Monday, September 18, 2006

Trip announced

While I'm blathering I should note that we're doing our semi-annual manly-men-only trip down the Green River at the beginning of October. When we first started running the Green we'd go in July, when it was about a million degrees, the river was low and slow, and the mosquitoes were supernaturally exsanguinary. It took us a couple of trips to figure out not to do that.

This time we studied a little on live blogging from the river--which in this stretch runs through narrow canyons with cliffs a couple of thousand feet high--via laptop and satellite phone. It's possible. Unfortunately it's also quite expensive, and while the nice lady I talked to about renting the satellite phone kept saying "it should work, it should work," she also kept saying, "the more open the area, the better it'll work." How about the bottom of a three-hundred-yard wide canyon from which you can see, at most, a 55 or 60-degree arc of sky? Is that open enough? "It should work, it should work." But even a GPS won't get a signal down there sometimes. "It should work, it should work."

Upshot is, we chickened out. We'll try it on the Missouri, which is broader and has much lower cliffs, next year.

Anyway, I think this stench-oozing excuse for a blog may well lie fallow while I'm gone. It's possible the D-a-W may rouse herself to post oncet or twicet, but, as she quite reasonably points out, aside from the occasional filthy comment blogging's not really her "bag."

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