Bobbing heads and wide open mouths and a very tired driver, after 23 hours on the road, we watched the sun come beaming into our windshield. We had finally arrived at Lake Itasca State Park. After milling around, settling the confusions that come with a unique adventure we sat up all of our gear and eagerly slipped our canoes into the pristine but very windy waters of of the lake. After a short paddle it was time to find "The Headwaters" of the The Mississippi River. We took a short two and a half walk beautiful and awesomely maintained Lake Itasca State Park along the bike trail that would lead us to the headwaters. A few walkers and bikers passed us by, all with looks of curiosity on their faces. Our walk would lead us to the growingvoices of small children playing and splashing loudly. As we turned the corner, there it was, the three and a half to four foot wide Mississippi River.
We walked it a bit to gauge water depths to decide if we were going to be able to take off from these headwaters. We're now approaching what we know as "hiker midnight" (dark) and the last forecast we heard was possible severe thunderstorms that produce hail. With that combination, that means it's time to bring this session of our daily progress to an end and climb in my into my tent and get re-acquainted with my tent and sleeping bag that I have been missing for so long. Tomorrow will be our first day of paddling in THE MIGHTY MISSISSIPPI!
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Monday, May 21, 2012
Down River
"I wonder if anyone has ever canoed the entire Mississippi River?", I thought to myself as I crossed the the first bridge that crosses the Mississippi River in Minnesota just below the headwaters in Lake Itasca. After sixteen months of research, team building, writing and submitting sponsorship proposals with the help of teammates that are in the background but key players, gathering of gear and the logistics of the whole trip, today we piled into our van and headed northeast from Knoxville headed to Minnesota where we will be canoeing the 2,340 miles of the Mississippi River. After a short stop in Ohio, we picked up our fifth and final member and drove until time for dinner. We were just outside of Chicago so Chicago style pizza only seemed right. That was a real treat! Each piece felt like it weighed a pound a piece and was ridiculously good. Six grown men left stuffed on 2 twelve inch pies and even had almost a half of s pizza left! With about nine hours separating us from our put in point, we're eager to get this adventure started but sleep has to come at some point. It's 10:15 p.m. and the uneventful dark fields of wisconsin await us and the book on CD rambles on as sleep draws ever closer.
21 May 2012
21 May 2012
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
one big holiday pt. 1
seventeen days. seven thousand nine hundred miles. the equivalent of two and a half times across the United States of America.. it was an adventure that also consisted of Veterans Day and Thanksgiving Day within those seventeen days spanning throughout what seemed to be every small town in the Midwest and the our country's Heartland. it was a eye opening experience that would create a great appreciation and thankfulness of what we overlook everyday in our country. buckle up and join me for a short trip as i share a very true story of adventure, fortune, luck, America and the unseen dreams that are created daily in our country.
Maryville, Tennessee. a fresh start as myself and my cousin Carrie Sims had just returned from other journeys that had spanned over the previous 6 months leading into our adventures of yet again into another unknown territory. myself, i had been hiking the Appalachian Trail. She, a lengthy wonder through Europe. we were still on our high on living for less. less money, less resources and less of the daily rigors that make up the daily rat race. i had been doing odd jobs for several weeks to make a little gas money while i was waiting for a job opportunity to present itself. she had already accepted a temporary job at the University of Tennessee while waiting for a career to present itself as well. We were both awaiting our dreaded penetration back into the world of the rat race... again. we waited. one day on a mild october day my phone rang. "hey, what do you think about doing a temporary job throughout the midwest" Carrie says. "doing what" and "how", i replied. "it's something about changing out all of the signage in all of the wells fargo banks from Minnesota to Kansas" she said. without hesitation i answered "count me in but how're we going to do this? i dont really have the money. is the company going to supply a vehicle, gas and hotel rooms, etc?" having not really researched it herself, she would have to make a phone call and find these things out. the answer was "no" and so the adventure begins.
