Jomegat's Weblog

Today, the Pathfinders met in a shopping center parking lot in Concord to assemble for our first Memorial Day parade. We fell in behind the Rundlet Middle School band, and I was pretty impressed by them. They were about a hundred strong, and they played very well. Their director stopped and said “Hi” to us before the parade started. He told us to be ready for a car to pull in behind the band. That was their water car. He offered to give us water if we needed it, and for that I was thankful. This being the first time I have ever been in charge of a group marching in a parade, I didn’t even think of that.

I was in band during my last year of high school and during my sophomore and junior years at Murray State. I have marched in far more parades than I have watched from the sidelines. But again, this was the first time I was in charge of the group with whom I marched, and that definitely offers a different perspective.

Cheryl, the director who preceded me came out for the parade too. She served as our drill instructor last year. David has been doing that this year, but he was sick today. As we set out, I called “column left march” when I meant “column right march.” Oops! Cheryl offered to call the commands, and I immediately and gratefully accepted her offer.

She did ask me when she should call “eyes right” which is when everyone except the rightmost column looks to the right while the director salutes. I told her I’d like to do it as much as we could. It is usually reserved for the reviewing stand, but I didn’t know if there would be one (and there wasn’t). Instead, she called “eyes right” every time we passed a veteran. They were easy to spot because they were wearing VFW hats (or similar), and they would remove them and salute the US Flag we were carrying. “Eyes right!” Both Cheryl and I would thank them for their service. It left a lump in my throat to think of what those guys had done for us.

The parade took about an hour, but it seemed like it was a lot shorter than that. I had enough flags so that about half the kids were carrying one. So I had them switch halfway through so they wouldn’t get too tired, and so that everyone would have a chance to carry one.

We had a new banner (thank you Darlene!) that two kids would carry, a US, Pathfinder, and NH State flag, plus four guidons. That’s nine flags, and ten of the kids showed up (the one flagless kid and the guidons carriers swapped with the banner and big flag carriers).

In no time, we arrived at the capitol and Rundlet started loading their instruments on their buses. Our group walked back to the shopping center, and that was pretty much it. Joy asked me if I could assemble the kids (she had some cookies she had baked for the Baking honor). So I did and I told them how proud I was of them, and that they looked fantastic. Then I turned them over to Joy. She had a surprise for me – a dozen cookies! She also had a batch of brownies for the rest of the club. I was totally not expecting that. 🙂

When I got home, Jonathan was outside mowing the front lawn. Usually he and David each mow half the yard, but with David under the weather, and since the parade didn’t even come close to wearing me out, I took David’s turn. I mowed more than the boys generally do, including my paths through the woods, the edge of the driveway, and some “wild” spots here and there. Plus the yard.

Then I went in for a bit of rest, but Penny wouldn’t have any of that. She wanted to play (and the mower terrifies her). So I took her for a walk down to Sandogardy Pond. And I took my resurrected camera with me.

Here’s some of what I saw (and I can’t tell you how glad I am to be able to share photos with you again).

This was in my east woods along the freshly mown trail to the frog pond.

This one was slightly more lonely.

The last time I went by this one, the light was failing and I didn’t have an operational tripod setup. This time the light was better and my tripod mount was fixed. It is a better result.

My camera was out of commission when I first noticed this was in bloom on Saturday. It was nice to be able to capture it today.

The blue-bead lily, aka corn lily, aka Clintonia borealis is too far along now for nibbling on the cuke-flavored leaves. But the flowers sure look nice.

I saw these four ladies slippers Saturday too, but couldn’t share them with you until today. Penny patiently waited for me to finish taking their portrait so I could throw her a stick.

This used to be a forest with a trail through it until the owner logged it. That broke my heart, especially since the loggers left such a mess behind. It’s hard to walk over all the sticks they left strewn everywhere, but I can’t really complain since it’s neither my property nor the public’s. As you can see, the forest is trying to re-establish itself again (and coming along nicely).

Most of the star flowers are finished now. I was surprised to see this one still looking so good. It’s probably the last one I will photograph until next spring.

Here’s one you don’t often see – poison ivy (Toxicodendron radicans) blossoms. I didn’t get too close, as I am most decidedly allergic to them.

Thanks for stopping by!

Tonight I picked up my camera again, perhaps out of desperation, and somehow turned it on. I did swap the memory card in it, so maybe that was it. I have no idea really. Thanks to everyone for their advice on overcoming my broken camera – I really appreciate it. Maybe tomorrow I’ll be able to take a few photos again.

