A fine little voyage

Well, it's done. The first 45 miles, anyhow. Only about 342 to go before I can greet the Louisiana border and hang my salty paddle up for a while.

Our shakedown segment of the trip, from Boca Chica to Port Mansfield, did what I expected it to do: it confirmed a few things, exposed some deficiencies in my planning, and -- importantly -- gave me some confidence for the rest of the trip.

Dean and Ken were great paddling partners and we ended the week better friends than when we headed south March 2. That, I think, is no small accomplishment.

Accomodations on either end of the open water paddling were primo. A big thanks to Melissa Zamora at the South Padre Island CVB, to Yves and Chris de Diesbach at the Brown Pelican Inn and to my old friends Bruce and Shirley Shuler at Getaway Adventures Lodge in Port Mansfield.

For a day-by-day account of the trip (abbreviated, to be sure; I still have to write a magazine article, you know), please visit www.texassportingjournal.com.

Here are a few photos:

Shakedown

It's true that time flies when you're having fun, and I've been having a lot of fun lately. Texas Independence Day looms, though, as does the official launch of the TSJ Kayak Safari.

Friday.

Friday my buddies Ken Larson and Dean Thomas will join me on the last beach in Texas and we'll push our boats into the sluggish current at the mouth of the Rio Grande, point our bows north and start paddling.

I'm looking forward to it. I'm also just a bit nervous.

This will be our shakedown cruise ... only about 60 miles -- a little less than 20 percent of the entire coastwise paddle -- but maybe the most important. It's the 60 miles that will tell me if this nutty idea I've been nurturing since the dawn of the millineum is truly crazy, or inspired.

It's the 60 miles that will let me know whether my daily mileage estimates were accurate, and whether a 16-foot sit-on-top kayak really can easily carry everything I need for a couple of unsupported days on the water.

It's also the 60 miles with -- potentially -- the best fishing.

We've had a warm week and the snook should be moving up onto the flats again. Trout and redfish will be feeding actively and there's always a chance we'll run across some of the Lower Laguna's resident tarpon even if the migratory schools of big fish are still vacationing in Mexico.

We'll catch up to them -- or they'll catch up to us -- toward the end of the trip, farther north on the coast.

Ken sent me the weather forecast yesterday and noted that winds this weekend are forecast to be blowing out of the north around 13. That's barely breezy for the Texas coast, but coming from the wrong direction. Highs in the mid-70s, lows in the mid-50s.

I think it will be pleasant, weather-wise. Aside from paddling into the wind. But, you know, if this was an entirely easy thing to do, I probably wouldn't be that interested in doing it.

Maybe I should be more wound-up about this -- everyone else seems to be -- for months I've been reassuring everyone from my editors to my paddling partners: "We can do this."

I've thought long and hard about why I'm not more concerned. I guess part of the reason is that I'm comfortable on this water; this, for me, is a return to my youth and dawn-to-dusk explorations in a 13-foot sailboat.

And we're well-equipped, if not for absolute comfort, at least for safety. A GPS unit will tell us where we are and VHF radios will allow us to tell the Coast Guard should we need to do that.

The first three nights we'll be in sight of the towering condos on South Padre Island. The last two nights we'll be almost within sniffing distance of Shirley Shuler's fantastic home cooking at Getaway Adventures Lodge in Port Mansfield. I probably won't be able to smell the cold beer in Cappy's cooler, but I can sure imagine it. That's powerful incentive to keep paddling.

The two friends who are joining me for this leg are experienced paddlers, fine anglers and -- importantly -- entertaining. It's going to be fun, and that, really, is the point.

I'll be sure to let you know how it goes.

Driving

I do a lot of it. Never been one to let a couple hundred miles of asphalt stand between me and ... whatever.

And really I don't mind. It's good thinkin' time, and sometimes I see some interesting stuff and I get to know my CDs really well. I'll come back to all of these things in due course.

It's 187 miles from my front door to the center of Rockport (my hometown) via U.S. Hwy 183, Texas 239 and Texas 35. I've done it so many times it's as if my car's on rails. Lockhart-Luling-Gonzales-Cuero-Goliad-Tivoli ....

Saturday I drove south to spend some time with my friend Kendal. He'd had a lousy week, I'd had a lousy week ... he has a fully stocked bar and satellite TV and lives right on the water. We figured that, somehow, some combination of those things would improve our collective mood.

On the way down, I got to thinking about the things I've figured-out all on my own while driving. Sadly, it's a pretty short list, but feel free to marvel at my, uh ... powers of observation. Or something:

• Highway maintenance contracts are awarded by county. Notice: most often, when you cross a county line, the road surface changes. It's the only explanation I can come up with.
  
• There's no such thing as a "canola." Canola cooking oil is actually made from rapeseed, not a marketing-friendly plant.
  
• When someone gives you two reasons for disappointing you, it's usually really only one or the other ... or maybe a third reason entirely that you're not hearing.
  
• Goats' tails point up, sheep's tails point down.
  