its now the beginning of November and having exhausted almost all of our means of financial freedom we had to figure out how we could get a vehicle for this job and even more, how we'd be able to afford hotel rooms? we went through the list of possible vehicles family members might loan us. nothing. it was time to try the next best thing, a rental car. i no longer had a credit card but she did. this meant technically i wasn't suppose to drive. we were given the keys to a nissan xterra and she drove it out of the rental car parking lot. quickly we changed places and headed to pick up the product that we were already two days behind on because the company couldn't find anybody to take the route. RED FLAG. we show up to find what seemed to be a tractor trailer truck load of what was to be out product. carefully and gingerly we strategically placed each box and said needed tools of this job. scooting the seats forward and in a very upright position, we scrounged for every little bit of space that xterra had. the topic of discussion back to pick up out luggage and such was the math behind this whole job. mainly, how much did we expect to make from it and how much of the cost of travel could we put on her credit card and just pay it immediately after we got paid. after running the numbers, staying in a hotel room every night was out of the question. it was time to be creative, resourceful and fall back on our life experiences. the only option was sleep in the car... IN THE UPRIGHT POSITION!!! we decided not to eat at any type of restaurants except every now and again and then it would mainly be off of the dollar menus. we strapped a cooler of food along with our luggage onto the roof of this vehicle that would soon hate us. our cockpit lay full of maps, electronic gadgetry such as cell phones, GPS system, an ipod, 2 laptops and phone chargers. there were cd cases stuck in there somewhere as well as our list of however many banks we were to visit from as far east as Illinois, on as far north as Minnesota (so we thought) heading west to the Colorado state line nearly and southbound just south of Kansas City, Kansas. we were a moving mobile command unit ! we were smiling and laughing and loving the opportunity and the open road that laid before us and so we drove.
the speakers were blaring, the sun was shining in and the wind was blowing through the windows and we were just we were just now driving down Carries driveway. we would look over at each other every other minute or so and we'd just belly laugh. we set out toward the interstate and we were northbound. taking in the fall colors, driving through the mountains of East Tennessee, through The plateau and the horse farms of middle Kentucky on up into the cornfields of Illinois until we ran out of daylight and that's when Carrie's shift of being co-pilot/DJ would come to a quick end. I was somewhat awake and my mind was racing. thoughts of everything from my dream of learning to surf one day to how i DID NOT want to stop driving because that would mean i would be transitioning from driver to sleeping in that undesirable upright sleeping position without changing places. not even moving that chair a single inch. the ONLY thing that would change in my positioning would be unbuckling my seatbelt. so i drove. aaaaand drove. as i fought off sleep i tried to listen to the radio at a volume that i could hear it without waking "sleeping beauty" to try to keep myself awake. now i've dealt with sleep deprivation before and seen the crazy stuff it will make a person see and do but up in the distance im seeing the craziest thing i had ever seen. in unison i'm seeing flashing red lights up in the night sky. A LOT of them! we're in a strange town just outside of Chicago, Illinois. it's around midnight, give or take a few hours and i have began to speak outloud with various expletives. a country boy, the possibilities that rural Chicago area carries in the middle of the night and now UFO's!?!? this justifies my verbal outbursts. frantically cuz wakes up, MATT!!! WHAT'S WRONG?!?! i said, "LOOK!" what the hell is going on?!?! we kept our travel speed the same, 80 MPH. we still had no clue as to what we were facing but if we were to hit it, i wanted to have the speed to hit it hard! cruise control was the least of my worries at this point. if we were about to drive off of a unseen cliff, we were bound to have a good launch. we drove for what seemed to be forever or 30 minutes until we finally reached these crazy lights and its really bazaar showing. I'M AWAKE! my juices are flowing and my co-pilot is back on the job. finally we find ourselves in the middle of a windmill wind farm and atop their enormous towers, a single blinking red light each. after finding myself in awe, my adrenaline calms only to give me what i'm guessing to be my third wind and i'm ready to drive even more. for what seemed to be miles and miles we would ride along in this wind farm. welcome to the windy city, i guess. the laughing had began once again, at my expense.
on we drove into the sunlight, cooler air and some of the most beautiful barns, farms and groomed cornfields we had seen in our lives. here is where things already begin to get blurry and blend together as far as some of the locations but i'll never forget the sunrise of this particular morning coming up over those flat cornfields and the light shimmering on the dew that was on the tin roofs of those barns. it was a site to be seen! we had crossed into Wisconsin. i honestly had never thought too highly of Wisconsin and that was due to a previous narrow mindset i had in my earlier life. it was reminding me of what East Tennessee looked like as a young boy growing up around the many farms and my association with the old farmers that would come into my mamaws restaurant. i found myself leaned far into the steering wheel, almost the dashboard honestly. straight, flat interstate, sleep deprivation, hunger and the need to use the restroom and fuel the mind back up on coffee, we stopped in Eau Claire, Wisconsin for much needed pit stop. there are 2 specific reasons i remember this town. my roommate in the Army was from here and somebody took the sign over the air compressor literally that read "FREE AIR" and had taken the whole compressor! we had big laughs about that. we crossed the street to McDonald's where while i was placing the order for our coffee in the drive thru (cause there was no need of getting out of the car to stretch or anything) Carrie was trying her best to make us a bagel with peanut butter but we were so cramped she had no room to set things down as she finished using them creating a potential disaster that involved the loss of peanut butter and a bagel. we were strapped for cash and we couldn't be having that. it hit me. the boxes of product had a thin sleeve of lose thin cardboard in each box. these would now double as our dinner/food prepping tables. problem solved. coffee, bagel with peanut butter, new tunes, a fresh fill up in the gas tank warm cups of java. we were back on the road and we were just a few short hours away from Minnesota. the music was loud and the miles were to adding up and we hadn't even been to our first job.
