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Ask Grateful Ed
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I occasionally get questions from the curious, which I file carefully away in
large white bucket marked "Pig Fodder" in red grease pencil by its previous
owner. I've just plunged my hand into the bucket and come up with a
half-dozen queries, and I intend to answer them as best I can.
Dear Ed: Where did the phrase "squirrely water" come from?
Well, the adjective "squirrely" comes down to us from the Gegonquin Indians
of the Tellico Basin, and is actually a corruption of the original
"squa-warr-e-li". As best I can tell from some ten minutes' careful
research, the Gegonquins were a tribe of brewers who concocted a weak corn
beer in huge skin cauldrons. The Gegonquin maidens were responsible for the
agitation of the mixture with their feet, which horrified the first canoeing
trappers and traders to sample the end product. These
connoisseurs corrupted the original Gegonquin phrase, which means "Swirling
Vat of Foot-Funk" into something more enunciable, which is how we come to
describe zones of funky water as "squirrely".
Hey Ed...who has the right-of-way, the person surfing the wave, or the person
coming through the rapid?
Oh, good Lord. Clearly the surfer has the right-of-way. It breaks down like
this...when you're surfing, you are in Zen. You incur no karma, you offend
no one, and you are one with the river. Self-actualization is realized.
Now, it doesn't take a special kind of fool...hell, I can do it myself...to
run through a rapid and knock a Supplicant of the Divine off his wave. But
you have to understand that to do so incurs great big steaming wads of bad
karma. Whew! You'll be reborn as a cockroach, or toast, or something. So
don't do it.
A Question For Ed: What are sponsons?
A sponson is a large rubber mallet used to drive bamboo slivers under the
toenails of people who ask annoying questions like "What are sponsons?"
Dear Ed: What's the maximum number of boats which can be carried by a light
pickup truck?
Hiram Jones of Purple Briar, Tennessee, reports successfully hauling 57 boats
and assorted gear with a 6-cylinder 4-wheel drive extended cab Ford Ranger.
By using a Yakima rack with custom-made 160-inch bars, Hiram was able to
stack ten boats four layers deep across the cab of his truck while carrying
16 additional boats in the bed. He placed the shortest of the boats, a
Pyranha MicroBat, in the passenger's seat. Each boat contained requisite
sprayskirts, neoprene, et cetera, and all paddles were loaded into specially
constructed multimounts attached to the truck's rearview mirrors.
Hiram mentions in his note that while the vehicle's top speed was only 21
miles per hour, he was able to achieve the impressive fuel efficiency of 4
gallons per mile.
Ed, I hear tell that the federal government may be placing special taxes on
kayaks and other outdoor recreational equipment. Any comment?
As with most government programs, the bill proposing these taxes (House
Resolution #1143XA44558 ver. 1.c.a.2.0) is part of a larger effort involving
the United Nations, the World Bank, and several of the more unsavory members
of the...er...Whitewater scam. Black, unmarked kayaks have been spotted
hovering over many rivers in Montana and other states in the Northwest. It
is widely reported on the Internet (see
rec.boats.conspiracy) that these kayaks are piloted by Cuban expatriates for
surveys of navigable waterways in the American backcountry in the event that
foreign invasion of the US occurs and militia groups take to the hills.
Government levies on kayaks and other backcountry equipment will have two
effects: they will finance current exportations of whitewater equipment to
third world countries in Latin America and they will de-incentivize domestic
equipment purchases, thus restricting the flow of such equipment to militia
groups. Additional legislation to regulate the manufacture and sale of
"aggressive" kayaks such as the Razor, the Fury, and the Whip-It is being
drafted in closed Congressional committee.
Your congressperson has the power to halt this nonsense in its tracks! Please
write to him or her care of your local draft board and make your voice heard.
Violent threats and hysterical raving have been shown to be highly effective
means of communication with federal officials.
Dear Ed, I'm a whitewater paddler, and my husband of twenty years has
recently expressed an interest in tandem open boating. What should I do?
Seek professional help immediately. You are in way over your head.
Ed, would you say that fewer people are paddling these days?
Someone else might say that, but I wouldn't. Seems like I can't get near
water anymore without being run over, mowed down, bumped, rammed, rubbed,
poked, prodded, slammed, and generally shat on. And although I tend to
paddle in spots which are more crowded anyway, even the hair boaters are
finding traffic on the steep creeks. I think there might be a few reasons
for this:
1)The Dead aren't touring anymore, and plenty of people that used to spend
summers following them around are now hiking the AT and paddling.
2)Adventure sports are "in". See any of various soft drink commericials.
3)Being a victim of a Dilbert workplace has funny effects on the psyche. I
think that as job pressures continue to mount, people are turning away from
materialism and towards escapism again, and this is why outdoor sports,
Carribean cruises, sci-fi movies, and other methods of actualizing fantasies
are so popular. If you work sixty hours a week, on your off days you're
going to want to get as far away from work as possible.
OK, which I intend to do right now. See you on the river.
Ed
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