Well, it has been ages since I posted anything on here. Aside from life with all of its little incongruities, and the absolutely wonderful state of the world, which I should likely not get into, I’m never sure what I should say. I can tell you I dunked my ass in Loon Pit around midnight the first Saturday in July after Clark had gone home, and I decided to stay to try to entice the beavers to paddle alongside and listen to music with me. My last thought as I started back to my seat after lying on my belly over the forward thwart to turn on my headlight was, don’t tip the boat… I exited said boat under my own terms as usual. If going in is unavoidable, I’d rather dive in than fall in. I spent the next few minutes tugging my life jacket off of the back of my upside down seat and putting it on me. It was a bit askew and it took me a while. I tried to flip the boat and lift it over my head, then flip it back upright, clear of water. That is the prescribed method, but it is easier in a tandem boat with two buoyant people lifting and supporting it. I was unsuccessful. I towed it to shallow water to bail it out, and as I swam everything I had lying loose in the boat disappeared into the darkness. Did I mention I had my phone and iPod waterproof pouches open, because both had wires running out of them and were hooked up to my battery pack recharging?
Anyway, it took me at least fifteen minutes to tow the boat to a depth at which I could stand and bail, and the bailing takes a while. Even with a plastic Folger’s coffee can it takes quite a while. Once I was back in the boat, thankful that my spare paddle hadn’t abandoned ship with everything else, I spent the next couple of hours looking for my beavertail paddle, my dry bag, my speaker case, my tackle box and my 1.75 liter bottle of Jameson. Within minutes I saw something gleaming in the moonlight. It was the Jameson. Thank the lord for small favors. I needed a sip right about then, for medicinal purposes. Over the next two hours the Jameson was all that I had been able to find. I used it judiciously. I had not, of course, been able to call or text Lisa to tell her what was going on, what with my phone being somewhat waterlogged, and dead. She is accustomed to my being on the lake into the wee hours, but 3:00 AM is usually my cutoff point, so I figured I had best get my ass home to let her know I was still alive. I hauled ass to the ramp, loaded everything up and zipped home. I got there around 4:00. She was awake. I should have gone earlier. Nuff said?
I drank coffee until shortly after dawn, then filled my thermos, went back to Loon, re-launched the boat and re-commenced my search. While launching I had spotted something of a light color floating low in the water against a mass of water weed off the point near the ramp, and I headed for that. I lucked out. It was my beavertail. I switched to it and paddled about in that area for a bit, to no avail, and then I paddled over and spoke to a nice gentleman in a fishing boat working the west bank. He told me he had come down the whole length of that shore and had not seen anything floating. He assured me if he did he would give me a shout. I thanked him and headed back across the lake toward the east bank, scanning the water as I went. I spotted something glinting in the early morning sunlight in an inlet over by the entrance to the hidey hole and headed for that. It was my flybox. Two down, but the most important thing to find was my dry bag. My headlamp, my hat with the Groot pin and my fishing rod were all lost to the lake. No hope for those. My wallet, my spare keys and my pistol were in the dry bag, along with all of my emergency gear. (For some reason I had accidentally left my primary keys in my pocket, thank the lord again.) The dry bag was always the main focus.
Figuring from the location of the paddle, and then the tackle box, that everything would be somewhere along this stretch, and that those were the lightest items and would have traveled the furthest, I headed back past the entrance to the hidey hole toward the ramp along the east shore, once again scanning the water as I went. After fifty yards or so I saw an odd shape along the shoreline bobbing in the ripples. It was not the shape of a dry bag floating lengthwise in the water for which I was looking, but odd and out of place none-the-less, so I headed for that. It was the dry bag, but floating upright three quarters submerged. I had not gotten the top folded properly, and it was waterlogged. There were enough air tight containers inside to keep it afloat, but everything was immersed, and the items in zip lock bags were totally sodden. I got all of the water out of the bag and the zip locks, repacked the bag and folded it properly. While I had been working on that I had spotted something else odd along the shoreline about thirty feet ahead of me. It looked like my speaker case, and it was. I snatched it out of the water and headed for the ramp. I had found everything I believed was possible to recover. Mission accomplished, I loaded up, again, and headed for home.
Upon arrival at the house I poured another cup of coffee, then unpacked the dry bag and spread the contents of my wallet, the wallet itself, and several other sodden items on the kitchen counter to dry. I then disassembled my pistol, dried it, cleaned it, oiled it and reassembled it. It is predominantly stainless steel, so my major concern was the condition of the internal carbon steel components. Once I got that done I collapsed, slept for the next twelve hours or so, got up, drank some coffee, talked with Lisa for a while, piddled around for a while, then collapsed again and slept for another twelve hours or so. Other than Lisa and coffee I don’t remember anything about Sunday at all. It took me about three days to really get back to some semblance of normal. I must remember that you must keep your center of gravity low when you’re in the nose of a canoe, or else no matter how many times you have successfully performed the maneuver you are attempting you are going in the water. I really need to be more careful. I am getting too old for this shit.