The forecast looked nice so six of us headed out to take advantage of the three-day holiday weekend. Section 10 of the Ouachita Trail was the target and, since this is an odd section with camping restrictions, a different approach was called for. Continue reading “OT2020: Section 10, MLK backpacking weekend”
Construction of a steady rest
For the vase I recently completed, I needed to use a steady rest to support the end of the vase and keep it from vibrating. As you can see in the photo below, at this stage the vase is connected to the lathe by the 2″ diameter neck and I needed to finish turning the inside of this piece. So I made arrangements to go to a friends house to use his steady rest.
Continue reading “Construction of a steady rest”The Little Vase That Was
It’s been a quiet six years on this blog! We’re quite alive although life, as it’s prone to do, got in the way of posting about our adventures. This post isn’t intended to catch the reader up on happenings but rather to test out our continued ability to post.
It’s finished! This was my first time turning an open segmented piece in two parts and then glueing them together. This made it easier to access the inside but it complicated the overall process and made it more like making two pieces simultaneously.
The finished piece consists of maple and walnut, 12 segments/row, approximately 15 inches tall by 8 inches wide (37cm x 21cm).
Cossatot First Timers Trip 2014
The Arkansas Canoe Club ran this years First Timers trip on the Cossatot River and here is a link to a gallery of photos I took… https://ourpasttents.com/galleries/2014-cossatot-first-timers-trip
This is a placeholder post… hopefully I’ll write more soon.
2013: Truth in Numbers
We’re a little late to this 2013 paddle log thread but here are the digits for we three Sig’s. I think I counted everything correctly as the year went on.
2013 saw each of us paddling for over 32 days this year on 15-18 different streams streams for 113-170 miles. We continued to try out lots of boats this year which means some of us paddled 10 different boats. Some were open boats and I’ve since made the switch to paddling canoes. This, of course, upped all of our swim counts compared to the year before though Mandy still has the fewest (duh!).
Last year also saw us camping out 23-38 nights last year and hiking 40-108 miles. Hiking has taken a backseat to paddling but Mandy got her numbers up by spending three weeks rambling around the western US.
Even our dog Hayduke managed to hike 31 miles and camp out 11 nights which is more than many folks. He really is a luck dog.
All in all, it was another great year and a lot of that credit goes to the community of paddlers that makeup the Arkansas Canoe Club … those folks have taken us in to safely show us the ropes. SYOTR!
How boats are made
Ever wonder how modern canoes and kayaks are made? We did, so we went in search of a few videos and figured we’d share them here.
It seems like most kayaks are made by rotomolding though one or two companies blowmold them… most canoes are made of Royalex and are made by vacuum forming but this material won’t be manufactured after spring 2014… SOME canoes (mainly the more modern/short whitewater canoes like those made by Blackfly and Esquif), are made by rotomolding… and Mohawk Canoes is working on a blowmolding process for their new whitewater canoe.
How to make a kayak – rotomolding (Liquidlogic)
How to make a kayak – rotomolding (Jackson)
How to make a kayak – blowmolding (Prijon)
Happy Canoe Year!
The canoe club starts out each year with a float on the Little Maumelle River. Mandy took some photos and wrote an article for Arkansas Outside about this year’s trip. You can read it here: Happy Canoe Year!
You can also read other articles written by Mandy.
Rafting on Ouachita
If my graduation trip to the Grand Canyon is going to work well, Bryan and I ought to have some idea about how oar rafts work. One pretty afternoon, our friend Debo offered to show us how to row one of their rafts. I sort of understood the way the raft worked but had a hard time getting my arms to work well with my brain in order to make it go where I wanted it to go. I could get it down the river ok, and I could turn it in circles in the middle of the river, but actually catching eddies along the sides of the stream were really more than I could figure out.
Bryan did better than me in the ‘how to make this thing go where I want it to’ department, but his big advantage is that he has about twelve times more upper body strength than I do, so he was able to row longer and harder and actually get the boat to behave better than I was. My primary job for the last two thirds of the trip was taking pictures and jumping up and down on the air-filled raft in order to make people laugh at me.
