The Drought is Over!

I wasn't real optimistic, but my friend Rob from Fort Smith had a hunch that Blackburn Creek got hit with enough rain to bring Lee Creek up. I knew his hunches were far better informed than my hunches so I loaded up the kayak and headed out. Turns out about a dozen of us had the same hunch and were rewarded with the prettiest brown water we've seen on Lee Creek since spring! The gauge, 30 miles downstream in Oklahoma, just broke four feet which is barely runnable but the section we were on was running more like seven feet. We caught it right on the swell! It was cool to be able to paddle with the Fort Smith crew again and to finally test out my 40th birthday present on some moving water. I've had a pristine, scratch-free Jackson 4Fun kayak sitting in my dry and desolate closet since August, begging for rain. The rain came on New Year's Eve!

A picture of Nick watching as Rob takes a picture of Don surfing a wave.

I Just Turned 40 an Hour Ago

which puts me in the twilight years of my botched life. Ain't a damn thing changed, though. I've known it was coming. I also knew that the Cossatot River would be running at a sweetheart level today and that my mom would be visiting from Houston and that I would choose, because everything in life is choice, to spend my birthday with her and my wife and son rather than leaving at six in the morning to do the one thing I say I love to do but have proven that I don't love to do because I consistently chose not to do it whenever the rare opportunity arises. I have the heart of a kayaker but life has given me a triple bypass. Actually that's bullshit. I do not have the heart of a kayaker. I do not have the heart of a runner, climber, bicycler, or even a disc golfer. Truth is, and I understand this with greater clarity now, at 40, than I ever have before--the truth is that I have the heart of a man, or a person, let's say, who has never broken a bone or even had a stitch, save the one which closed my gum after having a wisdom tooth pulled. I have the heart of a person so cautious that the most dangerous thing I've done in my life is fail to properly brush my back teeth, and that was more a matter of poor technique than intent; I tried my best to brush every tooth! But forty is here. Forty is the age when you realise who you are, and that who you are is who you are, and that who you are is not going to change. Forty is the age when you are able to examine your past decisions regarding kayaking and from that, accurately project future decisions. For instance, I know with great certainty that I will puss out from at least one trip to the Ocoee next summer. No doubt I'll have some lame excuse like "It's my son's birthday" or "I'm taking my boy camping" as if my son has no mother to take care of him. It's hard, I tell you! It's hard knowing that I could go kayaking tomorrow on the Cossatot and that doing so would not result in me getting divorced and that I reached the decision not to go kayaking very easily. Is it possible that in the deepest depth of my soul, in the part of me which I never explore because I'm afraid of what I might find--is it possible that I'm actually looking forward to the quaint and understated celebration my wife no doubt has planned for me in which by boy hands me the wrapped Andis Ceramic Advanced Hair Clipper #21490 which I've already purchased on ebay along with a card drawn in crayons and a cupcake with one of those candles shaped like a 40? Could that be?

A Syndrome that Sounds Like Ass Burgers

There is such a thing, and I have it! The fact that I have been medically diagnosed with this condition, by myself, changes nothing. If anything, it just disappoints me to learn that I'm not the only one to have this crippling lack of social acumen; I thought I had invented something new! Other than that, the Dave who now knows his condition has a name is indistinguishable from the Dave who didn't know. I still alternate daily between constipation so severe it must be cleared digitally and diarrhea that makes a bad bout of amoebic dysentery feel like a single bad taco; I still get beat up for using words like ennui in the break room; I still have people ask me, "Jesus Christ, Renfro, do you talk about kayaks all the time?" "Not when I'm sleeping." I always reply as I continue my twenty-minute explanation of a method of running waterfalls called "boofing," a technique which I myself have never attempted. The diagnosis was a slam-dunk just from reading the Wikipedia article; it was mere curiosity that--and this is a stylistically terrible way to write this sentence--drove me to drive to the bookstore to purchase a copy of Tony Attwood's The Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome* along with Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert. When I read it (the Asperger's book), it was is if I had written it myself! About me! Seriously, every paragraph is like a mirror into my own socially dysfunctional soul. It talks about "pedantic speech" and "unusual prosody" and such: I have no fucking idea what prosody is but I'm all about pedantry! Why be merely correct when you can be pedantic? That's what I always say! The fact is, I know I must speak and write using rigorously correct grammar or everything I say will definitely be misunderstood, probably earning me a slap in the face or worse. The book also talks about unusual and narrow interests. Here's an actual quote: "The child with Asperger's may have read fifty novels by 19th century French realists with syphilis but won't be able to explain the meaning of any of them" (Attwood, 2007). No shit! It's really in there! And of course it mentions "using metaphor meaningful only to the speaker." I'm the poster boy for using metaphor meaningful only to the speaker! Did you know that the marriage to my partner of now fifteen years nearly never happened because of a botched metaphor? I was working as an airframe mechanic at the time that I composed what I thought was the most tender and heartfelt tribute I could ever offer her, that going a day without her love holding me tight would be like going a day without my cleco pliers. I guess she didn't understand how completely fucking impossible it is to perform even the simplest airframe repair without cleco pliers. It took a month of grovelling to win her back! So yes! It's a slam dunk. I do have Asperger's and I'm going to continue to have it till I die, eighty frustrating years from now, because I like it and I want to have it. Without it, or more precisely without the knowledge of it, I would still be wandering about looking for something to explain my astonishing lack of success in this world. Now I know!

