Plenty of mistakes made.....

We planned for blistering hot weather, but Saturday was anything but that. A cold front blew in and dropped the temps into the 60's, as well as bringing rain. We hadn't been in the river 30 minutes when the rain started, and it continued for the next three hours or so. I had a long sleeved white t-shirt on, and I finally had to take it off.....I was so damn cold I was shaking. I figured that it being July in Missouri, even if it did rain, it would be warm enough it wouldn't matter. That was really dumb on my part.

If I recall right, the river was at 13 feet. The wing dikes were all underwater. Normally they would make the current faster in the channel, but instead the river was down to about 3 mph from a usual 5 mph due to the higher water level. As Mac mentioned, it also covered every damn sandbar from KC to Glasgow, with the exception of that great big 'un under the railroad trestle at Sibley (I think that's where we were, anyway.

) So anytime we wanted to get out of the canoe, we had to look for a sandy shelf and scramble up a muddy bank to get to it.

The seats were another mistake. They had backs and provided good support, but try sitting on a piece of hard molded plastic with no padding for hours at a time.

We had to stop a few miles upstream from Miami about 3 o'clock Sunday morning due to fog. Well, we didn't have to, but we thought it would be better to stop on our own before a can buoy did it for us....the fog was so thick we couldn't see a damn thing. Nothing will get your attention faster than being able hear the splash of a buoy and not being able to see it.

We went at it like we were killin' snakes, and by the time we got out of the river, we were a little bit loopy.

I got off work Friday morning and went over to Fayette to meet Kevin and then drop his vehicle at Wabo's in Glasgow, stayed up all day then went to bed Friday night about 10. Got up at 6 on Saturday and was on the river about 8:30 until about 3:30 Sunday afternoon. When I got to bed last night, I was asleep the instant my head hit the pillow.

Mac.....anytime you want to get your old ass into a staying-up-24-hours-plus pissing contest, I believe you know where I live.