April 4th Journal Entry

Woke up early to a bright fine day. I folded my ten, packed my last bag and blanket and started walking to the boat landing. I had been waiting for almost two hours when Robert and other rangers came down to the boat ramp and helped me slide the complete raft and all of my gear into the water. I waved until I turned around a bend.
I found out that this boat with the 2by4s holding the canoes together but apart with a span of almost 14 feet is very hard to maneuver. I could hold her on course if I paddled hard in the direction I needed to go, but she was quick to veer away from that course. I went through the first set of rapids, only a class one backwards. The trimaran rode the waves and drops well but was completely unsteerable with my kayak paddle. I tried the next set of rapids, a class two, using a metal pole that was to be part of my mast assembly as a dragging rudder. That worked to get me through the small falls without turning around, but the small waves splashed into the boats. Clearly this span and tie arrangement was not working.
I poled and paddled to an island, really an overgrown sandbar and tied the bowline to a tree. There I emptied the water from the boats with my plastic coffee cup. I pulled the boats up on the sand, trampling stinging nettles to protect my ankles from itching. I dug my portable electric drill out of the tool tote, and started shortening the span of this raft. I took the outside boats closer to the center one so the whole raft was now ten feet wide.
Repacking my tools, I pushed the raft out into the water and started again. The boat was more controllable now and much easier to steer. I was able to paddle hard enough with my kayak paddle to maintain a speed just faster then the water flow.
There was no breeze and the sun was warm. I used my cell phone to take some pictures which I hope to forward to my computer at home. I could paddle, or I could sit and rest while drinking coffee from my water bottle. I won't have coffee for too much longer unless I empty a fruit or vegetables can to make a coffee cooker.
At about noon I passed through another set of class two rapids, I was able to steer and hold course but not well. I realized that this situation could become dangerous if the water rose enough to prevent me from dragging my metal pole for control. I decided to put ashore on another sandbar and to shorten the span of the boats once more.
Three sandbars divided the river at this point and I unpacked  my tools on the lowest. When the boats were bolted back together only nine feet wide. I unloaded my tent and set it up. This would be my campsite for the night. I journeyed less then three miles today, but I am learning how to make this trimaran work. Thank you, father,  for the warmth and sunshine.

April 3rd Journal Entry

Well, its the third and I did not get the boat launched, but I did get the whole thing put together and most of my stuff packed into it. Robert the head park ranger is coming down to help me push off at 8 tomorrow morning. It got up to 70 degrees today with very light breezes. Hard to believe that it was snowing and freezing yesterday and the day before. The wind is just now picking up at the end of the day.
A few fishermen out today at the foot of the falls. They were catching walleye and musky, doing well at it. Yesterday, i froze and today I slept in until almost 8AM. I got up to brightened skies and no coat weather. Called Lorrie hoping to get her mother's phone number. I am hoping she might be able to bring out my fiberglass cloth and my phone charger.
Jammie, Lorrie's mother, called after 6PM this evening. By then I had just packed the last of my tools into the boats. Maybe another day she can help me pick up those things and get my hair cut. I kept getting tangled in the briers yesterday and today as I carried things between camp and the boats. I can't comb out all the thorns, but it only a little problem.
I am sure glad I have no schedule, Daddy. I am not moving fast. I still have a fever from the urinary tract infection. It makes me achy. I ate a whole jar of my dill pickles and then drank all the vinegar hoping to kill the burn and start the flow again.
Sure was a nice day. lots of folks came by to ask what I was doing. Many expressed shock about an older woman traveling so far and being alone for so long. I told them that I hoped Dezra can come later. Donnie Turner of "Blue Cat on the New" a river guide service asked me to stop by as I pass his campground. His wife and co-driver gave me directions with landmarks recognizable from the river. She was very nice.
I suppose i should turn in. Thanks for the day, the deer and geese. All was lovely.
Dawn

April 2nd Journal Entry

Icy morning! I loaded 1/2 of the 2by4 cross pieces in the canter hull and took off. The Falls are at flood stage so the rapids are class three. Not the best place to try an untried boat.
I made it through, but took on enough water in this flat bottomed hull to scare me good. I beached the boat unloaded the wood, dragged everything up hill and put the hull on a public rack. I have decided to carry the rest of the equipment around the rapids.
Took one hull upstream and started back down like I had originally planned. It is confirmed, I have a urinary tract infection. Shivering, fever, cough and it snowed or rained and then froze all day long. The wind blew, gusting hard at times. I shot the rapids with an empty hull and decided to carry the last one down to the boat dock tomorrow. These things are not stable in any kind of rough water. I scare myself.
I have most of the wood at the boat launch. I am wet and tired. The mast I made from particleboard cracked as I picked it up so I am burning it to cook supper. Going to bed after. Hoping to connect and launch the whole raft (boat) tomorrow. Bless me, Father.