• Old roads follow even older tracks; US 183, for instance, follows the path of the old Indianola-Bexar stagecoach route for a good part of its length in the southern part of the state. That's why old roads are so winding and interesting. New roads, like IH-35, were surveyed with the express intent of getting from Point A (Laredo) to Point B (Detroit?) in the most efficient manner. That's why new roads are so straight and boring. (okay, I actually had some help with this one from an historical marker)
  
• The outside heel of my left shoe is always the first thing to get worn down because I walk funny. I mean, I must walk funny, right?
  
• If you mostly throw just one type of lure, that's going to be your most productive lure. A corollary is that if you stop fishing after you catch a fish, you will have caught that fish on your "last cast." Fishermen like to say: "I caught that big sucker on my last cast," like -- "what luck!" -- what luck indeed.
  
• Vodka tonics are not effective aids to weight loss. I used to think they were, but then I figured out that really it was all the dancing I was doing along with the drinking. This, by the way, is an excellent example of using science in everyday life. A dozen vodka tonics per night + six hours of salsa x 20 nights = weight loss. A dozen vodka tonics and no dancing = weight gain. It's all about adding and subtracting variables. Either way, though, you're pretty well protected from malaria.
  
• The sun and the moon, when close to the horizon, appear so large because ... oh hell, I haven't figured this one out yet. The question is: why do the sun and the moon on the horizon appear so large, yet appear so small higher up in the sky? You can test this by looking at that big ol' orange moon as it rises, then taking a photo with a lens equivalent to about 50mm, and compare. It looks nothing like what you see with your naked eye. This is apparently an abiding mystery, and I'm not the only one still wondering. Seriously. Theories have ranged from atmospheric distortion (greater magnification by looking at the distant object through more or thicker atmosphere) to an optical illusion caused by one's mind comparing objects (like trees or buildings) of a known distance and size to an object (like the moon) of an unknown distance and size.

The astronomical body on the horizon question leads me to things I've pondered while driving but have yet to understand. For instance:

• Why the hell do so many trucks in Texas have "FISH" emblazoned on the trailers? This applies to refrigerated 18-wheelers and fish farm stocking tanks alike. I've actually asked TxDoT about this and they don't know. I understand HAZMAT placards ("Hey, this sucker could explode."), but ... fish?
  
• If synthetic materials (like polyester and polyethylene -- Nylon and bowling balls) are made from oil, what is "synthetic oil" made from?
  
• Is there an afterlife?

Some things just aren't observable. Or easily testable.

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Of all the cool things I spy while driving, birds usually top the list.

• It ocurred to me this weekend that vultures really are disgusting creatures. I know they fill an important niche in the ecosystem, but I'd like them a lot more if they'd draw the line at skunks. They're amazingly engineered, though. Did you know a vulture's vent is positioned so that it shits on its own feet? Vulture shit, as you might imagine, is pretty caustic stuff; so caustic, it kills the bacteria the birds pick up by wading around in dead stuff.
• I saw another pair of marsh hawks this weekend. The males are a very distinctive gray, and both males and females have white rumps. Unlike other hawks that soar or perch for a "birds-eye" view, harriers (properly, these birds are "Northern harriers") often hunt in pairs by gliding just feet over the ground. I frequently catch sight of a pair or more on Texas 239 between Goliad and Tivoli. I'm actually not much good at identifying raptors, and I saw several others; an American kestrel perched on a power line was the only other species I could identify for sure.
• I often see Rio Grande turkeys on this stretch of road as well, and sometimes geese this time of year. This trip the only large game birds I saw were sandhill cranes flying low in a ragged vee. They're impressively large animals with a distinctive, honking call that always puts me in mind of a brisk, north wind.
• I saw a couple of Belted kingfishers between Rockport and Aransas Pass. They habitually perch on the old telephone wires near the DeGussa refinery. While not exactly uncommon, kingfishers always get my attention in a way that seagulls, pelicans and whistling ducks don't. But I did see scores of those, too.

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Typically, when driving to Rockport, I can pick up The World's Best Radio Station (KTXN-98.7 FM, they stream at http://www.texasmix.com/) south of Gonzales. I usually listen all the way into town.

This trip, though, I kept cycling Jon Dee Graham through the CD changer. Partly because it fit my mood, partly because I'd seen him play at the Saxon Pub the night before, partly because I can be a little bit obsessive .... mostly because it's just really, really good stuff.

I've often found my favorite music at the intersection of my experience and the songwriter's sentiment; somewhere just north of blues, south of hard rock and a little east of country.

This is no great Eureka! discovery; plenty of other people already know about this guy, but his music is new to me and it just bowls me right over.

Thoughtful, wry, hopeful, a little heartbreaking sometimes, outright funny others, Jon Dee's songs are mostly about standing somewhere in the middle of your years and checking the traffic in both directions.

My favorite tracks so far, from Full, his most recent CD:

• "Swept Away" (Jon Dee said in an interview he considers Mexico his "spiritual home." It's my ancestral home, and I've ... well, I've actually sorta done the swept away thing. Once.);
  
• "Holes" I haven't quite parsed yet, but I keep going back to it;
  
• "Remain" (my sis and her heck-of-a-good-guy boyfriend of seven years really needed to hear this one Friday night. Glad they were there.); and
  
• "Beloved Garden" (a retelling of Genesis, Chapter 3 ... didn't really expect to like this one, but it's a great song).