Today was insanely busy. The Pathfinders had our annual yard sale. We moved a lot of stuff, but sales were a little off this year as compared to previous years. We also swept the parking lot, which is in fact my favorite fundraiser for the club – because it’s work the kids can do vs me and the rest of the staff doing most of it for them. Still, the yard sale and lot sweeping make for an exhausting day.

When we got home, Beth packed so she could spend the night with a friend (one of the Pathfinders). I drove her over and then came home and took a shower. Then I went through my photos from September until now (minus two days) so I could burn the Pathfinder pictures onto a disk and give them to one of the other staff members. She will turn them into a slideshow for our Investiture ceremony next Saturday.

Tomorrow we march in Concord’s Memorial Day parade. After that, I will have to take it easy for a bit.

This morning when we arrived at church, I thought I might take a peek in the canopy garage to see how much stuff had been donated for our annual Memorial Day yard sale. My intent was to take a photo so I could share that here. But my camera would not turn on. Thus the title of this post.

Perhaps it was a bad idea to put the threaded insert into the tripod mount, or perhaps 40,000 pictures was all it could handle (that’s not an exaggeration). So now I find myself without a camera, unless I count my cell phone. But that has a pretty crappy camera in it, so I don’t really count it at all! I don’t know if I can fix it this time, if I’ll have to go without a camera for a while, or if I will get a new one soon. With the prospect of sending Jonathan to UNH this fall, this is not the best time for me to get a new camera.

When we got home I had some lunch and then figured I might take a nice nap. I figured I could slip under the covers for an hour or so between shedding my church clothes and donning my hiking clothes. But before I could manage that, my phone rang. Joy, one of my Pathfinders (who lives pretty close to my house) wanted to know if she and Beth could go bike riding. Well, I knew Beth would want to do that, and I was planning on doing something after the nap anyhow. So I swapped the order of the nap and the activity. Also, I thought it would be better to have an adult around – after all, the roads between my house and Joy’s has some dangerous traffic on it.

So I put on my hiking clothes, got the bike down, filled some water bottles, and Beth and I set out. It’s only 2.8 miles to Joy’s house. Then the three of us biked down to Sandogardy Pond. It was 81 degrees, and there were a lot of people there. I definitely understand why people like going to the pond, but I also like it a lot better when I’m the only one there. With the crowds comes the cigarette smoke and the country music. I let the girls wade for 15-20 minutes, and then we hopped on the bikes again and hit the trails in the town forest.

While we were near, we parked the bikes and then went and visited my Little Cohas Brook geocache. I had placed a travel bug in it back in March, but since no one has been there since, it has just sat there patiently waiting. I picked it up and will move it along as soon as I can.

We made our way back to the bikes, rode around the park for a little while, and then went back to Joy’s house. She gave us Klondike Bars (which were very much appreciated). Then Beth and I headed back home. I plotted our route on Google Maps, and figured that Beth and I put in about 8 miles all together.

Then I came home and had an abbreviated nap (it was nearly supper time). After supper, Penny was begging everyone to play with her, and I was feeling guilty for not taking her on the bike trip – but that’s such a hard thing to manage, especially when there is a road with dangerous traffic involved in the route. So David and I walked her down to Sandogardy.

There were fewer people there the second time around, which is fine by me. Penny had a great time chasing sticks, but I almost felt lost without my camera. I could see that the sheep laurel (Kalmia angustifolia) was almost ready to bloom, and the cucumber root (Medeola virginiana) already had. But no photos. The bunchberry (Cornus canadensis) is fully in bloom now too, but again… no photos.

How will I survive!

Most of these were around the front door of my house this evening. The one on the screen was on the back door though.

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It was a pretty muggy day here today. I took a walk around my woods with the pruners and a bow saw and widened up my path a bit. Beth has been riding her bike on the path, which is something I would like to see continue. One of these days I’ll get out there with the mattock too and move some of the high spots into the low spots. But for now, riding without getting slapped in the face by a branch will have to do.

Here are some shots I got today during my lunchtime walk.

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It has been a week since I posted anything, and since I don’t see any hope of recapping the past seven days with any kind of detail, I’m going to have to jump forward to the present.

