We’re thirteen and a half feet above last year’s level on this date, with the Phatwater on the Natchez gage today coming in at:

40.56′

There’s a good bit of drift in the river, as there often is during a rise. Yesterday’s 2.25 inches of rain did little to knock the pollen from the air, and sleep has come only in fits and starts the past week due to the seasonal subjugation some suffer from airbursts of Japanese Magnolia microgametophytes of  pale yellow plant sperm. My personal record for sneezing during the course of  one minute now stands at 56, which does not leave much time for breathing although there’s not much breathing going on anyway since at present my sinuses are as impenetrable as Fort Knox.

This condition alone could have kept me from becoming a NASA pilot, though, admittedly, there were quite a few other factors, such as calculus, and differential equations. But, not to fret. Although rhythm can be expressed in mathematical formulae, engineers, universally, make poor dance partners.

I have been asked to pass along to interested parties the announcement of a kayak/canoe race on the Barnett Reservoir in Jackson, Mississippi, slated for April 21st. Contact is Phatwater Veteran David Moore: paddlebiker@comcast.net

Please direct all queries to David, and not I.  I will not be attending due to prior commitments. Here’s a sketch of the planned course. This is all the information I have so again, target your queries to David. Should be a fun race.

All For Now — KB

At present the Phatwater on the Natchez gage is at:

 39.9′

thirteen feet above this date a year ago, where at present we are being hounded by a rip-snorting rain that continues to replenish our aquifers and make us the envy of all whose vistas are carpeted in sand and tumbleweed. At last look, at my pos we have accumulated more than 13 inches of rain since the new year.  Thirteen feet, thirteen inches. Coincidence?

I have plans to take a surface temperature reading of the Phatwater this weekend. We paddled on Monday, under pleasant, even warm winds, but the water was Oh-So-Cold. More than an hour on the skin sets the hands quicker than concrete poured at noon in July. There are hand devices known as “pogies” which come in various constructions and fabrics, which fit over the paddle shaft  and into which one can thrust their hands for comfort against the wind.  I used them with great effect in my whitewater days of yore, though they’ve now gone missing.  I can and do recommend them highly. I’m the sort who simply cannot wear gloves while paddling. I don’t know why, but any and all gloves I’ve tried restrict the circulation in my fingers and they still go numb, although I don’t have this problem with pogies, which, I see from the NRS site, go for around $50 with shipping, for the “Black Mamba” model.

The other Black Mamba, which is not black, can drop an elephant, as well as one’s temperature, on a more or less permanent basis. They are so named because of the color of the inside of the mouth, although it is difficult to expect of anyone who has seen the inside of the black mamba’s mouth to give much of an account of it. The green mamba is green, though it is not envious of man, easily outperforming any hominid, past, present, or future, when it comes to, ahem, scaling the heights of African shrubbery. Shrubbery.  A Shrubbery.

The name, Mamba, I can give no account of, although the genus, Dendroaspis, into which the genetic framework of both the Off-Black Black Mamba and the less-than-envious Green Mamba are cast means “tree” (Dendro) and   “poisonous snake” (aspis, from asp).  Bear in mind that neither snake is poisonous, though both are venomous.

All For Now—KB

Phatwater on the Natchez gage today is at

31.88′

and dropping, down from last year about 9 and a half feet. Chris VanMeter writes from Milwaukee to report temps there at

-10° yesterday. Here, it is 74°. Here, the population density per square mile is 70. There, the population density is 9948. There are, in other words, 142 of them vying for the same donut as one of us.

Here, we say “damn straight”, there, they say, “Uff-Dah, Yossir You-Betcha, Doont-cha-knoo.”  In other words, we use a quarter as many syllables as do they, to say the same thing.

I couldn’t find our commercial property taxes based on square footage, but in Milwaukee they are $2326 per square foot, per month. That’s $27,912 a year. Just in taxes. They’ve got to sell 142 sno-cones or condoms or bottles of mouthwash for every one we sell here just to strike an equilibrium, and a whole lot more than that just to cover the taxes. Their taxes are higher because they have to have more square footage per fewer people since they are all always wearing layers upon layers of clothes, topped off with bulky Mackinaws or Puffy Down Parkas, which of course take up more space, allowing fewer people inside retail outlets and diners, which therefore requires more floor space, per person, to bring in enough revenue to pay the taxes needed to purchase more space.  A vicious cycle. Then there’s the need for a snow-blower which this blog has neither the time nor space to cover, so we’ll just leave it all to be with this notation about how much we are looking forward to a nice warm paddle on the Phatwater tomorrow.