the road was beginning to takes its toll already... again. looking over to my right several times i saw very tired slow blinking eye lids. Carrie was well on her way to her sleep position up against the cool window that was created by the cool Minnesota air. she was gone! pressing further north and then finally a little to the west, we came across what was to be a first of many significant landmarks. we had crossed the headwaters of the Mississippi River. At this time i reached down to turn off the radio because i had a thought. i began wondering if anybody had ever canoed the entire Mississippi River and it flooded my mind with thoughts and ideas. it seemed if i were literally shaking on my insides with anxiety about sharing this idea with Carrie when she woke up. i did a self check to see if it was true that i was shaking only on the inside only to find out i was shaky all over. it apparently was only the coffee getting the best of me. a short time later she awoke and unknowing the load i was about to drop on her. she was trying to get her eyes adjusted while looking into the glow of the western sun while attempting to stretch in her 2 foot by 2 foot personal space. "hey!, i have an awesome idea!" opening her left eye and cutting it toward me as if to say "are you kidding me???" being the awesome sport that she was during this trip, she instead says, "oh yeah?" "what's that?" i said to her, "well we passed the headwaters of the Mississippi River a little way back". "It has me wondering if anybody has ever canoed the whole thing?" "i'm going to look into it." knowing how adventurous the two of us are, she heard me out. no really, she heard me out. over the next 16 to 17 days i would mention something about canoeing that river. a short time after my big idea discussion Carrie finally convinced me to to sleep. we switched spots and the car felt completely different and comfortable on the passenger side. this would keep me awake again for some time. we talked and sang until i just couldn't take it anymore. finally, i had drifted off in that same neck breaking position i had seen her in for hours and wondered how in the world we were going to sleep like this and how long could our bodies hold up to it? we were honestly loving life and the simplicity of it.
Maryville, Tennessee. a fresh start as myself and my cousin Carrie Sims had just returned from other journeys that had spanned over the previous 6 months leading into our adventures of yet again into another unknown territory. myself, i had been hiking the Appalachian Trail. She, a lengthy wonder through Europe. we were still on our high on living for less. less money, less resources and less of the daily rigors that make up the daily rat race. i had been doing odd jobs for several weeks to make a little gas money while i was waiting for a job opportunity to present itself. she had already accepted a temporary job at the University of Tennessee while waiting for a career to present itself as well. We were both awaiting our dreaded penetration back into the world of the rat race... again. we waited. one day on a mild october day my phone rang. "hey, what do you think about doing a temporary job throughout the midwest" Carrie says. "doing what" and "how", i replied. "it's something about changing out all of the signage in all of the wells fargo banks from Minnesota to Kansas" she said. without hesitation i answered "count me in but how're we going to do this? i dont really have the money. is the company going to supply a vehicle, gas and hotel rooms, etc?" having not really researched it herself, she would have to make a phone call and find these things out. the answer was "no" and so the adventure begins.
