Good Joke for Birdwatchers.

Kip and I were watching the second season of Rome a couple of nights ago. In one of the late season episodes (I think it was "About Your Father"), two characters have fled into the desert and a third has found them there.

Characters one and three have known each other a long time, and they talk quietly around the fire in the desert night. In the background a bird cries.

And the bird chosen to emphasize the utter loneliness of the Egyptian desert…

…was a loon.

I fell over laughing.

Washing the dust off Patience

I took Patience out on Cherokee Lake this morning, having decided that I was Not Going To Let Another Day Go By Without Canoeing.

I'm way out of shape. Aerobically I'm in really good shape; that bike riding I've been doing has been great stuff. But it doesn't exercise my arms at all. My canoeing technique is pretty much all still there, such as it is, but I ended up stopping to rest a lot. Fortunately I brought a lunch, so the first time I wasn't stopping to *rest,* I was stopping to have *lunch*. And the second time I saw some trash on shore right next to a sheltered cove, so I was stopping to pay my dues to the wilderness by picking up litter. And the third time I stopped to check out this spot on an island I thought might be a good campground. Obviously I wasn't the only person who thought so; it had some "improvements" like a counter (a board nailed to two trees (!)) and a fireplace. It also had ...fewmets. Human droppings. No, not what you think. Cans. And trash.

I filled a 10 gallon trash sack completely with trash, to the point where I could barely tie the top shut. I had to leave stuff I had no space for, though, to be fair, not very much stuff. I stamped enough aluminum cans flat to fill a shopping bag. And I hauled all this stuff back to Patience and took it home to throw away (the cans will be recycled).

So that doesn't really count as resting either, and my canoeing machismo is preserved. I don't know *what* I'll do on a real trip. Though my favorite canoeing book says it's important to rest 10 minutes out of every hour if you want to canoe long distances, so I could call it distance training.

Then I came home, put all my canoeing stuff away, had a shower--and napped through the evening news.