Nom de guerre: Rivrdog

Downriver cruise

After loading my boat for the week's cruising, I shoved off for St. Helens, 11 miles downriver, getting there just after sunset on a full ebb tide and with wind opposing. Thanks to patience and a friendly local geezer on the dock, I was able to get secured, then secure my fellow yachtsman who was behind me. Fortunately, the courthouse clock was broken and did not chime all night, but unfortunately, the Internet network was tango uniform, so I couldn't post. No matter, I had to get up at dawn to meet my daughter, who is departing to work in Albuquerque, NM shortly. Next day, I got her squared away with Microsoft Streets and Trips '07, which now has voice command on navigation. Her Kia Rio is now equipped better than a Lexus for navigating the unfamiliar roads between here and there.

Then we pushed off for Rainier, about 20 miles further downriver, where I shanghaied a deckhand and bought an emergency starting battery, since my batteries are looking tired (still start the engines, but who know for how much longer), and my buddy's starting batteries are toast (dead cell on a Trojan golf car battery, rather unusual). With the equipment and deckhand aboard, we push off again, another 25 miles downriver. The river was UP, with nasty 3 foot rollers countering the ebb tide. Nice steep waves. Occasionally had to brace myself in the helm seat against the motion, and when I took a break for the head, I noted that a lot of things had changed locations in the main cabin, despite my best stowage attempts. Nothing broken, though.

It gets worse until we enter Cathlamet channel, which we timed for high tide, and even still, I saw four feet on the fishfinder once (boat draws 2 1/2 feet).

Navigation in the silty channel is by local knowledge, as the USCG doesn't maintain the four buoys that are there very well. I had the local knowledge, but it wasn't fresh - I haven't been here for two years.

Pull into the marina and take on fuel (only $120 worth, boat did better than I thought), then proceed to the assigned dock and completely fark up the stern-to landing. Some excuse, though, since my starboard engine kept dying at idle, and I couldn't train myself quick enough to keep it a skosh off of the idle stop.

Finally get tied up, and eat a late lunch at 1400. More boats arrive, then the driver arrives to take my deckhand back to Rainier, via Longview and the Lewis and Clark bridge. I take all of them out to dinner at the River Rat Tap, a waterside dive with an average tavern burger:

Note the classy missing chunk of roof. They need to sell more burgers and get that fixed, the first fall storm is due in Monday night.

Off to bed early. The rough river is hard on the Cap'n's old body. Heating pad AND Cyclobenzaprine.

Today, did some work on the batteries, bringing up the voltage by a thorough cleaning of the terminals and lugs on the battery cables (of which this boat has over a dozen).

Welcomed more boats to the cruise, then took a dinghy ride in my little Livingston dinghy, out into the main channel again, where I had to bail some due to the foot-or-better cross-chop, but I got some pictures of the outer harbor:

There's nothing but character in that old bucket, eh? More salty ships, here are two Brusco barge-dragging tugs, which usually average 4 knots at sea:

The inner harbor is full of these gillnetters, and I may gin up a post just on them and they way of life they represent, past, present and future:

More later, and then a post when I get back. I'll probably have to navigate through that coming storm, could be interesting.

Gotta go, Internet access here is $2.00 per hour and I only bought two hours.

The Hill and Bill scam

According to this, Bill Clintoon is shilling for his wifey. Except that he is SEVERELY taken to pieces by his former advisor, Bill Morris (the Karl Rove of the Clintoons) in this Front Page Magazine article.

Now THAT'S a fisking! BTW, I couldn't find the Bill-shills-Hill ad on Hillary's site...probably taken down now since Morris torpedoed it. Anyone who knows where it is please drop me an email with the link.

As a blogger, she manipulates her own archives to delete disadvantageous stuff. Just think of what she'll do to the US Archives (and the Spirit and Letter of the Constitution) if she's elected.

H/T to the EllTee.

Out on the water

Your blogger is going out on the water for about a week. by this time tomorrow early AM I will be cruising down the Multnomah Channel to St. Helens, thence down the mainstem Columbia River to Rainier, pick up a deckhand there, then down past Walker and Crims Island to Puget Island, then to the county seat of Wahkiakum County, Cathlamet, which has a lovely little harbor. They are having an end-of-summer fest there, including a chili-cook-off which I might participate in, might not.

I plan on being VERY relaxed by the time I come back, in a forecast (early) Fall rainstorm on Tuesday.

While I'm there, various folk will join me for a day or two aboard Lofoten Girl, my Tollycraft.

There's a large run of salmon just 30 miles downriver of Cathlamet, at the mouth, and the forecast rain may just start them moving up the Columbia, in which case I might delay a day or two and fish my way back up the river to Scappoose. This time of year, the Upriver Brights, a run of King (Chinook) salmon known for their size, up to 60 pounds (although the last one of these I caught a few years ago was only 18 pounds), is making it's way up to the gravel bars of the Hanford Reach, the last free-flowing section of the Columbia below British Columbia. All the rest of it is dammed from north-central Washington down through Bonneville Dam (about 30 miles upriver from where I sit).