All For Now—KB

Phatwater on the Natchez gage today is:

 42.43′

Today’s will be the last blog post from this old site. I am working with Allen Hancock to move the new site online, and he has requested we do so either today or tomorrow. I think I’ve mentioned Allen here before. He is owner of Mac Consulting Group, in Baton Rouge.

As mentioned earlier, for the six of you who bother reading this, I’m involved in a project which, apart from sleeping and keeping my nose barely above the the waterline, has forced upon me the need to eschew all social contact. Short of my own funeral, I have little expectation you will find me suitable for viewing. I cannot say for certain I will be present for any races this spring, or the conduct of this year’s Ochsner’s Ironman Safety Boat parade.  If I can coerce Adam Elliott to head up this fund raiser, I need to do so. You won’t be hearing much from me until June, although I do expect to make at least one weekly post to offer the Phatwater Natchez gage reading.

I’ve lost neither my sense of direction, nor humor, I’ve just got something pressing which has forced me to withdraw until mid-year. When I complete the task, you’ll all be made aware of it, hopefully in a big way.

Feel free to email me. I’m on that every day.

All For Now—KB

Math for idiots. We’ve dropped a four tenths of a foot on the Phatwater since yesterday, which is the same as a fifth of a foot, or 20 percent, which according to English measurements would be 2.4 inches, which puts us at

 45.81′

on the Natchez gage. I did some checking and the last time we were anywhere near this level, at the caboose of the year, would have been in 1982, when on 29 December we were at 46.9′, followed by a rise to 47.2′ on New Year’s Eve.  Ta Da.

I’m frequently axed, as frequently as last week by a Phatwater veteran and physician of notable skill, “Isn’t this rather unusual for the water to be this high this time of year?”, to which I replied, “Well, there is no systematic average for any given time of the year,” followed by the crossing of my arms over my chest, having learned in college speech, 101, this was a method often used by effective, provocative speakers with broad influence and grand followings which demonstrated one’s mastery of the topic being discussed, as well as one’s clear position of dominance on the issue. But in fact, there is no “average”, although if you go to the link below, offered by the same august organization, you will indeed find that they publish a, DAILY HISTORIC NORMAL STAGE. To that end, here, for your review, is the chart offering annual highs and lows for the Natchez gage, going back to 1940.

All For Now — KB

Yes, there have been mistakes, and there will continue to be mistakes, but keep in mind that while “Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me . . .”, Here we have but a staff of one.

Yesterday we were a foot and a half below flood stage at Natchez though today the Phatwater on the Natchez gage has dipped to

 46.2′

the current level undoubtedly being influenced by the 5+”s of rain to which we’ve most recently been subjected. As this rain which moved north and east of us, continues to load into the Mississippi’s drainage we can expect to see some more rises. Local waters are turgid and unattractive, if, by unattractive we mean muddy, which we do. Muddy waters have about them that same sort of appeal as does a reddish eruption with a white cap on an otherwise unmarred tip of the nose.

I’m not quite sure exactly what it is that separates me from those of you who prefer to communicate your thoughts, deeds, and charms through Facebook, to say nothing of twitter, about which I have nothing to say other than I’ve never used it and pay no attention to it and have no future plans to do so. Facebook just doesn’t resonate with me. It is busy, in its appearance, to a degree I find annoying. I have tried to give it the benefit of the doubt but have in doing so given up.

At first I was open minded, and tempted to conclude that there was some sort of generational gap which divided me from Facebook’s younger, more attuned audience, though on reflection I find that quite a few of the people with whom I fail to connect through facebook are in fact my age or older, so there must be something else at work.  I next suspected that it might be because I am left handed I do not, as a result, subscribe to Facebook with ease, anticipation or alacrity. This, of course, is only wishful thinking. Although I’ve conducted not one byte of research to uncover such facts as would support this position, this is, nonetheless, a very hollow claim, as I’m certain the ‘Devil’s Hand’ is well represented among the throngs of rattle-batterers at work on Facebook at this very moment.

The third and most likely reason I don’t spin my tires in the ruts of Facebook is that I just find Facebook entirely too tedious to navigate, and lack the time or patience, or haven’t the will to carve out the time, or, were I to carve out the time, the desire for the meditation required on my part to overcome the anxiety brought on by my impatience in dealing with this and other social media.