The title track from The Great Battle rocks.

• "Robot Moving" continues the meditation on ... well, just keepin' on, I think, and includes one of my favorite lines from the CD: Everybody says put one foot in front of the other/'Course the irony is that's the only way feet work/What luck/Now what am I supposed to do about that?

Anyhow, check him out.

Jon Dee plays most Wednesdays at the Continental Club, usually on a double bill with James McMurtry. You can catch him at the Saxon Pub about once a month with his band, and every Sunday there with The Resentments. I think all of the songs on his MySpace page are from The Great Battle, but his Web site (http://www.jondeegraham.com/) includes samples from Full.

That's it, man. All I got today.

Polar bears

One day a baby polar bear approaches his mother with a confused expression on his face and says, "Mom? Am I a polar bear?"

I arrived at the campground to find my only child sprawled on the ground, surrounded by a gaggle of 7-year-olds, his sneakers smoldering.

As I carefully removed his charred socks and then applied a rag soaked in icewater to the blisters on his ankles, he sobbed out the story.

Apparently he and three of his friends had been playing by the lake shore when they saw a large depression filled with grey powder. It looked interesting -- or maybe something on the other side did -- so they waded right through it, Patrick in the lead.

Later he said he thought the stuff drifting off the top was dust stirred-up by the wind. I suppose smoke might look like wind-blown dust. Or ash.

Either way, it was the last time he was truly warm the entire weekend.

"Well of course son!"
The cub replied, "You're sure I'm not a panda bear or a black bear?"

"Pack 20 Polar Bear Campout." The title of the event alone should have warned me away.

By sundown the wind whipping off the lake was truly cutting. The "observatory," which for some reason I had imagined as a heated, domed building with a sliding roof -- maybe with an open bar and a fireplace -- turned out to be a bunch of telescopes set up in a field at the top of a hill.

Brrr.

Later, after the campfire had been lit, various adults repeatedly warned the 70-some-odd elementary kids not to stray inside the logs laid around the fire. You could see that it was probably warmer in there, but you couldn't get quite close enough to tell for sure.

"No, of course not. Now run outside and play."
But the baby polar bear is still confused so he approaches his father.
The cub asks, "Dad, am I a polar bear?"

By 9 p.m., the wine was gone and there was nothing left to do but go to bed. Suddenly the "0-degree" sleeping bags Cabela's sent me looked inviting.

I tried for a few minutes to read by flashlight, but to do that I also had to leave my arms outside the bag. No good.

"Why of course son!" the papa polar bear gruffly replies.
The cub continues, "I don't have any grizzly bear or Koala bear in my bloodlines?"

10:30: I've inadvertently unzipped my bag in my restless sleep, and the cold is flooding in across my left ass cheek. I zip the bag up again and roll over.

11:23: I awake to the wailing of some Cub Scout's little brother, somewhere on the other side of the camp. The banshee-like screams continue until 11:47.

12:13: Patrick has rolled into the tent pole and I awake with a layer of nylon across my face. Our breath has condensed and formed ice on the inside of the tent.

2:21: I awake again and realize that I have to pee. I ponder this until about 2:29, when I decide it's just not worth it.

3:40: I really have to pee. I struggle out of my sleeping bag, don my hiking boots and jacket, and unzip the tent. It's freezing, probably because the evening's cloud cover has blown away. A million stars spangle the night sky. I hear something clattering on the ground as I go about my business. I'm pretty sure it's my urine, turning to ice.

4:17: Patrick rolls over and says: "I always wake up at this time when we're camping." Patrick, I say, it's 4:17 in the morning. "Oh," he replies. The diffused starlight through the top of the tent, refracted by the ice that has again formed there, looked like the gray light of dawn.

5:10: I awake from a nightmare in which the surgeon who performed my back surgery in June is standing over me, frowning and wagging his finger. I roll over and try to ease the ache that's spreading from my lower back into my thighs.

"No son. I'm a polar bear, your mother is a polar bear, and by god you too are one hundred percent purebred polar bear!! Why in the world do you ask?"
"Because I'm freezing my BUTT off!"

6:30: I wake-up again, and hear the voices of kids running across the campground. Maybe, I think, someone has coffee on. I stumble out of the tent and head across the campground. Still rubbing sleep out of my eyes, I stop and stare at the dad who apparently is standing in the fire. Sparks swirl and dance around him. I push through the two ranks of sleepy campers who are toasting their hands over the flames and ask him if there's room for two.

7:05: Sitting in my truck with the heat on high, trying to gather the courage to get back out and pack up.

7:27: Packing sleeping bags and the tent one-handed, as I desparetly clutch a cup of hot coffee in the other. Nick, the Cub Scout pack's grand poobah, walks over and hands Patrick a patch.

The patch shows three polar bears walking across an ice flow with the words: "It froze in Texas."

What?! These guys knew it was gonna do this? They knew far enough in advance to have patches made?

That's it.

For the second time in my life I'm quitting Cub Scouts. After I take a hot shower. And a nap.

Photos courtesy Pack 20.