But the quick recap is that I went to Spring Escape with Va and Beth last weekend, then haLd a Pathfinder meeting when we got back Sunday afternoon. I had a merit point make-up session on Tuesday, and I’ve hardly had time to sit down.

Pathfinder Investiture is coming up fast, and that’s always the most difficult aspect of being a director. I am responsible for determining what insignia every person in the club has earned, recording by insignia (so I know what to order), and then again by person (so I know who to give it to). Mathematically, that would be a simple matrix transpose operation, but I don’t know how to do that in a spreadsheet. So I do it by hand. I filled out the online order form last night – that took about an hour. I usually sit on my order for a day in case I remember something else, and of course, I did remember some things tonight. So I added them, placed the order ($450!) and then remembered a few more things. But once I’ve pulled the trigger, it’s too late. I’m sure I will remember a few more things in the next two weeks, so I always just plan to place another order after Investiture. Sigh. And this after about six hours of pouring over honor documentation!

But that’s not very photogenic, is it? Let’s start in with some photos from the past two days.

About half the wild blackberry canes on my place have bloomed now. I noticed that yesterday.

This is some sort of Viburnum growing in a planter next to my office. The leaves say maple-leaf viburnum (V. acerifolium), the flowers say hobblebush (V. lantanoides), and the habit says none of the above. It’s most likely a hybrid, but I have no idea if the two I’ve named are members of its ancestry. That’s why I dislike trying to id cultivated plants.

Fellow NH Blogger New Hampshire Garden Solutions posted photos of blue-eyed grass last week. I had been watching for some on my property to come up, but didn’t see it until today. But these blooms don’t stay open 24×7. And when they close, they just look like grass. So I could have missed them pretty easily. But not today!

I’ve had some sort of cinquefoil (Potentilla spp) blooming in spades for several weeks now. I won’t pretend to know which species this is though, and I’m too tired to try to guess tonight. I’ll happily settle for the genus for now.

In other news, I may have finally managed a permanent fix to my camera’s tripod mount. I bought a threaded insert (brass) and threaded it into the plastic. It was too long, so I put some duct tape on the camera around the insert and cut it off with a hacksaw. Then I filed down the brass and removed the duct tape (it was just there to keep me from scratching up the camera horribly). It seems pretty stable now, so hopefully this will do the trick.

Oh – and this marks my 1000th post. I wish I had time to make it a better one, but this will have to do.

I’ve not felt great the past couple of days. Some sort of sinus problem kept me home from work yesterday. It has since moved into my throat and chest, but as bad as it feels there, it’s a ton better than in my head.

I have a new laptop. My old hard drive was getting pretty full, and the screen was showing its age. It’s not a new new laptop, but rather, something we had kicking around at work. I also got a new hard drive for it, and have spent the evening installing the OS and copying files from my old laptop to this one. While stuff was copying, I took Penny to the backyard for some stick throwing, and also to play with a piece of #14 welder’s glass that I ordered online (it came in today).

What kind of fun can a guy have with #14 welder’s glass? How about… photographing the sun!

It has something of a green tint, doesn’t it? So I adjusted the white balance to make the sun white.

These are not great shots, but they are also the first ones I’ve ever taken of the sun. The camera didn’t much want to focus, so I set it to infinity manually. I think 93 million miles is close enough to infinity as far as the camera is concerned.

Now if I lived a bit farther to the west, I might use this to take pictures of the upcoming eclipse. Yeah – that’s on May 20. But I won’t get to see that here. Instead, I will wait until June 5 and take pictures of the transit of Venus. That won’t happen again for another 108 years, so if it interests you, you’d better get on it now. Google it if you must. The Innernets know all.

I also made a lap around the front of the property.

OK, the taxonomists have moved the American toad out of the Bufo genus and into some other genus. They keep doing that to a lot of frogs, and I just can’t keep track anymore. To me, it’ll be Bufo for a while longer.

While I was out doing all that, Va whipped out the mop. The mop and the dog are not compatible with one another, and since I was feeling better than I had been, I offered to take the dog down to the pond (even though there was only an hour of daylight left, and the sky was clouding up). I’m glad I did.

The lily of the valley was in bloom. There wasn’t a whole lot of available light, and macro photography does not much benefit from flash, so I did what I could. Jack up the ISO to about 800, minimize the f-stop, open up the shutter, and hold the camera as still as I could. I still need to make another attempt on that infernal tripod mounting hole.

