Popped a cherry today: Canoeing

Yes, Dear Readers, I've never been in a canoe until today. Here's what happened...

One of my bestie galpals posted that the basement of her brand new house was flooding due to rain. So, I packed up my Japanese floor vacuum, my two commercial kitchen-grade water hoses, and my cheapie cheep pressure hose attachment, and off I went to help. From my house to her house is usually 45 minutes on a Saturday. Today it took two hours and fifty five minutes. Every normal route that could get me from my house to her house was under water. Traffic was as slow and confused as a grandmother pushing a shopping cart.

I pressed on, and got to her house in the afternoon. She was relaxing with friends and babies in her backyard, an inch of water left in her new basement, and hubby number three who I haven't met at that point was in the house "handling things." After ten minutes the friends and the babies left. She and I grabbed goblets of sangria and went for a walk.

She lives in a hamlet near a river, and the rains that hit her area had caused the river to crest and rainwater to erupt from street drains. It looked fairly harmless. My pal turns to me and says; "Those boys shouldn't be in the water, what about water moccasins?" She's from Texas.

"What? We don't have those here." I don't really know that, but I would think that our subarctic winter temps would kill them off in hibernation. I also don't want to make her feel bad so I lob in "I do remember that episode* of 'Lonesome Dove' though." *Spoiler alert - getting bit up by a nest of water moccasins is how the Irish kid dies in the story.

She grins. "Hey, the previous owners left their canoe - you want to go get it" The wink of her eye is a dare. It is either yes or no, but I can tell that her life now, while it's everything she wanted, a husband, a baby, a great house, a downtown job, it is Dullsville, baby, the life is boring her to bits. She's from Galveston, the daughter of a Texas Ranger, she's lived in New York, Dallas, Houston, London, Los Angeles, been an "exotic dancer", a rock and roll tour photographer, in the gallery scene, in advertising. I can tell she needs this.

"Um, you know I've never been in a canoe, right?" With that, she knows I've agreed to her scheme.

"Ha ha! Just like you were never on a motorcycle until you met me!" Yep, we're doin' it.

"Okay, I'm in. But I'm not riding bitch this time." And we're off.

She leads me into the other side of her backyard, and there on the ground is the biggest silver aluminum canoe I've ever seen. And it is filthy. On it are permit stickers that are 1983 1984 1985. We foosh-scrub it, haul it out to the alley, and carry it to the water. She's so excited she's practically running with it. We get it in, and she warns me- "Let me do the paddling, if you've never paddled before, I don't want to fight what you're doing." "Okay." She paddles us on.

Now, street paddling is not river paddling. There are curbs, and garden gnomes, and garbage can lids, and all sorts of terrain issues. I listen to her, and not paddle, but I do shove us off of fire hydrants and high points in the pavement. We hit lawn, and since I am in the front, I hop out to push us off.

Let the record show that I am a damn fine canoeist. A natural. I push us off and scamper in, staying low and steady. I pull the boat through water with complete efficiency. My friend is extremely impressed and rather grateful, I thank my Viking ancestors.

As we're paddling along, we are heavily photographed. People are silly, and wonderful. After a half hour or so we come across folks who are sandbagging their houses. Why, I don't know. I guess it is the instinct of a mammal to defend the nest, even when it is pointless and beyond logic. Fighting back is better than not, so we put fun-time aside to load up sandbags into the canoe. We spend the rest of the evening delivering them until we run out of sunlight and bags.

So, there you have it. If you ever want to canoe with me, I'm really, really good at it.