I’ll make a prediction though. I predict in the not-so-distant future Facebook will go the way of dial-up internet connections, and will uniformly be shanked by its most loyal users much in the same way no-one today is still using prodigy or compuserve.  Remember prodigy and compuserve?

So, if you are among the dozen or so people who bother to allow this bullet to strike your I’ve-got-the-time-to-waste target, and you’ve attempted to reach my distant shores via tweet or facebook message, or notification, please know that I’m not ignoring the message outright, I’m just ignoring the messenger much in the way I enjoy to capacity to ignore the buzz of mosquitoes in my ears when fixed on some greater need, such as upturning literary boulders in search of adenoids.

All For Now — KB

We are at

46.1′

on the Phatwater Natchez gage today under leaden, dreary skies of the kind I find quite enjoyable for doing what I am presently doing, which is sitting before the Weather Channel broadcast with the volume turned off, and wondering at the edge of my faculties and considerable imagination what on Earth the two weather women were thinking in the wee hours of dawn as they crawled into the hideous outfits in which they’ve both chosen to parade across the floor of their station. The good looking one with the brown eyes and collar bone length hair is wearing a black jacket, buttoned at the mid-section to form a double “V”, both above and below, with some sort of pink ruffle fronted blouse, a type of zebra-print skirt, and footwear of the kind I’m given to understand is referred to as “stilettos.” The other one, arguably the more vivacious of the two, has on one of those ridiculous looking — dresses? — I guess one would say, of the type that is trussed up under her chest, apparently to aid in defining the border between where her mammaries end and her gut, which prevails, clearly begins, though which in its flowing loose design is intended to disguise. The color is the color of unoxygenated blood, the truss, an ugly shade of mauve, as if there is any shade of mauve that is not ugly. For those of you born under the color chart of mauve, I extend my sympathies. Weather woman deuce, with the longer hair, incorporates a standing posture of the kind which suggests she has just dismounted a Clydesdale after a lengthy, all-night canter through rough terrain. Women, and men, exiting kayaks after 42 and a half miles have never looked to be in so much pain as does this lass. She would not make the cut, I fear, as the love interest in a James Bond revisit featuring either Sean Connery or Roger Moore, one last time, in the episode involving 007′s retirement from Her Majesty’s service.

Speaking of retiring, I have become involved in a project which has potential for platinum, though in so doing will require of moi a great deal of time and concentration which, of necessity, will preclude my regular visits to these postings. When I can, I shall, though they will likely be quite brief until the conclusion of my stated task, for which I have set a deadline of July 16, the anniversary of the World’s first atomic detonation at the Jornada Del Muerto Desert, Alamogordo, New MayHeeCoh, at 0530, 1945, after which, as we all know, a new age was entered, the world was a changed place, and the color mauve made its way onto the fashion stage for all to revile.

Until then,

All For Now — KB

Not long in my past I found myself on a family oriented “furniture” mission to north Texas, on my way to a neighborhood where a lot of people with a great deal of money and very little imagination or concern for open space reside beneath the thundering roar of 787s and against the brush of implanted ornamental shrubs, previously unknown to the high semi-desert surroundings where, today, the corporate transparency of yet another “gated golfing experience” can be had.  Suddenly, I made a wrong turn.

This is easy to do when one is towing a trailer, 70 miles per hour, through six lanes of carbon monoxide clouds, especially if one, such as I, is not paying close attention, and has failed to plan the trip and check the exits beforehand. Instead I had chosen to rely on the old fashioned map-in-the-lap during the crush of commuter jousting, punctuated by the insinuation of black and white motorcycles with blue lights flashing, weaving through gaps between bumpers and rear hitches adorned with plastic bull-scrotums.

At one point, I happened to notice that the motorcycle to my left was under the guidance of the heavy thighs of one well fed policewomen, whose only shot at fame will come should she happen to detour down the path of the criminals against whom she’s been charged to protect us, and fall prey to the temptation found in picking up a few extra bucks from those among her ranks whose job it is to go undercover in a sting operation, devised by their superiors whose one shot at fame derives from climbing the internal affairs ladder to promotion.

Mere speculation on my part, but once the wrong turn had been made, with trailer in tow, map-in-lap, and the greater desire to find myself reposing on a beach somewhere in the South China Sea, I had to conjure blame from pure vapor and shift it, accordingly, if my anger was to be abated, kept under the shrill peep of the metephoric kettle announcing afternoon tea and shortbread were nigh, and the next lane change needed effecting as soon as my overstocked bladder had deduced there was adequate service just beyond that upcoming westerly bend.