its now the beginning of November and having exhausted almost all of our means of financial freedom we had to figure out how we could get a vehicle for this job and even more, how we'd be able to afford hotel rooms? we went through the list of possible vehicles family members might loan us. nothing. it was time to try the next best thing, a rental car. i no longer had a credit card but she did. this meant technically i wasn't suppose to drive. we were given the keys to a nissan xterra and she drove it out of the rental car parking lot. quickly we changed places and headed to pick up the product that we were already two days behind on because the company couldn't find anybody to take the route. RED FLAG. we show up to find what seemed to be a tractor trailer truck load of what was to be out product. carefully and gingerly we strategically placed each box and said needed tools of this job. scooting the seats forward and in a very upright position, we scrounged for every little bit of space that xterra had. the topic of discussion back to pick up out luggage and such was the math behind this whole job. mainly, how much did we expect to make from it and how much of the cost of travel could we put on her credit card and just pay it immediately after we got paid. after running the numbers, staying in a hotel room every night was out of the question. it was time to be creative, resourceful and fall back on our life experiences. the only option was sleep in the car... IN THE UPRIGHT POSITION!!! we decided not to eat at any type of restaurants except every now and again and then it would mainly be off of the dollar menus. we strapped a cooler of food along with our luggage onto the roof of this vehicle that would soon hate us. our cockpit lay full of maps, electronic gadgetry such as cell phones, GPS system, an ipod, 2 laptops and phone chargers. there were cd cases stuck in there somewhere as well as our list of however many banks we were to visit from as far east as Illinois, on as far north as Minnesota (so we thought) heading west to the Colorado state line nearly and southbound just south of Kansas City, Kansas. we were a moving mobile command unit ! we were smiling and laughing and loving the opportunity and the open road that laid before us and so we drove.
the speakers were blaring, the sun was shining in and the wind was blowing through the windows and we were just we were just now driving down Carries driveway. we would look over at each other every other minute or so and we'd just belly laugh. we set out toward the interstate and we were northbound. taking in the fall colors, driving through the mountains of East Tennessee, through The plateau and the horse farms of middle Kentucky on up into the cornfields of Illinois until we ran out of daylight and that's when Carrie's shift of being co-pilot/DJ would come to a quick end. I was somewhat awake and my mind was racing. thoughts of everything from my dream of learning to surf one day to how i DID NOT want to stop driving because that would mean i would be transitioning from driver to sleeping in that undesirable upright sleeping position without changing places. not even moving that chair a single inch. the ONLY thing that would change in my positioning would be unbuckling my seatbelt. so i drove. aaaaand drove. as i fought off sleep i tried to listen to the radio at a volume that i could hear it without waking "sleeping beauty" to try to keep myself awake. now i've dealt with sleep deprivation before and seen the crazy stuff it will make a person see and do but up in the distance im seeing the craziest thing i had ever seen. in unison i'm seeing flashing red lights up in the night sky. A LOT of them! we're in a strange town just outside of Chicago, Illinois. it's around midnight, give or take a few hours and i have began to speak outloud with various expletives. a country boy, the possibilities that rural Chicago area carries in the middle of the night and now UFO's!?!? this justifies my verbal outbursts. frantically cuz wakes up, MATT!!! WHAT'S WRONG?!?! i said, "LOOK!" what the hell is going on?!?! we kept our travel speed the same, 80 MPH. we still had no clue as to what we were facing but if we were to hit it, i wanted to have the speed to hit it hard! cruise control was the least of my worries at this point. if we were about to drive off of a unseen cliff, we were bound to have a good launch. we drove for what seemed to be forever or 30 minutes until we finally reached these crazy lights and its really bazaar showing. I'M AWAKE! my juices are flowing and my co-pilot is back on the job. finally we find ourselves in the middle of a windmill wind farm and atop their enormous towers, a single blinking red light each. after finding myself in awe, my adrenaline calms only to give me what i'm guessing to be my third wind and i'm ready to drive even more. for what seemed to be miles and miles we would ride along in this wind farm. welcome to the windy city, i guess. the laughing had began once again, at my expense.
on we drove into the sunlight, cooler air and some of the most beautiful barns, farms and groomed cornfields we had seen in our lives. here is where things already begin to get blurry and blend together as far as some of the locations but i'll never forget the sunrise of this particular morning coming up over those flat cornfields and the light shimmering on the dew that was on the tin roofs of those barns. it was a site to be seen! we had crossed into Wisconsin. i honestly had never thought too highly of Wisconsin and that was due to a previous narrow mindset i had in my earlier life. it was reminding me of what East Tennessee looked like as a young boy growing up around the many farms and my association with the old farmers that would come into my mamaws restaurant. i found myself leaned far into the steering wheel, almost the dashboard honestly. straight, flat interstate, sleep deprivation, hunger and the need to use the restroom and fuel the mind back up on coffee, we stopped in Eau Claire, Wisconsin for much needed pit stop. there are 2 specific reasons i remember this town. my roommate in the Army was from here and somebody took the sign over the air compressor literally that read "FREE AIR" and had taken the whole compressor! we had big laughs about that. we crossed the street to McDonald's where while i was placing the order for our coffee in the drive thru (cause there was no need of getting out of the car to stretch or anything) Carrie was trying her best to make us a bagel with peanut butter but we were so cramped she had no room to set things down as she finished using them creating a potential disaster that involved the loss of peanut butter and a bagel. we were strapped for cash and we couldn't be having that. it hit me. the boxes of product had a thin sleeve of lose thin cardboard in each box. these would now double as our dinner/food prepping tables. problem solved. coffee, bagel with peanut butter, new tunes, a fresh fill up in the gas tank warm cups of java. we were back on the road and we were just a few short hours away from Minnesota. the music was loud and the miles were to adding up and we hadn't even been to our first job.