As is the case on most summer weekend afternoons, when we got to Rockport we found lots of friends in lots of boats. As fun as it is to play at Rockport, it’s just as much fun to watch others work on surfing and tricks at the ledge. People in rental canoes and flotillas of tubers wander down and through the group, too, and on a good day there are extra boats around – rafts and duckies and standup paddleboards to play with.
I’d wanted to take Cowper’s Star raft for another trip down the river, but I should have known better – there were games to play. Tanya Sacomani and I helped paddle the raft into a hole where we were able to park it for awhile, the upstream motion of the wave holding us steady against the downstream motion of the river current. We pulled cans of beer out of our pfds and drank them as the boat pitched and Bryan took pictures.
Usually, a trip to Rockport means an afternoon in the water followed by a long supper with friends at some area Mexican place, and this day wasn’t any different. Sure, we could save time by making the half-hour drive to the ledge, staying for an hour or two, and then driving straight back home. But we never, ever do. It’s funny how these trips have become just as much about the friends as about the boats and the water.
I Do Love to Plan a Trip
Mandy has the doctors’ blessings to keep playing; she’s learning how to protect her back and mitigate her pain. And so we’re launching ourselves, without the usual time to plan, into our summer adventures. Our friend Britt had planned to go with her on a two-week train-and-bike trip to northern New York, but they decided they weren’t up to the back-to-back 70-mile days that it would require. They’ve put their heads together and decided to go on a two-week rambling road trip to the Badlands, Corn Palace, Mount Rushmore, Glacier, and Arches. She’s gone to Tulsa for her three-week visit, leaving the rest of us to plan their trip. Britt’s planning the route and the side trips and the car campgrounds and the dayhikes they’ll do. Earlier this week, Britt tucked three pages of notes under my windshield wiper in the office parking lot.
The Wedding in NOLA
Bryan’s little brother Michael got married.
I haven’t been involved the hustle that comes before weddings since getting ready for my own. It was fun to be caught in the edge of the whirlwind. As soon as we arrived in town, Mandy left again with the cluster of people headed to the wedding rehearsal. Bryan and I stayed behind to get the rehearsal dinner heated up and on the table – pans of pasta, french bread, salad, fruit, petits fours, brownies. And then there was the surge of people in the house after the rehearsal, more people than I’d imagined, stuffed into the big kitchen, laughing and talking, excited about being part of something happy. I got a plate of food and a Hurricane and retreated to a chair in the backyard.
At some point the next afternoon, Juliana and some people I didn’t know rushed into the house and took over the kitchen, with its big marble countertop, to make pralines. We went to do a few errands, an dress (black and white, but that’s fine) and about Aunt Dot’s dress (classy and gold-and-white, completely perfect.)
The day of the wedding was another whirlwind, though a somewhat more controlled one. We slept late and Bryan painted Mandy’s toenails. We scratched our heads over her tan lines, which she’d been working to smooth out, without much success. Julie did Mandy’s hair and makeup in the kitchen before running home to get herself and the baby ready to go. We fussed over Mandy’s dress and made sure her things were packed before sending her off for pictures.
I’d never seen Bryan’s dad or brothers in suits, and I was impressed by how handsome they looked. Michael met us at the car to open the door, a sudden gentleman escorting his grandma into the wedding hall. Kevin was there, and JD, dressed in dark suits and white vests and Chuck Taylors and boutonnières. It was a combination of classy and silly, and they all pulled it off very well. I was proud of each of them.
It was Mandy’s first bridesmaid gig, and she did a very nice job. Before the wedding, she helped Juliana get ready, and after the wedding she drank her officially-sanctioned Lemondrop without making a face. She looked lovely in the pictures and she danced with the little ones and she talked to the old people and she was gracious and thoughtful and she only ordered pineapple juice from the open bar and we were proud of her.
The rest of the weekend was good, spent in a sort of content wedding afterglow. On Saturday night, Mandy crashed on the couch next to Aunt Dot while Bryan and I went to supper at Deanie’s with my friend Cristina. We ate oysters and walked barefoot, far after dark, along the path at the edge of Lake Pontchartrain. On Sunday we had beignets for breakfast and took Emma to the bookstore. We ate lunch with Bryan’s grandma, and a sudden afternoon thunderstorm trapped us inside the seafood restaurant, and Mandy dumped an entire glass of ice water into her lap, and none of these details are really important but the total of all of them is.
Welcome to our family, Juliana.