I wound up, though I’m not a tourist, in Dealy Plaza, keeping an eye out for misaligned manhole covers beneath which snipers of a new era were honing their skills, though which, as I’ve pointed out elsewhere, should now be referred to as “personhole covers” if this great nation of ours is expected to survive. Given, however, that we now have buxom women of uniform directing the ebb and flow of urban traffic from the comfort of a Police Edition Harley-Davidson Motorcycle (I’m assuming it was a Harley-Davidson, although it could well be that the Dallas PeeDee has entered into some sort of free trade agreement with Honda or Kawasaki Police cruisers, thrown together in various maquiladoras, under license, though with abiding love and inspiration by those few hard working Mexican nationals who’ve not yet begun tunneling beneath the Rio Grande), it has become clear that America is doin’ just fine at bridging the gender gap.

What does all this have to do with the Phatwater? you may ask. Well, I’ll put it this way.  Women, these days, are kicking men’s asses.

I’m not going to go into a debate on this issue. I don’t have time and besides, I haven’t won a single argument with any woman during my current lifetime. I’ll just sum things up by putting this one in your ditty bag. Our good friend and author Joe Glickman, 1st Place co-winner with Eric Mims, of last October’s Xth annual Phatwater Kayak Challenge, has his latest title, FEARLESS, about to be released, from what I’ve been told, some time “after the new year”. It’s about one such kick-ass woman, Freya Hoffmeister, and her circumnavigation of the Australian Continent. It’s good. Buy it. This will help Joe afford his flight back down here next October to defend his title. Here’s the Amazon Link:

Freya Hoffmeister — FEARLESS

So as I was leaving Dealy Plaza, a whiskered rastafarian came bumping up the way, wearing one canvas shoe, his bobbing head draped beneath what appeared to be a filthy beach towel in the hues of a rainbow, buttressed by the scaffolding of his horsewhip tresses in such a way as to give him  the appearance of the figure depicted on the so-called “Turin Shroud”, though in living color. He held in his left hand a sign which read, “Toorism Info”, while he pumped with his right hand back and forth towards the sign with exaggerated animation, fingers curled like the legs of a frightened spider, pointing at the words on his sign with his bony index digit attached to his hand by the creative genius of a Loving God.

He moved off the sidewalk and into the right-of-way, directly in my path. I slowed. Traffic was light. The trailer was my guardian to the rear. Tail end charlie.

The rasta began circling toward me. I reached beneath the seat, checking for my “instant heat”. He walked up to the driver’s side window — motioned for me to open the window.  The doors were already locked. M handed me a dollar.”He’s just a begger,” she said. “Give him a buck, or he’ll key your paint job as you go by.” I cracked the window, slipped him the dollar. He leaned over, staring at the bill. “Cain’t chew do no bettah than that?” I thought he was going to sniff it. M handed me another dollar. I slid it into the space in the window. He took them both, said,”bettah not be no counna-fit,” then turned, stepped back onto the walk and started away.

“How far’s the I-35 junction,” I asked. He flipped me the bird and mumbled something that sounded like “the man,” although he could have said, “You the man,” or, he could have simply been telling me his name was Stan. Stan, of Dealy Plaza. Dealy Stan.

Onward into the fog.

Phatwater on the Natchez gage, today, is:

 44.79′

fifteen feet above this stage a year ago.

All For Now — KB

Windy would best describe the sort of weather we are beneath at the moment, although Wendy might not. I don’t know anyone by the name Wendy although I do know Phatwater veteran Rebecca Amerson, from Eutawville, South Carolina, who goes by Wyndy, and who, in the manner of a wanderer with a pebble in her hiking boot, abides the missteps of her consort, goat herder Rick Carter, with the stoicism of a brass cannon mated to a slow burning fuze.

Rick frequently comments here, though of late has had nothing to declare, and has apparently taken to his own wanderings, in a fashion somewhat detached; perhaps in the way a skink may come up missing the back half of its twitching tail, so to get things back on track, provocation on his behalf has encouraged me to draw today’s line in the sand, before Christmas shrouds either of us with yet another pair of sox, which I often make use of, or a necktie, which I often do not.

That is to say, I am spending my nearest hours working on the development of the new look for our web site while watching twenty-somethings, in possession of far greater fortunes than I could ever tolerate slug it out on ESPN, while the Phatwater on the Natchez gage currently pulsates at

 43.35′,

half a first-down higher than a year ago.

All For Now — KB