"Groundhog town" & Canada coming up fast

[As a test of this Blogger.com-embedded Jigglebox page and its ability to take text from an email and turn it into a blog entry, I send this, the meat of a recent email sent to a friend, fleshed out and polished up for YOU, beloved Reader. Cross yer fingers now. I thumb-wrote this on a phone and am sending it from a phone in a canoe-laden minivan shooting up some interstate in rural Minnesota at 70 mph. The technological ramifications baffle me.]

After the Doyle and a fine food & booze opulent week in York, PA with (and courtesy of) Editor Pam, I romped on Washington, D.C. and tore up four great daze with amigo & gracious host Miguel in which I visited seven Smithsonian museums and every monument and war memorial on The Mall. On Saturday with Mike off work, we went sailing on Chesapeake Bay and later gorged on delicious blue crab in a crowded restaurant/seafood-slaughterhouse in a bizzare ritual involving tiny wooden mallets and what appeared (to my tropical cocktail-adled mind) a truly savage slaughter, a kind of agregious attack on the food, a venting of madness just one human hair's width shy of cannibalism. Mighta just been my warped perception.

Following five nights in D.C., I flew to Chicago and yesterday went right from plane to work (plus 2 hour drive from airport) shopping, other errands, gear introductions by a very excited partner Frank. The gear really is amazing, all top shelf (eg: PFDs w/CO2 canisters that inflate like airbags with the pull of a ripcord). I won't drown. The Kevlar canoe is 18.5" long yet weighs just 35 lbs.

You'll laugh when I tell you where I spent last night. Perfect kickoff for this new journey into unknown. Punxatawny, PA. Think Phil. That's right, "Groundhog Day." 'Cept it warn't filmed in PA but in Frank's town of Woodstock, IL. The entire small town was THE SET. They didn't change a thing. Town square w/gazebo, bowling alley w/train tracks next door, his B&B home, clock tower, the cafe, very cool. Got a photo of my feet at a bronze plaque where Bill Murray incessently stepped in his nemesis pothole.

Awoke today and was on the road at 6 a.m. for our 600 mile drive to Canada. I'm a zombie. Now a zombie w/sore thumbs from typing on this Blackberry. But in under 24 hrs, I'll be on water. THE water. Hoo-Rah! - RSM

[End note: It might be a week before my next posting as this method won't fly while I'm canoeing. Stay tuned for the BIG postings that will come via Sony memory stix, Priority Mail and the aide of Sister Margarita! Until then, I'll do short ones like this from the river when I am able.]
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Author Embarks on “Dreamcatcher Expedition” to Collect the Dreams of River Residents While Canoeing the Length of the Mississippi

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: Rick McKinney

PHONE: 480-283-3237

EMAIL: jigglebox@gmail.com

WEB: www.jigglebox.com/dreamcatcherexpedition

August 31, 2006, Lake Itasca, Minnesota—This Labor Day weekend, author Rick McKinney embarks on a two-month journey down the Mississippi River to collect the dreams of people living along America's greatest river. As he meets river residents along the way, McKinney will write down their dreams and send them out to sea in a corked bottle at journey's end. "This journey is going to be all about hope and connections between people," says McKinney.

McKinney will begin this "Dreamcatcher Expedition" at the headwaters of the Mississippi on the Canadian border, putting in on Lake Itasca with traveling companion Frank Grandau, a retired Navy captain. Together with their mascot, Clyde the Beagle, they'll travel the 2,350 miles from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico in an 18-foot We-no'nah Minnesota II canoe, looking for the common thread among the people who live in the small towns and big cities along the Mississippi.

Grandau, who attended Parks College on the banks of the river in Cohokia, Illinois, says of the expedition, "It's probably been more of a goal than a dream for me. I think I'm too much of a pragmatist to dream much anymore." But dreams were the first thing to come to McKinney's mind when Grandau invited him along for the adventure. As the aorta of America, the Mississippi carries the lifeblood of the country. What better way to celebrate the lives of its residents than to collect their dreams and set them free?

McKinney and Grandau met while each was on a solo thru-hike of the 2,174-mile Appalachian Trail in 2004. For McKinney, the hike was a cathartic journey to exorcise his own suicidal demons following the suicide of a friend in late 2003. The story of his hike and the many connections he made along the way became his recently published book Dead Men Hike No Trails, a chronicle that New Hampshire's Concord Monitor called "Better than Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods."

McKinney followed up his 2004 Appalachian Trail adventure with a 500-mile hike along the Continental Divide Trail in 2005 to more publicly highlight the epidemic of depression in America. He ended that journey at the memorial service of his mentor, "gonzo journalist" Hunter S. Thompson, who himself gave in to suicide earlier in 2005. On this latest expedition, canoeing down the entire length of the Mississippi, McKinney intends to focus on hope—a hope for dreams-come-true: his own, and as many of others as he can ferry downriver.

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