A Groundhog Kinda Day

I'm in a car zooming down the freeway headed toward the Chicago area. There's a canoe on the roof. A yellow, Kevlar canoe. Frank's sister Cherrie is at the wheel, I'm in the pasenger seat. In the backseat sleeps Clyde with his master, Frank, at his side. There's something oddly familiar about all this.

Yes, it's true. Captain Frank is now off the river as well. He's headed home to manicure his lawn and walk his dog in peace. After three days of paddling (not alone but with his guest paddler Cherrie) he came to the same conclusion we together had once or twice come to upriver: we were nuts. In this case, he realized he would have to be crazy to continue on, alone.

Frank spoke of how, even with his sister in my place in the bow, he was humbled by the massive 6 or 8 or 12-packs of barges (each one huge in its own right but all lashed together - whoa!) being ferried downriver by tugs. "And the size of the river!" He exclaimed. Beneath the Twin Cities, the Miss had really gone mighty on him. Monster barges, speedboats flying by with no heed for the tiny canoe being tossed and sloshed by their violent wakes. And the lakes.

With not much exception, the Miss is really just a big-beaded necklace of lake after wide lake all the way to St. Louis. "It's not fun anymore," he sighed. I could relate. It had been a hardass endeavor from the get-go, but thru northern Minnesota it had at least been pretty. I felt sad for him, but the result of those early hard days zapped me like a taser as I forgot myself and tried to lift some gear with my right as we prepared to pack the car. My race was run. There was nothing I could do to help him, not anymore.

And so officially ends Frank & Rick's Mississippi bid for the Fall of 2006. We're goin' home. But The Dreamcatcher Expedition? That ain't over til I say so. That ain't over til I quit collecting dreams. That's the beauty of a conceptual journey. It's boundless. You can't kill it. It has taken on a life of its own. And right now, this very instant flying across land in a late model silver sedan, right now it is morphing.

Speaking of things you can't kill...
Frank lives in Woodstock, Illinois, that old town square and gazebo town that anyone who's seen Groundhog Day has had burned into their memory forever. How could we forget it? We walked its cobbled streets time and time again with poor grumpy Bill Murray until he got ungrumpy and learned to do good for others and appreciate the simple things in life at which point his time-loop curse was lifted and he got to wake up in bed with Andy McDowell.

Well, things generally go back to their source, and here am I on my way back to the fictional Punksatawny, PA where, after we've unloaded the canoe and gear, I have every intention of strolling over to the non-fictional, very real bowling alley featured in the film and sittin' down for a beer right where Bill Murray sat before deciding to take his local drunken buddies on a suicidal ride down the railroad tracks that pass by right near the alley.

This wasn't in the plan. I was merely to drive Cherrie's car dowriver to wherever they ended up after three days on the river, then ride into Chicago with her (she lives somewhere nearby), hole up in a cheap motel room for the night, and fly outa Midway Airport tomorrow afternoon.

But things are morphing, like I said. Let's just hope "tomorrow begins tomorrow," as the rock lyric goes, and I get to leave Punksatawny and tomorrow night lay my head in an Arizona desert bed. (smile) - RSM
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