We got to the pond, and the dock had been rolled out. So I walked out onto it and steadied my camera on a post to take this shot.

It was a nice evening, even if it was threatening to rain. Penny and I continued on, and I found the corn lilies in bloom.

I was out here a couple of day ago (before the black plague/Ebola or whatever took hold of my sinuses) and managed to harvest a few leaves from these. Peterson says they taste like cucumbers, and I would have to agree. I ate half of them raw, and I cooked the other half and had them with butter. They are pretty OK! You do have to get them before the leaves fully unfurl, otherwise, the flavor is way too strong.

Then Penny and I headed back to the house. I had been throwing sticks for her almost non-stop since we had left, and she was starting to get tired. She needs that. When we got home, she lied down next to her water bowl and just about emptied it. Yes – that’s the sign of a good walk!

These are shots I took mostly at my place this week. We’ll start with this little guy.

He didn’t want to hold still for me after I took this first shot, so it came out the best. It was overcast and rainy and heading towards sunset when I took it.

The starflowers have bloomed now. I’ve been watching them for a while, and this week was the first time this year I’ve seen one open. There are lots of them in my woods right now.

Here’s another one I’ve been watching, the Canada mayflower (Maianthemum canadense). This one has only partly opened, and that’s still farther along than most of them in my woods.

The dwarf ginseng is still in bloom for the most part, but this one has already fruited now. They aren’t in season for very long.

They do have edible roots, and I dug a few up and ate them last year. They were pretty good. These are along the stone wall bordering my neighbor, and he has cut a lot of trees (he’s getting ready to build a new house). So that lets a lot more sun into my woods, and I don’t know if these will bloom here again or not. They might get out-competed by sun-loving plants next spring. We’ll see.

I guess I’ve done the gaywings about to death now, but I liked this triplet. So here you go again.

My chokeberries are blooming now. Most blossoms are still closed, but there are a few brave ones here and there.

The red stamens fade quickly to pink, and then to brown. I like them best when they are red.

I’ve got plenty of wild sarsaparilla to go around. This one is just beginning to bloom.

Not all of them make flowers. I’d say maybe a quarter of them do. I have no idea why that would be though. Maybe it’s the conditions here, or maybe they are dioecious (i.e., male and female versions).

Here’s another chokeberry. This one has nice and red stamens.

And finally, here’s another amphibian for you.

If amphibians were bread, this post would be a flower sandwich.

Here are the other eight boats in the cardboard boat regatta last weekend. We’ll start with these two.

The yellow boat here is the one that took first place in the speed contest. They did a great job. I missed their run, as I was hauling Redux up the bank when their race occurred, but I heard they put three people in this tandem kayak. They did a fantastic job and had some good paddlers. I was very impressed!

The white one was very nicely done too. When the race was over, they actually mounted an outboard motor on it and took it out for a spin. They raced against the yellow one, but the yellow one beat it too. The front of this boat had a water cannon mounted on a rotating turret. After they lost their powered race against Woodstock, they began chasing the safety canoes, and squirting them with the water cannon. I think everyone enjoyed that spectacle.

Let’s see what else we had.

The most amazing thing about this one was that it completed the course without capsizing. I thought this one was the scariest boat. I have a shot of them paddling it back to the dock, and the look on the face of the girl in the bow says “I am terrified!” I would have been too.

This was not the only V-bottomed boat though. Portsmouth also had one.

They may have won a ribbon for creativity – I was late to the awards ceremony, so I’m not sure. They sure should have won a ribbon anyhow. Bananas are not known for their racing ability.

I don’t know which clubs entered these next few boats, but they were all very seaworthy, and I think the kids in those clubs deserved a pat on the back.

This was a well-executed catamaran. The major problem i saw with it was that it would have been pretty difficult to paddle on the starboard side because of the outriggers. The grass skirts more than make up for that though.

So that’s what we were up against. I hope you have all enjoyed our cardboard boat adventures, but I know you could not have as much as I did. Thanks for stopping by!

After the weekend’s adventures, I was one tired guy today. A single night’s sleep was not sufficient to revive me, and I found myself dragging after lunch. I gave up, went home a bit early, and took a nap. Now I feel a ton better, so I will attempt to share with you the adventures that caused all this fatigue! But I will limit it to just the cardboard boat race. There were a lot of other things that happened over the weekend, and by “The Full Account” I mean, “The Full Account of Our Cardboard Boat Adventures.”