April Fools Day Journal Entry

Bob Ballard and Pastor Steve will be here soon. I hope all the hulls can fit on their vehicles. Packed everything into bags and totes last night and woke at 4AM., thinking that the tent set up on the decking could be a going with the wind sail of sorts. I'll try that later.
Bob is here. We can only get one hull on his car. Pastor Steve will be late, he has a doctor's appointment. Well, daddy, I am here. It took several trips and I am near freezing. We took almost until 5PM to get the equipment unloaded. We had to relocate to Foster Falls, to the Millrace campground. A nice concerned, conservation officer thought it best that I not set up my boats on the Austinville Landing. He felt the wind and the water were much too cold. So here I am. I'll pole one boat upstream to say I was there.
The tent is set up, but it is designed for summer use and is inadequate for this temperature. It is snowing and the wind is strong enough to blow the tent material right down sideways onto my sleeping bag. Gosh, I am cold!
Ice on everything when I went to the outhouse. I hope to load all the gear in the single hulls and run the class three rapid ahead of me in the morning. Those rapids are the reason for the name Foster Falls.
Nite, nite. Brr.

March 30 Journal Entry

Everything is done, dear. Tomorrow my friends come to move everything to Austinville. I definitely need their help. My car died coming home form seeing the dentist in Gary on the 28Th. Poor Deloris Ramona went to the scrapyard two days early. Her demise gave me a chance to give away some design books to the car scrappers.
I still have a rough cough, Father, and the start of a urinary infection. If it gets worse, I'll stop and see a doctor. I turned in all my library books  and did not buy any more at the Friends of the Library sale. I took Alexis to the courthouse to change her name. Now, she will take that letter to apply for a changed birth certificate and passport.
I am jumpy and nervous. Bye, Father.

March 22 Journal Entry

I am designing the sail and mast today. While I am at it I will think about a reply to Congressman Morgan. He is a soul with limited compassion for the weak. One who believes that we do not have enough of everything to share with the world.
My mast and mast seat looks like a vagina waiting for a penis to slide into it. All this so the wind can push my trimaran. It reminds me of Charles Stross, who said through one of his story characters, "Power come from a big swinging dick."
The pilgrim, puritan women in America were adamant about the keeping, teaching, and enforcing of the Ten Commandments. These Ten Commandments were the only hope they had of living past middle age. In a country where all power did come from a dick between legs, women had no power. They were chattel, soon used up and thrown away. America was a land with its own Taliban in charge.
The command against adultery sounded good on paper, but any man could trump that commandment with a letter of divorcement for any reason. The usual was a simple, "she doesn't please me anymore."
An older woman's only hope lay in "honor your mother." Perhaps a dutiful child would see to her post good looks survival. So women perpetuated the patriarchal society as their only hope of self preservation. Women owned nothing, controlled nothing, not even animals. They had control of children, but only for a few years. Once that short teaching period passed all opportunity was lost.

March 18 Journal Entry

Yep, its the flu. Lorrie may be starting in on it as well. Hope the baby is fine. She and Mike are as pleased as squirrels playing catch me jump. I will miss seeing the little one's birth and most of her first year if i complete this journey.
I am just able to move about today, so I am using up my planned lazy slack.There will be no room for mistakes, learning and corrections on the next two boats. I'll bounce (slump) down to Kmart this morning to get the rest of the fun-noodles. Found a great deal on rope at the closing hardware store, two blocks from home. Twenty dollars for more than two hundred yards. I should get an anchor so I can stop one boat and line the others through rapids as I go down river.
I hope to get paint for the 2by4s today. They can dry while I cut out the last hull and begin putting it together. The seams on hull two are curing.
Real stuffed up head, dizzy too. Keep on keeping on. Should be able to paint outside, thank you, daddy.

