Well now there’s a good start to the week;  I got absolutely drenched on the way in this morning.  In retrospect, maybe I could have looked out the window before deciding to ride my scooter in.  Or, perhaps as I walked the 50 feet from the front door to the garage, decided “Well it’s starting to rain pretty hard, guess I better walk on up to the bus stop.”  But no, with my trained meteorological eye, I looked north towards the office and decided the really hard stuff wouldn’t be coming down for several hours.  Made it about three blocks.  The only way it could have been worse was if my rain gear was, say, still packed up with my float trip stuff instead of under the seat where it usually is.  Mmmm hmmmm.  Oh well, I should dry out by lunch time or so.

Well, another Easter gone by, two more DOR’s (Days On River) under my belt.  And a fine float it was.  Aside from a prolonged bout of rain on Friday night, we enjoyed rather sublime weather conditions.  Given the last five years of, shall we say, “less than ideal” weather, nobody was complaining about a few sprinkles.  (OK, six hours of blinding rain, but still.)

I traveled down there Wednesday night after work with Martin & Munkirs.  We took Chris’ truck and made pretty good time;  I think we showed up at camp at 10:00 or so.  Parked the truck next to Zim & Chad, as per our usual agenda, and commenced to campin’.  We actually went well into the wee hours that night;  Guess we were ready to get out of KC or something.  Munkirs eventually set up his tent and called it a night;  I weaseled in on Zim’s camper myself.  I think James got caught up in “new tent” euphoria;  I couldn’t see banging around in the dark trying to figure a tent out when there was a warm, dry couch a few steps away.  And as for Martin;  Well, he’s from Kearney, he ain’t quite cut out for the “sleeping outside” thing…  He always sleeps in a camper.

Thursday morning we got up and enjoyed some tasty egg sandwiches from Zim’s Cantina, then headed for the river.  Since it was shaping up into a fine day, we opted for the “long float,” where they take you up river and you float back down to camp.  It’s advertised on their site as a five hour trip.  That’s a bit…  “Optimistic” I would say, at least where our group is concerned.  We did make pretty good time though.  It was just two canoes in our group that day;  Munkirs & I in one, and Martin & Chad in the other.  There was a much larger group from our campground also, but we didn’t know them that well and Munkirs wasn’t feeling particularly social, so we kept to our own little barge.  (Or, “age group,” as the case may have been.)  It was a pleasant, uneventful float, which is to say we didn’t dump and got back to camp while it was still light out.  By the time we arrived back in camp, several more “elderly gentlemen” had arrived, and dinner preparations were well under way.  We had a fine BBQ dinner prepared by team TFB, and then re-commenced to campin’.

Friday shaped up quite similarly, if on a larger scale.  We went on the lower-half float that day, which despite being billed as an hour shorter in duration actually took about the same time, if not a bit longer.  Hmmm, strange.  (Not really.)  Once again, it was a sunny, warm, dry day, something we haven’t enjoyed in recent years.  We all got through it in remarkably good condition.  I really cannot recall going on two floats in as many days and not losing even one canoe.  Absolutely unheard of.  The only thing different I could think of was that Scotten wasn’t there, de-stabilizing the barge with his stupid lawn chair.  Carl quite inexplicably chose feeding his family over floating this year, breaking a long attendance streak.  (With the exception of one quite controversial incident a few years back.)  That couldn’t have been the difference though…  Could it?

Saturday morning we got up, swam out of our tents, and started breaking camp.  We enjoyed our standard breakfast in beautiful Mountain Grove, MO, and headed back home.  First order of business upon our arrival in KC was a little lunch at the Brooksider, naturally, to enjoy the weather and re-hash the weekend.  After that, I went home and chiseled three nights of camping off me, then went to bed for 15 hours.

Sunday I woke up well rested, if a bit sore.  Little “worse for wear” as the saying goes.  I managed to get around and get out to Mom’s for a delicious Easter lunch though.  As an added bonus, I rode the motorcycle so I got to enjoy the warm, if rather windy, weather for one more day.  We stayed at Mom’s a few hours, then took the “long way” home.  There was still plenty of daylight left when we got home, so I fired up the lawn mower and knocked out the first mowing of the season.  (Booo.)