you say. “It’s such a cheerful song.”
Of course I reply, as you know I will, “Shut up.”
I should be coaxed gently from the bosom of Morpheus, preferably by the Swedish Bikini Team. The Little Woman isn’t, how should I put this?, a quivering mass of womanly desire first thing in the morning. So I’d settle for the Swedish Bikini Team. No dice. I get James Brown. “OW!”
I go wake Soupo. “Hey. Gettup.” He doesn’t know from the Swedish Bikini Team, and he’s only four and a half.
“G’way. Wanna sleep s’more.” That’s my boy.
“If you don’t get up, you’ll have to stay home with Mommy while I go canoeing with Uncle Skippy.”
It takes a few moments for this to burn through the sleep-fog. I know when it does. His head pops up and he jumps out of bed.
Since breakfast is one of the three or four Most Important Meals of the Day, I crack open a tub of little powder sugared doughnuts. I love Sam’s Club. You can buy your weight in little powder sugared doughnuts in a conveient plastic tub. A little milk for dunking, we’re set.
We get dressed in our swim trunks and t-shirts, sandals and floppy hats. We are two stylin’ dudes. Because of chafing issues, I have to change into a different pair of shorts. That’s all I’m saying.
The car’s loaded up and we’re off to pick up Uncle Skip. He throws his junk in the hatch, and we’re off. The canoe livery is about a half hour away. Soupo chatters the whole way.
“Can I have a pedal? I want a pedal.”
“A paddle?”
“Yeah. I want one.”
“If there’s one your size, sure. You can have a paddle.”
“Good. I want a pedal.”
Then he’s on about alligators. Then crabs. Then something else. It’s fun to drive with a four and a half year old hopped up on little powder sugared doughnuts heading for his first canoe trip. Try it.
We get there. It’s quarter after 9. Our reservation is for 9. But this is Indiana, not Ohio. So it’s really 8 here. We’re ahead of schedule. Not that it matters. The reservation is so they know about how many canoes to drag down to the river, not a hard and fast tee-off time.
Our local guide, M’Tumboo, warns us of the dangers of the river. The ferocious crocadile, the territorial hippopatamouses… hippopatami… the territorial hippo, then the other ones too. Actually his name was Kyle, and the orientation was essentially “Don’t break our stuff, or you’ll have to pay for it, and wear your life jacket.”
We’re off. Me in front, Soupo in the middle, our cooler and food, then Uncle Skippy in back. Now, technically he’s Captain Skippy. He’s in charge of our boat. He rules with an iron hand. Skipper Skippy. Ha! That cracks me up. We paddle off into the middle of the river.
“Hey!” we hear from shore. “Go that way!”
So we turn around and go the other way. It’s not a fast river. It’s a pokey little river. It’s really a jumped-up creek, but they call it a river. The Whitewater River. The Green Water Creek doesn’t sound as picturesque.
We get out in the current, such as it is. When the water gets wide (don’t let me loose you with the technical sailor-talk) and still we spin the canoe. I back-paddle like crazy on one side, and Skip paddles like crazy on the other. The canoe spins on its middle. Wooo! Are we wild!
We stop at the first island. Just a lump of rocks and sand in the middle of the river. It had a few trees on it, so it was pretty cool. We skipped rocks across the water and “explored”. Soupo thought he was Dr. Livingston or something. After a few minutes we head back into the river.
“I’m thirsty.”
“Why didn’t you tell us when we were stopped?”
“I wasn’t thirsty then.”
We stop at the next island. You could probably throw a rock from one to the other. Don’t though. You could put an eye out. I root through the cooler. A few bottles of water, some Coke, some fruit punch that swears it has fruit in it somewhere, and lem… hey! Wher’s the lemonade? How can you be in a boat without lemonade? What moron forgot… oh yeah, I was in charge of stocking the cooler. The fruit punch wasn’t too bad. We also had some peanut butter crackers. The orange crackers, you know. The color you will never find in nature. We had those.
Back to the river. We see a few ducks and a heron. Skippy says it’s a Great Blue Herron. It didn’t look better than adequate to me. But I wasn’t going to start a fight.
We hit the halfway point and stop for lunch. Ham salad sandwiches and bottled water. Some Scooby Doo fruit snacks, I ate Velma’s head, and gummy worms. And beef jerky.
Back to the river, and we drift with the current. It’s only a six mile trip and we have all day. It’s a little overcast, but the sun keeps trying to peek out. It’s really a nice day. Soupo is paddling (or pedalling, depending on who you ask) the whole way. Sometimes he even paddles in the same direction as Uncle Skip and me. We spin the canoe again, just because we can.
Then we spy them. Around the bend, by the water line. Sea cows. Or river cows. OK, really just regular cows, but they’re standing in the river. About twenty head. With there bodies too, Just twenty cow heads in the river would be gross.
The river is pretty clean. We see one old refridgerator rusting on the bank. A few plastic grocery bags. Really not too much stuff. Then, five minutes after the cows, car carcasses. About a dozen car carcasses. They’ve been there for a while. Trees are growing through the windows. Old square bodied cars. If you know anything about cars, you’d look at then and say “Yup, 1947 Anderson Excellsiors. Too bad they’re all rusty.” Me, I saw old rusty cars. I have no idea what kind they were.
We did pretty good, rolling into the pick-up point. We didn’t get hung up on anything, and we didn’t fall out of the canoe. Even when the water got “bumpy”. Of course the last 10 yards, we almost spilled three times. Stupid current.
Soupo left his hat on the shuttle bus. We had to wait 15 minutes for it to come back. The driver had his hat when he got back, so everything turned out alright. Better than alright. The lady who works the reservation desk came out and gave Soupo a sucker.
Soupo went off to sea a boy and came back a… slightly older boy. But he did get a tattoo. A temporary tattoo, but still. We put it on him in the middle of the river. A good time was had by all.
-Rue.