the road was beginning to takes its toll already... again. looking over to my right several times i saw very tired slow blinking eye lids. Carrie was well on her way to her sleep position up against the cool window that was created by the cool Minnesota air. she was gone! pressing further north and then finally a little to the west, we came across what was to be a first of many significant landmarks. we had crossed the headwaters of the Mississippi River. At this time i reached down to turn off the radio because i had a thought. i began wondering if anybody had ever canoed the entire Mississippi River and it flooded my mind with thoughts and ideas. it seemed if i were literally shaking on my insides with anxiety about sharing this idea with Carrie when she woke up. i did a self check to see if it was true that i was shaking only on the inside only to find out i was shaky all over. it apparently was only the coffee getting the best of me. a short time later she awoke and unknowing the load i was about to drop on her. she was trying to get her eyes adjusted while looking into the glow of the western sun while attempting to stretch in her 2 foot by 2 foot personal space. "hey!, i have an awesome idea!" opening her left eye and cutting it toward me as if to say "are you kidding me???" being the awesome sport that she was during this trip, she instead says, "oh yeah?" "what's that?" i said to her, "well we passed the headwaters of the Mississippi River a little way back". "It has me wondering if anybody has ever canoed the whole thing?" "i'm going to look into it." knowing how adventurous the two of us are, she heard me out. no really, she heard me out. over the next 16 to 17 days i would mention something about canoeing that river. a short time after my big idea discussion Carrie finally convinced me to to sleep. we switched spots and the car felt completely different and comfortable on the passenger side. this would keep me awake again for some time. we talked and sang until i just couldn't take it anymore. finally, i had drifted off in that same neck breaking position i had seen her in for hours and wondered how in the world we were going to sleep like this and how long could our bodies hold up to it? we were honestly loving life and the simplicity of it.
Monday, November 21, 2011
hello world
today, i will begin a new type of adventure, "blogging".
a few things about me and the way i will be doing this.
first off, i'm a fan of simplicity so i wont be using capital letters unless i'm showing respect toward something or someone or what i feel to be a respectable reference. ex. God and United States of America. why will i be doing this? several reasons. it allows be to keep focus and less spell check graffiti on my page and most of all i can share my point of view without going in depth and creating an offensive post. if i have chosen to use lower case letters referring to something, i have some type of issue with the said subject. see. it's simple. however, at the end of the day im human, so along with misspelled wurds, country grammar and off the wall blogs, i will forget to capitalize some words that were meant to be capitalized, im sure.
next, i will be blogging about past experiences so that you the reader may be able to put my blunders to use so that you can have a more pleasurable experience if youre interested in the topic of discussion. these topics can range from lumpy oatmeal to how if it were me, how i would build a space shuttle bigger, better, faster and for less. i want to share tips and advice that ive gained from my lifes adventures, misadventures, blunders and triumphs. stay tuned!
a few things about me and the way i will be doing this.
first off, i'm a fan of simplicity so i wont be using capital letters unless i'm showing respect toward something or someone or what i feel to be a respectable reference. ex. God and United States of America. why will i be doing this? several reasons. it allows be to keep focus and less spell check graffiti on my page and most of all i can share my point of view without going in depth and creating an offensive post. if i have chosen to use lower case letters referring to something, i have some type of issue with the said subject. see. it's simple. however, at the end of the day im human, so along with misspelled wurds, country grammar and off the wall blogs, i will forget to capitalize some words that were meant to be capitalized, im sure.
next, i will be blogging about past experiences so that you the reader may be able to put my blunders to use so that you can have a more pleasurable experience if youre interested in the topic of discussion. these topics can range from lumpy oatmeal to how if it were me, how i would build a space shuttle bigger, better, faster and for less. i want to share tips and advice that ive gained from my lifes adventures, misadventures, blunders and triumphs. stay tuned!
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