March 17th journal Entry

Been a while since I wrote, Daddy. I am finishing the first of the three hulls today. Progress has been in slow motion. Only thirteen more days until launch. I decided to put outwales on the hulls for more strength. It came down to a trade off; 13 miles of portage compared to more than 3000 on the ocean. I'll carry the extra weight so I don't have to swim when a wave tears this craft apart.
I have the sniffles today, probably the flu everyone else shared a week ago. I keep on keeping on, however. I don't have a lot of time. Headache, fever, blahs...
I thank you for the sunshine this morning, makes for a pleasant warmth. I'll set the mast foot and be done with this hull today.

March 14th Journal Entry

Today, I painted the inside of the first hull on my trimaran boat. Using a paint several years old left over from when the porch on this house was painted, I coated the rather sloppy fiberglass and bare wood.
The outside of this hull is the pinkest of pinks, one I call super pink. This color copies a tee shirt color I bought in Pikeville, Kentucky last year. At the Hillbilly Festival, I heard an all woman band called Coal Town Dixie. They were great and I bought their tee shirt because I loved them and their shirt.
I should be wrapping the mast sections tonight while the second coat of inside paint dries. I have cord that I used to tie two sheets of thin plywood to the top of the car. Lowe's gives the stuff away for tying down customer loads. Glue and this twine ought to strengthen each mast joint. I think I will glue a plywood reinforcement to the floor and then build a three sided wall around it for a mast seat. Three feet back from the bow should be about right.
I hope to paint the 2by4 cross pieces that will join the hulls together an emerald green. Marking them with white painted numbers will make assembly and reassembly after portages easy.

The Trimaran Canoes.

I will build three just shy of 16 foot canoes, as flat bottomed as any Louisiana pirogues. I plan to connect these with eye bolts, carriage bolts and two by fours. The resulting raft will be 16 feet by 12 feet and very stable. Maybe, too stable, we'll see.
The mast rigging will need to be very simple for a klutz like me. I am planning a 14' by 9' triangle sail eventually, although I will start with one 9' by 6' to learn how to sail. I think I can build a good mast with white plastic pipe, string wrapped and sealed with paint to keep it from cracking. Maybe three pieces that slide together for great height? A simple attachment could use eye bolts through the 2by4's, tied to the mast with lashings. A folded painter's drop cloth could be the sail cloth.
I might lay plywood over the 2by4's for a platform that could support my tent when i have no place to land my boat (boats).
A raft made from these three boats would have amazing displacement equal to 360 gallons of water of 3000 pounds. Cutting that total displacement by 25% still leaves a safe load of almost 2250 pounds. If the boats and mast and platform weigh 350 pounds, there would still be room for 1500 pound of payload plus 400 pound of passengers.
The resistance to tipping is 50 to 1. Only a strong wind, full sail, both sailors on the extreme lee side condition might tip this raft. Unfortunately , it will buck like a bull in waves. This might make the waves of a rapid pour over the sides, because the boat-raft will not adjust to standing waves. That could be especially dangerous in class three to five waters.
Just have to see. Good night, daddy.

Not Enough- Reason to Kill

Love and understanding are not congruent. I love you, God, but I do not understand you. You understand and love me, yet I do not understand you. You allow people of all kinds, million and millions to be killed for minor differences by millions of bigots who sing your praises with knives and hatchets in hand.
Now, even though everyone dies, I don't understand why you let folks die for being black, red, yellow, gay, gender variant, young or old. Why do you allow one set of your children to murder others, usually in your name?
They cite their concern for you, brag on their patriotism, to justify their violence. They honestly believe that they kill to protect the children you gave them. They have been convinced that you limit available resources and give enough only to your chosen ones. They think all others are a threat to their share. Why, daddy, why??

April Fool's Day Launch

Got this habit, Father, of skipping the backside of a writing paper page. I guess I don't like the possibility of the ink bleeding through. It bugs me when that happens because its so hard to read. My hand is small mostly so anything that makes my small writing even harder to puzzle out is definitely not good. I don't like losing thoughts, even if I am just rambling to you. I wonder if that comes from having lost so many memories on super shock day?
I love April Fool's Day and its only three weeks away. Baptized on April 1st, released from Ft. Leavenworth Penitentiary on April Fools, with possibly two of my girls conceived on that day, I love the should be a holiday. Now, I hope to start floating on April Fools Day. More than one person has said that this is a fool's journey.
Times change and nothing stays the same for long. There will be times coming when floating on the rivers and living off the land will be seen as a good way to live. I've had my children grown and not many of them would like me to always be around embarrassing them. I figure moving on is just something I should get and stay used to.
Thinking that turning the car window shade solar cooker to the night sky might make it a cooler instead of a stove. That could be real interesting. Hoping it works out. Should be able to make ice up until June. Maybe putting an aluminum funnel in a Styrofoam box could freeze the whole thing. Ice in the mornings.
This boat-float-home green project is wonderfully strange. Thanks for the opportunity.

