It’s amazing how fast money can be raised to defraud people through ‘Go Fund Me,’ but then I’m repeating myself.

While I’ve gotten used to the Grammar Police, it’s Corrections Officer that’s gotta go.

My wife doesn’t pay much attention to me, until I want to spend money.

At each bend in the river, I expected to find an amazing white-water rapid to do battle with, but at each bend there was nothing but disappointment. The hardest bit of work were the portage’s across riffles, dragging the canoe over the small rocky areas in an otherwise fairly deep stream.

By midday, I paddled my way into the opening of a large body of water. From where I entered, the shoreline on the other appeared to be nothing more than a pencil line in the horizon. I stayed close to shore because I didn’t have a life vest on and I was fearful of the speed craft, towing skiers, would inadvertently capsize my man-powered craft.

As I moved slowly along the western shoreline, my head was on a swivel. There were beautiful, bikini clad women in every direction I looked. There were fancy RV’s, nice boats, and the smell of the camp’s fire from one stroke to the next.

Finally, I slipped into an area between two large groups of people, dragging the canoe up onto the sandy bank. There I set myself to building a small fire and brewing some coffee.

A man, somewhat older than me, soon wandered over and we began to chat. Neil, I soon learned worked in the aerospace industry and was thinking about retiring. He planned to find a piece of acreage, build a house and spend the rest of his life on the river and lakes along the Colorado.

My story seemed less impressive, so I kept it to myself, other than to say something like, “I’m in between jobs and I figured that since I’m not getting any younger, I’d go explore and find some adventure while I could.” I found it pretty much satisfied his curiosity and he invited me to stop over at his set up later in the day, “if you’re still around.”

Late afternoon rolled in quicker than I thought it would, but then I’d been dozing on and off throughout much of the days heat. I could smell meat cooking and could see the barbecue smoking, so I grabbed my bar of Ivory soap and went for a quick dip in the lake.

“We’re heading up to Laughlin tomorrow morning,” Neil offered as his wife, Bess handed me a second beer. Bess laughed, “All this roughing it makes me long for civilization.”

She had been a looker at one time, this I could see. I imagined her having won “Miss Orange Grove 1968,” or something as a teen. Still she could sport a two-piece bathing suit with the best of them and I don’t think either Neil or Bess cared who was watching as they played ‘grab ass,’ with each other throughout the evening.

After a thick steak and a ton of mashed potatoes with gravy and nearly a six-pack of beer in my belly, I bid them goodnight and a safe trip to Nevada. I wandered over to my little nest and flopped down on my sleeping bag to stare up into the bejeweled night sky that covered the lake from one point to another like a carpet.

The sky was graying in the east when I heard Neil and Bess pull out of their space and crunch their way from the gravel and sand to the pavement for their trip northward. I laid there for a few more minutes thinking about Bess’ titties before I decided to jump in the lake and cool off.

Being a Drama Queen is more a matter of philosophy than biology.

When it comes to sex — skin and bones are for the dog; the meat and fat, for the man.

After eating the brains of an honor student, the zombie will be no smarter.

Is running away and joining the circus still a thing?

To look at it on a map, it doesn’t seem all that long, but to actually put an oar in the river…well that became a whole other thing. Laughlin, Nevada is hot and larger than one might think and very few of her citizen’s are interested in helping anyone simply hiking through, which was the nature of my business as I told the two separate police pairs.

My main interest was to make it to Lake Havasu. The problem was – I really didn’t have any idea where that was. I jus’ knew that I was en route that way and that this was where my journey had taken me.

As I sat on the bank of the Colorado River, being unimpressed by its not-so-mighty power and flow, I managed to gather the ire of a drunk guy and his wife. He began throwing rocks at me and yelling that I was spying him and his wife.

Needless to say I vamoosed and made myself scarce. Unfortunately for me, I returned that evening and discovered he’d left his Coleman canoe on the river’s bank and I willfully stole the damn thing.

Why I initially did this – I cannot explain. But it lead me to an adventure that I never dreamed of doing – attempting to paddle down the Colorado River to the U.S./Mexico border. How hard could that be, right? Right.

I put in behind Harrah’s Casino about 100 feet from where the canoe had been left and paddled out towards the middle of the stream and discovered the current was much swifter than it looked. Before I knew it, I was splashing my way beneath Highway 40 as the sun began to come up.

The river offered me a freedom I hadn’t felt in sometime. I grew up near the banks of the Klamath River in northern California and had become land-locked, living in the high desert, so I’d forgotten the feel of the water as it lapped at the sides of the canoe.

All that day, I paddled and drifted intermittently, trying to get my muscles used to the effort. At first, I thought it would be my arms that would be the greatest problem, but it turns out my shoulders and eventually my rib-cage and stomach muscles bore the brunt of the effort.

After six or seven hour, I put ashore where I clumsily dragged my ill-gotten canoe into the brush, rolled out my sleeping bag and fell asleep without eating. It was still dark when I awoke the following morning and began to question my decision to try such a foolish thing.

“Do I or don’t I?” my inner voice argued, “No one will ever know that you didn’t make it. No shame in that.”

It was the words, ‘didn’t make it,’ that goaded me to my feet. Instantly, I knew I had to continue because I hadn’t really tried and all I knew was that aside from hurting like hell, trying and failing is a lot better than never giving the effort in the first place.

Quietly, I went to work building a small camp fire and boiling water for a mess of rice and beans. Coffee, I decided would have to wait until later as I didn’t want to waste a bunch of time in an area that I was totally unfamiliar with. No sense in attracting anymore attention than necessary, after all I was piloting a stolen canoe.