I have already posted video of the maiden voyage of our canoe. Our boat was one of the two selected for the first run (by what criteria, I have no idea). I gave the camera to David, and he shot the video. I have not listened to it (because I don’t really care for listening to screaming crowds), but I understand that he might have made a few comments comparing the Redux to the “HMS Sinkeytowne” which we entered in 2009. While I agree that the Sinkeytowne was a better boat than the Redux, the Redux was Good Enough.

Anyhow… I diverge. Because he was shooting video, I have no stills. You’ll just have to look at this morning’s post and watch the video (if you are able – sorry to those of you who can’t, C!).

Natasha had the most merit points so far since January, so she got to go first. And since she chose the canoe over the kayak, the next two girls who also chose the canoe got to go with her. None of them had ever paddled stern before (which is the position that controls 90% of the steering, or 100% of the steering if I’m back there with inexperienced paddlers in the front).

Go!

I dug in as hard as I could, and the canoe was handling pretty nicely. We rounded the buoy, but that could have been done better. I turned downstream, when I should have turned upstream. That way, the current would have caught the front of the boat and turned us faster.

In 2009, we went out to the buoy and made a 90 degree turn, then went to the next buoy and made another, returning to the opposite side of the dock from which we started out. This year they modified it, and we were to make a 180 degree turn and return to the same starting point. That way is more fair, because then there’s no paddling upstream for one team, and downstream for the other.

Even though the turn was made with suboptimal execution, it was still not bad, and we managed a 58 second run. That was the fastest time at that point (duh) but it was also only the first run. I was pretty pleased with it.

We got out of the canoe, and I put my next four girls in. Jane has been in our club for six years, and I know she has done some canoeing. I’ve taken her out more than once myself. I just didn’t remember that she had never paddled stern before.

That was my mistake. They paddled out to the buoy straight as an arrow. But then they could not get the boat to turn. Usually kids have the opposite problem in that they can only make it turn and they can’t get it to go straight at all. They passed the buoy which was maybe 80 feet off shore. Then they went another 80 feet before they finally managed a turn. If the race had been all the way across the lake, they might have done pretty OK. But it wasn’t.

At that point in their journey, they switched from not being able to turn to not being able to go straight. Pretty soon the current caught them and they were just headed downstream. When they got too far off course, the safety canoes showed up, threw them a line, and began to tow them in.

When they got within 50 feet of the dock, the girl holding the line let go. That was a mistake. They were no more able to steer that canoe 50 feet from the dock than they had been 100 yards from it. It started going all screwy on them, and in short order, they rammed it into some rocks on the shore. I headed to the bank to swap out with one of them, but before I could get there, they had backed up and were far from my help. So I scrambled back up the embankment. When I got to the top, they came in and rammed those same rocks again. So back down I went. Again when I got there, they had reversed and were back out in the lake a pretty good distance, but I stayed put this time. Again, they came in and rammed the rocks on the bank, and I grabbed the canoe.

I told the girl in the bow to get out, and for the rest to stay put. I got in. They asked, “What do you want us to do Mr Thomas?” and I told them to stay put and keep their paddles in the boat. In short order I had them back at the dock. The crowd was cheering wildly, but I think they were pretty embarrassed. At that point, our team had both the fastest time and the slowest time. We hung on to the slowest time. That was not a statistic that changed as the other nine boats ran the race.

There was a club from the Bay of Fundy up in New Brunswick, Canada who came down for the Camporee too. They had built a boat, but did not wrap it in plastic for the trip down. It poured rain, and their boat was no longer intact when it arrived. I offered to let them take a cruise in ours, and they gratefully accepted. So back at the dock, I stayed in, and the two Canadian girls boarded. While I was waiting for them to board, I noticed a little stream of water gushing in through the hull. I was kneeling in the ex-bow (but since I was facing the other way, that was now the stern). The bow had taken a beating on the rocks, and we had probably 20 gallons of water aboard by the time the timekeeper told us to go.

With all that water aboard, the Redux was a lot less responsive to the paddle. I still hadn’t figured out that I should turn upstream around the buoy, and the boat really, really didn’t want to make the latter 90 degrees of the 180 degree turn. But I insisted. We got back, and by then, the Redux had shipped about 30 gallons of water. At that rate, it was not in danger of sinking for at least another 10 minutes. The water wasn’t coming in any faster than a kitchen faucet could fill it, and just think of how long it would take to fill a 300 gallon bucket from the kitchen sink. Yeah – a long time.