If there is internet connectivity in Cathlamet (should be, at a County Seat), I'll post some, with pictures, from there. If not, I'll wait until I get back next week.

See you on the water! There's always a spare berth and a spare fishing rod aboard, and the liquor locker is legendary!

Least PeeCee movie of the month...

It parodies hispanic gangs...it's hillarious, but you have to wonder if those cops who made it are still working...

Download HispanicShootingRange.mpeg

BTW, range safety is observed, the weapon they are firing is loaded with Simunition ammo

H/T to the EllTee

Jesse Jackson's Ammo

So, I was moved by Jesse Jackson's claim that his race is a victim of "illegal guns". So moved that I decided to follow David Codrea's advice and make my own protest, so I just returned from buying some "evil dum-dum bullets".

Actually soft-point ammo is only evil and "dum-dum" according to a former Sheriff I worked for, Lee P. Brown, who has, since I worked for him in the 70's, inflicted himself on New Yawk City, Atlanta and Houston, not to mention San Jose, CA where he came from.

But, Lee P notwithstanding, the evil gun-banner of the day is Jesse Jackson, he of the Operation Push (and Shove), an extortion non-profit outfit which exists to shake down solicit business and industry to provide funds for the Rev. Jackson's efforts to support his extravagant lifestyle help the races get along better.

Anyway, I patronized my local boomstick store, where they were doing a decent business in folks coming in JUST FOR AMMO. I was so bold to announce to the proprietor just why I was buying ONE box of premium ammo, instead of the usual can of milsurp I frequently buy from them. The proprietor smiled at the reference to "Jesse Jackson's Ammo Day", and again at my suitable attire to celebrate that day, the very desireable "Carnival of Cordite" Tee-shirt:

All in all, a good day.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to the gun safe to reload one of my S.H.T.F. rifles, Snuffy, a Marlin 1894C, with the new ammo.

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UPDATE: 082907 0748 PDT: I almost forgot. Include in my total, all you Ammo Day Jr talliers, the two AR-7 magazines I just bought at auction and paid for yestiddy, as well as the 300 bullets I just signed for that I won at auction (by the way, that's J&G Sales' Gunbroker.com auctions, usually some good stuff in there).

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Vick "Rehabilitation" begins at ESPN

So it begins, right on schedule, the "rehabilitation" of Michael Vick, convicted Federal Conspirator and illegal dogfighter. You knew this was going to happen of course, this "spinning" of Vick's crimes into an "opportunity for forgiveness" that those of us NOT in Vick's asshole subculture are now to be offered. The main premise behind this "rehabilitation" of Michael Vick is that we are told to forgive and forget his crimes and let him get on with football.

ESPN is behind it, no doubt at the behest of Arthur Blank, the owner of the Atlanta Falcons and supreme CYA-in-charge for Vick. ESPN, not really wanting to cover football in the Monday Night Football game, spent at least 3/4 of the airtime in the game talking about Vick, who actually rated maybe ten minutes of the 20 minute halftime as a subject of discussion.

But NOOOOOOOOOO, ESPN trotted out Cynthia Tucker, Chief Editorialist and apologist for the terribly disadvantaged black culture in Atlanta, and Ms. Tucker gushed on for five or ten minutes as to how Vick's rehabilitation had begun.

Excuse me, Ms. Tucker, but Michael Vick hasn't been sentenced yet, and won't be (on the Federal charges) until December 10, a curiously long time, but a time with a definite purpose (to give max allowance for the spin to work). He also faces State of Virginia charges, and that State may not be so inclined to forgive and forget his trespasses. So, talk of his "rehabilitation" is extremely premature. At a short news conference (in which he took no questions), he stumbled through a pro-forma apology to all concerned, but his face and mannerisms suggested that his heart wasn't in his words.

No, Michael Vick is one of those strange dichotomies that we see from time to time, mostly in professional sports, but occasionally in politics: a person of low background with high talent and the luck to have the talent developed for him. What do you do when the low background continues to overshadow the stellar athletic performance?

If you want to save the culture, you come down on the man like a ton of bricks, and when he's done his sentences, you send him back to his low background in his excessively-forgiving subculture and tell him he can either figure out, on his own, how to tell those leeches and snakes that he isn't one of them anymore, and then, and ONLY then, he needs to beg the forgiveness of the rest of us. Failing to take this action only weakens the moral resolve of the culture as a whole, because sports heroes are such an important part of our culture and it's moral structure.

The dogfighting scheme isn't Michael Vick's only trespass. Ever since he was a college football star, he has supported (and now paid for) and encouraged (immorally) his "posse", a group of subculture men who would ALL be in prison except for his largesse. This "posse" has muscled it's way around the fringes of the NFL for several years now, getting into scrapes with the law in Las Vegas, to name just one place where they are personnae non grata. The dogfighting scheme was just a part of their subculture sin.

Nope, I am waiting for a sign that Michael Vick has actually joined the rest of us in THIS culture, and has rejected his subculture past. Until I see that sign, Joey Harrington will be THE quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons for me, and by the looks of his workmanlike job last night, Joey knows his job and can win games for the Falcons.