*It is true that this book was recommended to me by a therapist who works with young children. Infer nothing! It is Mrs. DMG's position, and therefore my position, that even if DMG Jr. had what my Guru to All Things Rod White calls "the most grand and glorious 'wrong' that a person can have," and it would thrill me to learn that he did because it is glorious and it is grand, I should not post anything about it here. And so I won't.

Bear Island Paddle Day

Ben and Ryan from OMTC brought a bunch of cool boats out to the Hwy 12 Bridge for a quick paddle around Bear Island on Beaver Lake. I put the first scratches on a brand new Perception Prodigy (prodigy of what, I'm not sure) and then swapped into Ben's 16-foot touring kayak. What a rocket! I'd own one if it wasn't geometrically impossible to get it into my second-storey apartment. After we got back to the boat ramp, we took turns in each other's playboats, which feel really freaky after spending an hour in a boat that is a full ten feet longer. Thanks OMTC, you guys rock!

Not all who wander are lost!

A picture of Ben taking a picture.

GO LERFS!

It's taken some adjustment, but so far my life post-Proust has been going fairly well. I just plow my field, plant whatever vegetable I'm going to grow that day, and harvest it when it's ready. Sure, there's cows to milk and eggs to collect, but that only takes a few minutes. The best thing is that the evenings are all mine! Of course, a person who reads Proust in 290 days is not going to be satisfied by drinking beer and watching hockey every night. That person is going to have to do some pondering, which is what I do. Fortunately, being a small-time farmer provides one with endless material for thought. Like how, if the Toronto Maple Leafs were instead called the Toronto Maple Leaves, then the mind of an aerial viewer seeing a "GO LEAVES!" sign made from hay bales would automatically assign the letter "A" rather than the letter "R" to the ambiguous third character because "leaves" is a familiar word. I usually start the evening pondering that, but, like always, my light and frivolous pondering soon turns to a melancholy brooding that lasts the night. I think of the work it took to make the sign and how unfortunate it is that I can't see it from the air. Most of all, I agonize over the fact that, even though I've been a Leaf's fan long enough that "LEAFS" is a real world to me, I still (in my mind's eye because I've never actually seen my sign) see "GO LERFS!" about half the time. My sleepless agonizing turns to genuine suffering when I realize that the full creative force of my mind cannot produce a single fucking idea how to fix it. About that time, the goddamned rooster crows and my insomniac ass is back in the field. But that is my life, post-Proust!

I Really Good Blog Idea for Someone

Well, is no one going to point out how extraordinary it is that the Maple Leafs won their season opener last Thursday? It wouldn't be hard to do. I mean, it's not like you'd have to spent so many hours on the opening paragraph that the necessary task of spreading this great and surprising news would keep you from reading Proust during the few minutes of peace you have every night. Here, I'll get you started:

TORONTO--Does anybody remember the California Seals? One of the six expansion teams added in 1967 double the size of the NHL, they lost to the defending Stanley Cup Champion Toronto Maple Leafs in their opening game. They would not lose to the Leafs again. Nor would any other team. For the next 43 years, fans would fill every seat in the Maple Leaf Gardens, and starting in 1999 every seat in the Air Canada Center, every single game, because they loved hockey and in particular, they loved Toronto hockey! They didn't mind seeing their beloved Maple Leafs lose game after game, season after season, because they understood that after their successful cup run in 1967, with their best players either retiring or being traded away, the team simply wasn't good enough to win. Instead, they came to eat overpriced hot dogs, drink overpriced beer, and watch the players they idolised struggle valiantly and fall. That's what they paid for, what they expected, and what they got night after night. Well, last night, against a tired and listless Montreal team, they watched the Toronto Maple Leafs struggle valiantly and win!

The rest is cake! Just continue developing the idea that the Leafs hadn't won a game since 1967. You could talk about how they hadn't scored three goals in one game since Alexander Mogilny scored the franchise's only hat trick in '02. Or how they hadn't held a team to two goals since King Clancie's legendary game in 1932, a game the Leafs lost 2-0. Maybe you could include some post-game interviews with Leaf's Captain Dion Phaneuf who would explain how he thought he'd gotten the last win of his career when Calgary traded him, or with Kaberle who would describe what it's like playing thirteen straight 82-game seasons without a single win and how astonishing it is to finally win one. "I can't wait to call my mom in the Czech Republic!" he might say.

It's a little late, I suppose, but it's still a good idea. Someone should take it and run with it!