I got out of the boat, as that was its third and final voyage. Then came the task of getting it up out of the lake. Thirty gallons of water weighs about 240 pounds, and the cardboard was quite limp at that point. It took four of us to lift it up onto the dock. We flipped it over to drain, and then hauled it up the hill next to the fire pit.

During the trip up the hill one of the ends split open. Ahhh, you had a great run Redux. But this was your expected fate.

By this time I was pretty spent, having run two races full out, one rescue mission, and then hauled the sodden mass of cardboard, duct tape, and glue up the hill. I had a brief rest while they ran some other boats. And then it was time for “KAYAK spelled backwards” to race.

Beth was the first to go. I posted a photo of that last night, so you could go see it here if you wanted to. I was nervous that she might not have a good run, and that maybe she would steer it as well as the foursome in the Redux did, wrecking on the rocks, and with it, our chances of winning the fastest time. But she amazed me with her performance. She took two port-side strokes before she cleared the dock on the starboard side, and by then, the boat was crooked. She compensated with two starboard strokes, and then she was crooked the other way. But she got it straightened out pretty quickly and then made a beeline for the buoy. That’s when the kayak showed its real strength.

The plastic kayak upon which “KAYAK spelled backwards” was formed is a white water kayak (a “Prijon Rockit” if you must know), and it was designed for quick turns in whitewater. Doing a 180 around a buoy was childsplay, even for a child. She rounded the buoy in an instant and headed back to the shore. I think she finished in something like 90 seconds.

Then it was Joy’s turn.

She also turned in a stellar performance, as did Connor and Trevor.


And finally it was Cody’s turn.

Cody was the strongest paddler to pilot KAYAK. He finished the race in 45 seconds, and that was good enough to get us a second place ribbon. The 58 second run in Redux earned the third place ribbon. And yes, that means we did not have the fastest time. The Woodstock Whitetails pulled that off with a four-man kayak in a very impressive 38-second run. Wow. My hat is off to them. They had a couple of other runs that were also faster than Cody’s 45 seconds, but the judges only considered the fastest time by each boat, as the prizes were awarded to the boats rather than to individual runs.

While Cody was making his run, a mother from another club asked if her daughter could take a turn. They did not build a boat, but the girl wanted to give it a try. So I said, “Sure, as long as it’s still seaworthy when all the kids in my club had taken a turn.” It was still exceedingly seaworthy, but it had shipped maybe five gallons of water by the time Cody got out (he was our last kid to run in the kayak). The girl stepped in, but tried to kneel in the seat instead of sitting in it. I told her, “No, your legs go in front, and you sit here on the seat.” Then she decided to not go. I must admit, that five gallons of water did take the waterline up to the level of the seat. Since she declined, I hopped in instead. Yeah. It was wet all right.

By that time I had figured out the turn upstream tactic, and that’s exactly what I did. I powered the kayak out, made the zero-radius turn in record time, and then powered it back. But my time was 47 seconds. Cody. Beat. Me.

Ah well. I am a geezer compared to him. Also, I had already been out three times and was pretty well flogged by then. When I got out and we lifted the boat out of the water, we flipped it over to drain the five gallons of bilge and saw that a sheet of un-corrugated cardboard had partly come off. We had an underwater sail. Surely, that came off between Cody’s run and mine, right? Also, there had to have been more water in the kayak by the time I got in compared to Cody, right? It couldn’t be that I’m nearly 50, and can’t compete with a strapping teenage lad. That could never be it!
😉

We hauled KAYAK spelled backwards up the hill and placed it next to Redux. Then we got out a knife and cut out her name ot keep next to Sinkeytowns’s name in our trophy case.

Some of you might be sorry to see that our boats lasted only one day. But that was what I fully expected. I knew these weren’t as waterproof as the Sinkeytowne, and the Sinkeytowne was disposed of in exactly the same way. This is How It Was Meant To Be.

I didn’t think to cut out the Redux’s name until it was already in the fire.

You can see how KSB could no longer hold its shape. Some of that was due to the removal of the front deck, but it was mostly because… it was a sodden cardboard boat. So sodden, that these two were unable to heave it into the fire. Peter from Limington stepped in and gave a hand.

So Redux had three voyages, and Kayak spelled backwards had six. Not a bad performance!