Of course, you wouldn't hear the spinning ESPN ever say that, but many thousands of fans at last night's games saw it, and so did a few who caught the rare glimpses of football offered by ESPN in between it's segments of Vick-spin.

Buh-Bye Alberto

Alberto Gonzales has resigned, according to this AssPress story.

Buh-Bye, Alberto. You held your standard high, but were lacking in a few important criteria for success, such as supporting the Second Amendment, which you seemed early on to oppose. You also (although I blame this one on your boss) totally FUBAR'd the dismissal of the 8 Clintonian legal beagles.

You won't be missed.

Will this merely whet the appetite of the BDS people for more scalps?

Probably, after the resignation of Rove just a few days ago, this will give them the idea that they have W on the run.

Oh well, it diverts attention from the REAL FUBAR, the total screwing-up of the war in Iraq.

If I wasn't on this diet, this'd be one of those days I'd start with a stiff drink.

Little League World Series (final note)

Even Brent Musberger couldn't ruin this last game for me. In the bottom of the eighth, two innings into extra innings, Dalton Carriker stepped up to bat. He had all the confidence of the Babe in his prime. The commentators were babbling on as to his hitting power, and, indeed, Japan's coach HAD put the outfielders at the edge of the warning track. Carriker took a cut, then I could read his eyes, which said that the next decent pitch was going over the right-field wall, AND IT DID! Warner-Robins, Georgia won the game with a walk-off home run.

Brent Mouthmesser Musberger STILL gets a failing grade though, awarding the "(commercial name deleted) Team Play of the Game" to the Warner-Robins third baseman FOR MAKING AN UNASSISTED PUT-OUT AT THIRD! Musberger, you get Sportz Asshat of the Week for that one. Your "gravitas" almost rhymes with "asshat".

The Acidman (RIP) was right. Georgians DO have the heart for junior sports.

Congrats to Warner-Robins (a good USAF town) and all the young players, coaches and parents of that team.

Rock Snot

Coming to a river near you: "Rock Snot", an invasive form of algae that smothers the food supply of small fish. Strangely, it prefers clear streams with moderate to fast current, the opposite to most other alga, which prefer little to no current and thrive in cloudy water.

The scientists seem baffled, but there is a simple answer to this menace: find something which eats it and introduce that organism into the rivers. Hopefully, the solution won't be as bad as the problem, as was the Grass Carp to coastal lakes where it was introduced to counter an invasive plant, Milfoil, in Oregon a generation ago, and subsequently crowded out most of the gamefish such as perch, bluegill and largemouth bass.

Invasive species are a nighmare for ecologists, that is, those who actually CARE about the ecology rather than the political clout it might bring. There are always three solutions in any system to beat an invasive species: First, control it's spread through education, second, trace it back to it's origin and find out about how ma nature controls it there, and third, find something that eats it. Protection of ecologies is not a difficult science, it is only made so by people who want something for themselves as well as the ecologies they are protecting.

Way to go, Oregonian!

Hammer down! The editors of the Oregonian newspaper, writing about ESPN's coverage of the Little League World Series, ALSO think ESPN sucks, and said as much here. ESPN chief blatherer Brent Mouthmesser Musberger was singled out for some criticism: "Brent Musberger was oozing so much gravitas..." Damn, I wish I could write like that!

ESPN now carries NASCAR racing, which they don't do too bad a job of. They do the race coverage properly, but they seem to have doubled the number of interviews with drivers, crew chiefs and owners, and they STILL think that Title IX applies to sportscasting as well as college athletics, because they employ FAR too many blondes who know little of what they are doing.

Their MNF coverage this week was just as bad as ever, and I turned it off and will not watch any more of it until the regular season. I DID catch Sunday night Football on NBC, and watched John Madden show how the job is supposed to be done. Last night's coverage of Green Bay vs. Jacksonville on Fox Sports was also done well, with all the plays covered, replayed as necessary and commented on briefly, while still making proper comment about player development.

ESPN is in serious danger of losing the pre-emminent position which they've enjoyed for some years now. I'm to a point where I hope that they do, and go back to sports talk and general sports scoring and coverage. One very disturbing item: they are trying to pump up "fantasy football" into a corporate entity. My suspicious mind tells me that there may be more to fantasy football than just wannabe commissioners and team owners. Something tells me that a LOT of moolah changes hands in this trash-sport. By trying to actually incorporate it, is ESPN trying to get some vig on all that action? Time will tell, but one thing seems obvious with ESPN now: they are much farther into the sidelines of the various sports they cover than they used to be. If their marketing wizards have told them that Tony Kornheiser will sell more Bud for Annheiser-Busch, that's one thing, but their obvious pander to sport-related areas vulnerable to betting and corruption seems just a little too far out of place in the overall game of sports coverage when compared to other networks.

Why doesn't NY Att'y General Elliot Spitzer look into ESPN's books instead of harassing gun shop owners?

My question for readers: what's your best guess? Which "family" has bought into ESPN?