Old Man River, he just keeps trying to kill me

As I mentioned in last week’s column, The Lovely Mrs. Taylor and I just got back from vacationing up north. Very relaxing.

I’m still trying to get back into “work mode,” never an easy task after a week of sleeping late, dining lavishly and basically living the life I was destined for—but denied access to—by cruel, cruel fate.

I didn’t lounge around the entire time, however. Mrs. T and I biked several great trails, walked an average of 500 miles a day (mostly through shops selling sweaters with “Mackinaw” this or “Mackinac” that embroidered on them), and even went on a canoe trip down the Crystal River.

The canoe trip was my idea. A chance, I thought, to relax a little. More importantly, a chance to get Mrs. Taylor the heck away from all those shops selling sweaters, fudge, knick-knacks, porcelain Indian dolls, cheap jewelry, flavored “gourmet” popcorn, moccasins, glassware, art in which sailboats and lighthouses figure prominently, and baseball caps that virtually scream “Tourist!” from every other head passing by on the street.

Shopping with Mrs. T while vacationing is pretty much like shopping with her any other time. It is hell.

I figured we would encounter no shops on the river, and if we did, I could paddle the other direction.

In my mind, I pictured a halcyon afternoon, Mrs. T and I paddling languidly along with the gently rolling current, stopping for a picnic lunch along the river’s sandy banks, snapping a few photos of any wildlife that passed our way. A few hours rendered in pointillist pastels, a portrait of blessed tranquility.

We were the last canoeists of the day. A battered van rambled through dusty, woodland roads delivering us and our rental canoe to the drop point. The driver pushed our canoe into the water, handed us paddles, and left us to our own devices.

Climbing into the canoe, I noticed the day was every bit as beautiful as I had envisioned it. Sunlight dappled through the woodland canopy above, refracting off the water’s surface like a million diamonds. The air smelled of pine and sunshine. And not a shop in sight.

A dopey smile plastered across my face, I eased the canoe out into the water. The current pulled us downriver, slowly at first, then faster, then faster still.

Our canoe slid sidewise, then backward. We struck what was to be the first of many downed trees. They reached out into the river like the grey, grasping arms of angry ghosts. My smile turned to a grimace of fear.

It quickly became apparent that—lousy as I am at handling a canoe—The Lovely Mrs. Taylor is 100 times lousier. Tree after tree and rock after rock battered our poor floating aluminum toothpick. White water washed over the sides. The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald played feverishly and implacably through my mind. Somewhere in the distance, I could swear I heard the banjo player from “Deliverance” tuning up.

The water, it turned out, wasn’t too deep. We discovered this fact by going into it.

We managed to right the canoe, dump out most of the water, and—against all reason—get back into it again.

By the time we reached the rental place about two hours later, I was exhausted. So was Mrs. Taylor. Too exhausted to do any more shopping that day.

Mission accomplished.



More “Reality Check” online at http://mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com or www.milive.com. E-mail Mike Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.