The Reason I Float

Back in September of 2010, I discovered a lump in my right breast. The AMA, all sorts of women's organizations and cancer prevention groups encourage us to perform monthly breast exams. I have been following that advice for some time. I discovered a lump and told my doctor at the Bland Medical Clinic.
She sent me to the Bluefield Memorial Hospital for a mammogram, and they recommended an ultrasound because of the lump they scanned. A few days later my doctor's nurse called and said everything was alright. I was very relieved.
For almost a month, I did not think about either the mammogram or the ultrasound, then my doctor called and asked if I had scheduled a biopsy. I asked why, and she told me that I should have received a letter telling me that the lump was suspicious, and not a call saying I was alright. Oops, mistakes happen, so I asked for help setting up an appointment with a local surgeon. She was happy to oblige.
Three weeks later, I arrived at that surgeon's office only to be told by a nurse that the doctor would not give me a biopsy as he did not treat transsexuals. I am used to this kind of prejudice, even from people who should know better. I called my doctor and her nurse said she would get back to me with another surgeon appointment. She did and I arrived at that doctor's office a month later only to be told by his office manager, not by a nurse or by the surgeon, that he would not treat a woman who had been given implants, nor  one exposed to DES in the womb. I questioned the manager until she admitted that the doctor did not like transsexuals and had refused to touch or even to talk to me.
It was now late November and I still had not had a biopsy, although one of the two surgeons tried to bill me for an office visit. My clinic doctor made an appointment for me at the University of Virginia Breast Cancer Center. I still had the lump, in fact I now had three lumps, two in my right breast and one in my armpit. I was very worried. I was to see a cancer specialist just before Christmas.
I had signed up for medical insurance four times with the Kmart employee insurance providers, Starbridge. Four times I had been refused, without ever being told why. I signed up again with the new provider available to us come January. As I had turned 62 on November 16th, I started looking into early retirement. For all I knew, there might not be a lot of life left to me by the time doctors decided I might need some care.
My friend and housemate, Lorrie took off work and drove me to my appointment. Two interns questioned and examined me, got me an x ray, and then called in the specialist. He examined me as well and then said there was no cancer, because it was more likely that I had a lymph node infection. I was given a prescription and sent home. OK, I wish they had taken a biopsy, but they should know what's what, so I would be happy.
I reported the results to my own doctor and she scheduled a followup at her clinic for three months later. I had discovered that if I waited until I was 66 to retire, I would receive only thirty more dollars per month over the amount I would get if I retired now. It would take more than 20 years then to receive the difference I would have received by retiring now. The new insurance company determined that it would not insure me either, so I announced my intention to retire on January 10th.
When I did not know whether or not I had cancer, I had begun building three canoes in my basement. I thought it would be a fine thing to be traveling on the New River if I had to die sometime soon. Now that I had been pronounced clean I still thought the trip would be fun. I said good-bye to my work friends and finished the boats.
On April Fool's Day, 2011, friends drove me to the river and I began my float journey. Two weeks later, my doctor called and told me that she was worried because no one had checked to see if I might have clear-cell cancers. I headed back to the clinic and reported to another doctor as mine was on vacation. He looked at a reddened, scaly, skin rash that had developed on my right breast and completely surrounded my nipple, probed the lumps that still remained under my arm and in my breast tissues, called in other doctors to consult and announced that I might have Piaget's Disease. He took a biopsy, put in stitches and told me to stay off of the river until the stitches came out.
I went home, looked up the disease on the Internet and experienced a sudden sadness. Piaget's is usually, but not always, associated with an underlying breast cancer. The cure rate for cancerous Piaget's is not high. Immediately, I thought, I had been misinformed and improperly cleared by the other doctors. It took me almost a week, to realize that it did not matter. I would continue floating no matter what. I would not let my life be saddened by the threat of dying. It has been a good life so far, and I have little reason to cry.
When I returned to have my stitches removed, the lab results had just been opened at the clinic. Again, I was declared clear of cancer. My Piaget's was not cancerous Piaget's. It could be treated by antibiotics and breast creams. Both were prescribed. 
So here I am, floating because I want to and not because I am dying. Cancer made me look into retiring and that was good.  I do not have cancer or at least I hope I don't have it, and that is better.